We spend a lot of time in this newsletter talking about ETF flows and institutional adoption and price targets and all of that matters for us as investors.
But in real life I have so many friends that think Bitcoin is total bunk and makes zero difference in the world or even worse is just used by drug dealers or for illicit activities which is ironic considering that 90% of US dollar bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them.
But the reality is that Bitcoin is a tool and like any other tool it can be used to help or to hurt, just like a scalpel can be used to cut someone or in the hands of a surgeon it can save someone’s life.
So this article attempts to talk about why Bitcoin is more than just an investment, it can be a humanitarian tool to help the 4 Billion people living under Authoritarian regimes.
The Women Who Can’t Open a Bank Account
Here’s something most of us never think about.
In Afghanistan, women can’t open a bank account without permission from a father or husband and that permission is almost never granted, in fact it’s estimated that only 5-7% of women in Afghanistan have their own bank account because they were allowed to have one.
But think about what that means for the rest of them.
They can’t save money. They can’t get paid for work. They can’t build anything for themselves or their family.
Often if they do earn an income their father, husband or brothers will take their money from them immediately.
Roya Mahboob is an Afghani woman who built a software company called Citadel Software.
She hired women and paid them in cash at first but learned their cash got confiscated by family members and it’s not like there were a ton of options available to them.
No Paypal, no international banks and mobile payments never became a thing there.
Then in 2013, her Italian business partner told her about Bitcoin and so offered Bitcoin as an alternative payment system for her employees.
Nobody had to know, no permission needed to get an account - just a phone and a 12 word seed phrase.
She and her sister Forough went on to teach 16,000 Afghan girls how to use computers through their Digital Citizen Fund and 1/3 of them set up Bitcoin wallets and started receiving funds.
When the Taliban retook Kabul in August 2021, some of those women used their Bitcoin wallets to evacuate their families. They carried their savings across borders in their heads.
That was the difference between escape and captivity.
For those who escaped they went on harrowing journey’s where they lost almost everything except for their passphrase and were able to access their Bitcoin in new countries
Today, even though the Taliban have officially banned cryptocurrency, underground Bitcoin education continues.
Women learn in secret classrooms in the basements, kitchens and backrooms in Afghanistan with instructors who risk imprisonment to teach them because financial freedom via Bitcoin is that important.
As Mahboob puts it: “It gives them a hope of financial freedom.”
And right now, those underground schools are being funded by Bitcoin because traditional banking rails aka SWIFT, Visa, Western Union pulled out of Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal.
Bitcoin doesn’t care about any of that.
A teacher in Kabul can receive funds, convert them to local currency through a peer-to-peer exchange, and pay rent on a secret classroom all without permission from The Taliban.
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4 Billion People Live Under Authoritarian Regimes and Bitcoin Can Help Them
Alex Gladstein, the Human Rights Foundation’s chief strategy officer, published an essay in the Journal of Democracy last year called “Why Bitcoin is Freedom Money.”
His argument is simple and wildly effective.
Fifty years ago, governments couldn’t easily monitor or control the economy at the individual level.
Most transactions were cash. No database. No surveillance.
That world is gone now.
Today, authoritarian regimes weaponize financial systems as tools of control.
Nigeria freezes the bank accounts of protest organizers.
Cuba cuts off remittances to dissidents.
Russia surveils every digital transaction.
Iran arrests Bitcoin advocates like Ziya Sadr for the crime of teaching people about money the government can’t control.
We covered Iran’s currency collapse in this newsletter a few weeks ago. The rial crashed 96% in 30 days.
Guess what the government’s response was.
It was to cap cryptocurrency purchases because when the money is dying fast and the regime is losing control over the people, the last thing a regime wants is for its people to have an escape hatch.
Bitcoin is that escape hatch.
Not for everyone. Not yet.
The technology still needs to get easier.
Internet access in rural Afghanistan is limited and digital literacy remains a barrier in many places.
But here’s what the critics miss.
The same people who dismiss Bitcoin as “speculative” or “volatile” are usually people who’ve never had their bank account frozen by a dictator.
Who’ve never watched their currency lose 96% of its value in a month.
Gladstein calls it “checking your financial privilege.” And he’s right.
The Bottom Line
We talk a lot about billion-dollar ETF inflows and corporate treasuries and price targets in this newsletter and hat stuff matters for the investment thesis.
But the humanitarian case IS the investment case.
They aren’t separate arguments.
When 1.4 billion unbanked people gain access to a monetary network... that’s demand. When authoritarian governments keep proving they can’t be trusted with their citizens’ money... that’s the use case.
Every Afghan girl who opens a Bitcoin wallet. Every Nigerian entrepreneur who routes around capital controls. Every Ukrainian refugee who receives aid in seconds instead of weeks.
They’re all bricks in the road to the Million Dollar Bitcoin.
Not because the price matters most but because the price reflects what Bitcoin actually is.
A monetary network that doesn’t ask permission. That doesn’t discriminate. That doesn’t care if you’re a billionaire or a teenager in Herat with a borrowed phone.
That’s not just technology.
That’s freedom and freedom has a way of becoming very, very valuable.
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