Mission-driven cryptocurrency requires an active commitment to equity

These views overestimate the ability of cryptocurrency to address financial exclusion caused by structural problems as well as technical ones.

The technology of cryptocurrency offers solutions and features critical to increasing financial inclusion.

The technical advantages of cryptocurrency do not line up perfectly with the root causes of financial exclusion.

While companies such as Coinbase do important work proliferating cryptocurrencies, achieving economic freedom requires more, and crypto projects must be honest about their opportunities to improve financial inclusion as they reckon with their own limitations.

While cryptocurrency offers novel ways to create a new financial system, the technology and its proliferation cannot solve the underlying causes of financial exclusion alone.

According to The Boston Globe, the median net worth of non-immigrant African-American households in Boston is $8. The history of marginalization that cryptocurrency will have to grapple with manifests itself in lack of connectivity, distrust in technology, financial illiteracy, and historical economic and social inequality.

Financial institutions may offer difficult-to-understand financial products or training, particularly in emerging markets, and some take advantage of consumers through products such as predatory loans.

As a result, financial illiteracy may prevent people from knowing how or why to use cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency offers a novel technical solution to creating a new financial system - this achievement should be celebrated because it has the potential to be truly transformative.

Cryptocurrencies can create a financial infrastructure uniquely suited to addressing financial exclusion, but without enabling easier access to that infrastructure, its benefits are not fully realized.