Blockchain ID system to tackle poverty issues

In Buenos Aires 16.2 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Tech company NEC, the NGO Bitcoin Argentina and IDB Lab (the Innovation Laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank Group) will develop a blockchain identity system to make financial services and other services easily and cheaply accessible to the poorest citizens of the Argentinian capital.

People who live below the poverty line have a major problem of accessing services and gaining information. This is called the poverty penalty, an unfair advantage to which blockchain technology can provide a solution.

NEC and the other partners believe that a blockchain identity system can provide a secure and reliable registration of data on the identity and behavior of individuals. Of course all this happens while preserving privacy and giving citizens control over its circulation.

The partnership will last for at least four years, and at first it’s only focused on one neighborhood in Buenos Aires. The neighborhood is called Barrio 31, one of the oldest ‘informal’ settlements in Buenos Aires. Here lots of people live in handmade houses without any government registration or what so ever. The entire neighborhood has became a center of urbanization as the government is building more and more infrastructures for the people living in Barrio 31. This partnership with NEC is another example in order to increase the quality of life for the people in the neighborhood.

Originally published at NEDEROB.