Giving Compass' Take:

• Bill Gates endorses the use of digital currencies to address global poverty by expanding financial access and services around the world. 

• What are the potential harms of cryptocurrency in humanitarian work? 

• Read about how cryptocurrencies are creating social change around the world. 

In a video message for a forum on cryptocurrency, the Microsoft founder said that 2.5 billion around the world lack access to financial services, which deepens their poverty and prevents them from pursuing opportunities and growing their potential.

He said that expanding digital financial access should be a global humanitarian priority.

“If we were building a financial system from scratch today, we’d do it on a digital platform,” Gates said. “Digital can lower the cost of a range of transactions by as much as 90%, providing nearly universal access to innovative financial products and services.”Gates went on to compare the potential of universal financial access to vaccines and high yielding crops, which have helped billions of people around the world.

Greater access to financial services would allow people to build up credit, accumulate savings, access loans to expand business operations, purchase insurance to protect against crop loss, and more. Research has shown that access to a bank account improves a family’s ability to pay for education, health care, food, and more.

Further, inclusion in formal financial systems can allow people to receive better government services, and obtain payments for work more reliably.

In the past, Gates’ has dismissed cryptocurrencies as a “bad investment,” but while the philanthropist may not think bBitcoin will overtake national currencies, he does see value in its digital foundation, which can be cheap and scaled around the world.

“Transforming the underlying economics of financial systems through digital currency will help those in poverty directly, and it will also support a host of other development actives, including health and agriculture,” he said.

Read the full article about digital currencies by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen