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

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

AccessTimeIconMay 5, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. UTC
Updated Dec 11, 2022 at 7:37 p.m. UTC
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In a world of centralized mobile money solutions, do decentralized, permissionless currencies matter?

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This episode is sponsored by ErisXThe Stellar Development Foundation and  Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fundhttps://grayscale.co/coindesk.

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

For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, IHeartRadio or RSS.

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