A high school dropout just transferred cryptocurrency via satellite to a school in Ghana. No internet or smartphones involved. No fancy, expensive infrastructure.
Erik Finman, who turned 21 in October, has busted one of crypto’s biggest myths: that it can’t reach the unbanked in remote areas or low-tech regions with spotty internet or where people are living without iPhones or laptops.
Finman sent $1,000 of MTL, the native digital asset of the crypto platform Metal Pay, to St. Mary’s School in Korle Gonno in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. MTL is made for everyday use, allowing people to transact it, store it, exchange it for other cryptocurrencies, make payments or cash it out to a fiat currency.
The funds that were sent to St. Mary’s were used to repair the school’s roof and to build new benches and tables.
Finman, who made a modest purchase of 446 Bitcoin in 2011, is now a millionaire-turned-entrepreneur who is trying to solve social and economic problems by using a mix of new technology, old technology and ingenuity.
Experiments abound in the cryptosphere where entrepreneurs and computer scientists are sharpening radical inventions to build an alternate money system and a new global infrastructure for finance.
Finman’s “crypto space drop” is a bold move that shows the potential of the digital economy. It reimagines how money can be distributed and underscores why commercial banks and traditional checking and savings accounts, which are off-limits to roughly 1.7 billion people around the world, are ill-suited to go the last mile and to help lift entire populations out of poverty.
Says Finman,
“Cryptocurrency + satellites = anyone in the world can participate in the economy.”
The team at Metal Pay says they’re working on the next steps to make crypto go mainstream with easier transactions, intuitive designs, a responsive marketplace and global coverage. They’ve announced an early access version of Metal Pay for Android.
You can check out more about early access here.
Featured image: Shutterstock/moonshadowz
