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CoinDesk Podcast Network

BREAKDOWN: Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Feat. Celo's Marek Olszewski

CoinDesk Podcast Network

CoinDesk

Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency, Dlt, Tokenization, Coindesk, Distributed Ledger, Blockchain, Tech News, Business News, Ethereum, Bitcoin, News, Digitalassets, Daily News, Decentralization, Defi, Crypto, Business

4.8689 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is sponsored by ErisXThe Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund.

In a world of centralized mobile money solutions, do decentralized, permissionless currencies matter?

Around the world, an estimated 1.7 billion people remain unbanked and lacking access to high quality financial services. 

Some projects see cryptocurrency as an answer. In this episode of The Breakdown, NLW speaks with Celo co-founder Marek Olszewski about:

  • How Celo was designed differently to address financial inclusion as a primary use case 
  • The problems with centralized approaches to mobile money like m-pesa 
  • Why true financial inclusions solutions must be permissionless 
  • Why technology design isn’t enough and projects that seek to gain adoption require ground up go to market strategies
  • The impact of Libra’s launch on the “bank the unbanked” narrative 
  • How the COVID-19 crisis has changed the narrative around and demand for stablecoins globally

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond.

0:12.0

This episode is sponsored by ArisX.com, the Stellar Development Foundation, and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund.

0:20.0

The Breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

0:22.7

Here's your host, NLW.

0:27.7

Welcome back to the breakdown.

0:30.0

It is Tuesday, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, and I'm sure by now you've already seen the

0:35.1

memes going around that say something to the effect of,

0:37.5

imagine a world where Cinco de Mayo falls on Taco Tuesday, only to be ruined by a virus

0:42.3

named after a Mexican beer.

0:44.5

But that's the state of where we are.

0:46.1

It is Tuesday, the 5th of May.

0:48.9

And today, I wanted to do something a little bit different.

0:51.6

For those of you who don't know, who aren't familiar with my background, I spent about a decade in San Francisco doing tech before moving back

0:58.4

to the East Coast, where I live now in the Hudson Valley and focusing entirely on crypto and

1:02.6

content marketing and this podcast. And the thing that got me into tech was actually working

1:07.5

with a company called change.org because when I was in college and then for

1:11.1

the first couple years after, my focus was entirely on social impact and in particular, the

1:16.7

relationships between people from different places, how you build networks of action that could

1:21.8

include both people on the ground actually experiencing problems as well as international

1:26.4

networks of support?

1:30.7

What was the right way to actually create change and make a difference?

1:35.8

I think that on the one hand, I am loath to say that everyone just needs to take care of themselves and that everything should be left to communities.

...

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