# The Unbanked, A Real Blue Ocean Opportunity for Crypto by Gabriela Chang | Devcon Bogotá

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2023-10-07
- Duration: 07:19
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-fhPdvmequaY
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhPdvmequaY

## Description

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/the-unbanked-a-real-blue-ocean-opportunity-for-crypto/

1/4 of the global population is excluded from the current financial system. Financial exclusion stems from the belief that a population is too high risk to receive funding. Sadly, this factor preeminently causes these same people to never be able to break out of poverty.

Unbanked farmers fall in the same boat. Due to their lack of collateral and credit history, they can only access loans starting at 100% interest rate. Crypto and blockchain has an opportunity to change that for the better.

Speaker(s): Gabriela Chang
Track: Opportunity & Global Impact
Keywords: refi,regenerative agriculture,financial inclusion

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Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
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## Transcript

foreign [Music] CSO and co-founder of Epic Hub I'm an industrial and product designer and artist and writer and I work for the Secretary of economic development in Chiapas Mexico and I was also an organic coffee producer I'm thrilled to be here to talk with you about the amazing opportunity arising for using web tree to solve one of the most pressing problems in this world the unbanked farmers I'm here to remind all of you that blockchain initials promise was to enable a financial system where no one was left outside excluded shocking data according to the World Bank a quarter of the world population is excluded from the traditional Financial system so this means that the only source for working capitals for nearly 2 billion people is shark launch and they often have to pay uh over 100 interest for the little money they can borrow within their communities bad news from these two billion people 70 percent are smallholder farmers living in poverty despite producing a third of the worst Food our food they live and work in very fragile ecosystems we all need to protect for our own sake money for these tiny Farmers is scarce and outrageously expensive preventing them from keeping a benefit after paying the debt also the annual Financial need accounts for almost one trillion dollars annually they are not eligible for microfinancials micro credits because they are not able to pay every week or every month this is known as the poverty cycle they are good payers there's no record to prove it so quite often risk is perceived way higher than it really is uh for an example the global Benchmark for grouper loans grupal solidarity groups is the the default is less than three percent there should be people queuing to invest in these Farmers this enormous dysfunction is also a blue ocean opportunity to build a better economic system leveraging on blockchain and crypto as Catalyst for True development the global Paradox of the economy inspired us to connect complementary economic regions to benefit both parties in a win-win Arbitrage where lenders and Farmers become partners that no longer pay abusive interest for loans or negative rates for the savings through our lending and staking platform almost anyone in the world can invest into cure projects and earn a return while generating triple impact social economic and environmental fintech approach to the unbanked usually is focus on data to do the credit scoring or in assets to Atlas collateral but small farmers live in areas with no connectivity and their small lands are of no commercial interest so for them they have designed crowd collateral connecting defy to the productive economy of the real world building a most resilient model where Jill doesn't come from derivative uh sorry this is not confidential derivatives but from real Agriculture and this is Jill Farmers back in the launch of actual farmers the key is to leverage on crypto to develop the incentives to create the proper incentive Loops that we call we built an International Community where all stakeholders benefit from interacting our mission is to improve the living standard of the smallholder farmers through their own productivity why because there's no future without sustainability and it's a huge business opportunity to leverage on blockchain on webtree to replace and pray internet and inefficient supply chain transforming scarcity and inequality into abundance and through development we are one of the most awarded and recognized projects within the verify the regenerative Finance space they say web true it's about competition and web 3 about collaboration we need to collaborate in order to solve the huge problem the planet is facing that most remember this most of the greenest areas of the world is where the unbanked lived so we need to secure their well-being to secure ours we need to stop thinking Financial inclusion it's about solving others problems we need to work together using blockchain and crypto to bring back balance to humanity join us it's a good business to do good thank you for the optimistic magic at the end we still have two minutes for questions so please raise your hand our volunteers will bring the mic for you now we need that for the streaming sorry oh hello hello hey um I have a question what's what's the biggest roadblock to specifically ethic Hub scaling massively I know you've been around for a while so I'm just wondering just you know how do we scale ethic Hub and projects like it to reach more Farmers all over the world right and obviously sort of with nuances Etc but what are the roadblocks true collaboration we started in we're in the space since 2017 we launched a platform in 2018 and it's very hard to grow with the available resources the way we start from from zero from scratch and the challenge is to bring together all the actors we are already working we are uh attending over 500 families we are in three countries and we are growing but the challenge is to bring more actors to the ecosystem we were by Links of trust by Circles of trust and theory of games so we are working with with trust here and we are actually having the partnership with Ika which is a an Institutional entity The inter-american Institute for cooperation for agriculture and we are already already doing some other Partnerships uh in order to access the farmers that are already selected by these trusted entities and from there go down the Pyramid of the social population add up to Gabriela gracias if you have more questions you can contact me later thank you very much