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In Afghanistan, is crypto helping the women or the Taliban?

 


Afghanistan is on the brink – sanctions, inflation, collapse of the economy and ban on international currencies. Right now, the country is making it into the global top 20 of the Crypto Adoption Index. What is happening in the Hindu Kush?


Five months ago we received daily news from Afghanistan that went around the world. People fought at Kabul Airport to leave their country on one of the 150 evacuation flights that departed daily. In the city, the Taliban shot their way into the center of the city, and on the runway mothers with their children clung desperately to the landing gear of military aircraft.


The Taliban regime had gradually regained control of the country just a few weeks after US forces withdrew. While many people gave up everything to flee Afghanistan, others reacted with more hope. Perhaps the radical Islamists have changed, moved with the times? However, international relations between the self-proclaimed holy warriors and western countries deteriorated - with dramatic consequences for the Afghan population.


As a result, Afghanistan is currently in political and economic isolation. No nation state in the world is making moves to officially recognize the Taliban as the country's new government. On the contrary: the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions. One consequence is frozen assets, at the time of writing around $9 billion in cash reserves are frozen.


This has fatal consequences for a country that has been dependent on international aid for years. The isolation of Afghanistan, combined with a severe drought and the corona pandemic, brings with it a humanitarian crisis.


Bitcoin & crypto as a glimmer of hope

Actually, Roya Mahboob had taken precautions. The founder of the Digital Citizen Fund - a non-governmental organization that gives girls and women in developing countries access to technology - started paying her employees in Bitcoin 10 years ago. In the IT center in Kabul run by the organization, women not only learned basic computer skills, but also how to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum and set up a wallet.


After the Taliban took power, some of these women were able to use their crypto assets to flee the country unnoticed.



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