GoodNews: Angelina Jolie Fights Against Systematic Inequality While MetaMask Proves Most Popular In Developing Countries

#GoodData

In just five weeks since the GoodDollar basic income wallet and protocol was launched, on September 7, there have been almost half-a-million total successful claims. And this Monday’s total of 430,066 is some 105,727 more than last Monday’s figure of 324,339. Given the impressive rate of adoption of GoodDollar and the rising number of claims, we might break one-million claims before December.

For more data – including cool graphs – please explore our stats dashboard here.

A Week Of #GoodNews

• San Francisco mayor, London Breed, plans to implement a basic income programme for local artists, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The scheme, starting in early 2021, provides $1,000 a month for up to 130 artists for at least six months.

• A Vancouver-based basic income project handed homeless people $7,500 and tracked their progress over 12 months – and the results have been “beautifully surprising”, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The study, of 115 participants, aged between 19 and 64 – with 50 chosen at random to be handed the cash – showed that those with money found housing faster, their food security was boosted, and they spent less on substance abuse.

• Sophie Howe, The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, believes giving people unconditional, regular payment could prevent further mass unemployment and poverty. “This is an emergency and there’s no grounds for leaving anyone behind in an emergency,” she is quoted as saying in Business Live. “A basic income would allow us to provide for the many, the present and the future, giving people more control of their lives.”

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) is “2020’s top story in blockchain and cryptocurrency”, writes Luke Fitzpatrick on Forbes. Moreover, DeFi may push governments to adopt central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). “CBDCs would tokenize sovereign money and enable users to enjoy the advantages of less friction, as well as faster and cheaper transactions,” he adds.

• While CoinTelegraph, with tongue firmly in cheek, calls DeFi “Wolf of Wall Street on steroids”, this article continues: “DeFi could end up being bigger than the internet one day. Anything is possible now. Peer-to-peer finance has also been operating silently in the background. It offers financial services to people based on real use cases like payments, remittance, wealth preservation and commerce. The people of emerging markets such as Africa and India, for example, seem to benefit most.”

#DoBetter

The coronavirus pandemic will push 115 million people into extreme poverty – including scores of “new poor” who are relatively well educated in the cities of middle-income countries – this year, according to the latest calculations by the World Bank. “We are likely to see people who previously escaped poverty falling back into it, as well as people who have never been poor falling into poverty for the first time,” said Carolina Sánchez-Páramo, Global Director of the bank’s Poverty and Equity division. Nearly 7 per cent of the world’s population will be living on less than $1.90 a day – the threshold of “extreme poverty” – by 2030, the bank added.

This coming Saturday, October 17, marks the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The theme for 2020 is “acting together to achieve social and environmental justice for all”. How are you going to help? Join the #EndPoverty global campaign.

#GoodInfluence

Hollywood actor, filmmaker and humanitarian activist Angelina Jolie has written an explosive article for Time magazine that takes aim at unbalanced systems that have enabled inequality, in its many forms, to deepen over many years. “These problems cannot be blamed entirely on the coronavirus,” she writes. “While the virus has inflamed inequalities in societies, it did not create them. Humans – not disease – are responsible for unjust laws and systems, and racial and social inequality.”

#GoodFuture

As MetaMask – a browser extension that allows users to interact with the Ethereum network and its wide range of smart contract-based DeFi applications – surpasses one million, it’s encouraging that, according to CoinDesk, “developing countries lead in MetaMask adoption. India, Nigeria and the Philippines are the countries with most MetaMask usage after the United States.”

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