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Banking the Unbanked: How the Crypto Community Can Make a Big Impact

For tech-savvy young adults in communities often overlooked by traditional big business, the crypto and blockchain industry offers opportunities that others don't.

Updated Dec 10, 2022, 9:18 p.m. Published Apr 30, 2020, 3:00 p.m.

For tech-savvy yet unbanked young adults in communities often overlooked by traditional big business, the crypto and blockchain industry offers opportunities that others don’t.

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“Hodl” has become quite the rallying cry in the crypto industry today. But to boost adoption, that might be the wrong trend.

So says Carlos Acevedo, director of sales and the regional lead of Latin America for Brave, the crypto-powered web browser. In this episode of CoinDesk Live, hosted by Consensus organizer Stephanie Izquieta, Acevedo seemed to invoke the giving nature of early bitcoin enthusiasts such as Roger Ver, who would give away bitcoin to anyone and everyone he met.

According to Acevedo, that’s the best way to get more people interested in the technology. They’ll not only be interested from a price perspective but become more curious about how crypto could offer efficiencies and benefits in other areas of their life.

For people in lower-income communities that are unbanked or underbanked, it’s introducing a whole new concept of finance they didn’t have access to before.

“The movement is so small but so, so powerful,” Acevedo said.

Listen in to hear more about:

Acevedo's work building the Crypto Community Project in the Bronx (N.Y.) and his broader crusade to help the unbanked
What he learned what interests students during his time as a teacher
The missing topic in young people's education about money: personal finance
What has the largest impact on a person's scholastic success?
How to use Brave and its Basic Attention Token (BAT)
Monetizing your attention
The Brave web browser and, specifically, its crypto rewards functionality as a gateway drug for going further down the blockchain rabbit hole
How crypto could help push people out of poverty
The fork that allows you to use Brave just like Google Chrome; why would you ever go back to using data-extracting search engines?
Crypto stimulus and helping the unbanked

Next up:

CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Edition continues its popular twice-weekly virtual chats with Consensus speakers via Zoom and Twitter, giving you a preview of what’s to come at Consensus: Distributed, our first fully virtual – and fully free – big-tent conference May 11-15.

Register to join our fifth session Thursday, April 30, with speaker Hudson Jameson from the Ethereum Foundation to discuss private transactions, client improvements and dealing with FUD, hosted by Consensus organizer Nolan Bauerle. Zoom participants can ask questions directly to our guests.

Then, of course, join us at Consensus: Distributed May 11-15 where all the guests you hear on CoinDesk LIVE will be speaking in more depth.

Charity Unbanked Brave Podcasts Stimulus Consensus: Distributed Carlos Acevedo

Adam B. Levine

Adam B. Levine joined CoinDesk in 2019 as the editor of its new audio and podcasts division. Previously, Adam founded the long-running Let's Talk Bitcoin! talk show with co-hosts Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

Finding early success with the show, Adam transformed the podcast's homepage into a full newsdesk and publishing platform, founding the LTB Network in January of 2014 to help broaden the conversation with new and different perspectives. In the Spring of that year, he would go on to launch the first and largest tokenized rewards program for creators and their audience. In what many have called an early influential version of "Steemit"; LTBCOIN, which was awarded to both content creators and members of the audience for participation was distributed until the LTBN was acquired by BTC, Inc. in January of 2017.

With the network launched and growing, in late 2014 Adam turned his attention to the practical challenges of administering the tokenized program and founded Tokenly, Inc. There, he led the development of early tokenized vending machines with Swapbot, tokenized identity solution Tokenpass, e-commerce with TokenMarkets.com and media with Token.fm. Adam owns some BTC, ETH and small positions in a number of other tokens.