Paxful, the peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace that enables its users to purchase and sell bitcoin instantly, has funded the construction of a school for young students in Rwanda.
Located in Kasebigege Village in the Bugesera District of Rwanda, Paxful’s bitcoin-funded school will serve children aged from 3 to 6 in a town with over 7,500 residents. The school has three classrooms, four restrooms, irrigation system, and a 35,000-liter water tank, providing a stable source of water supply for both the students and local residents.
By contributing $50,000 in bitcoin, Paxful contributed to the Education is Life project and Water Well project, building schools and providing a better ecosystem in partnership with Zam Zam, a non-profit organization that focuses on helping students and families in Afghanistan, Gaza, and Rwanda.
“Paxful cares about corporate responsibility, and they believe that positive things can happen through Bitcoin. The Education is Life project is not only a model for what can be built with Bitcoin, but is a model for how we create and sustain successful corporate partnerships,” said the Zam Zam team.
Last month, CNBC featured a documentary covering the efforts of the Paxful team building a school in Rwanda using bitcoin as the primary source of funds. The Paxful team intends to fund more schools and infrastructures in Africa in the future, with donations raised from the cryptocurrency community with bitcoin.
“One of our key goals is to bring financial inclusion to the underbanked, via bitcoin. #BuiltwithBitcoin is the next logical step. Now we are not only helping those in emerging economies meet their day-to-day financial needs; through our work with Zam Zam, we are also making a real and lasting difference in their communities. We hope that others in the cryptocurrency scene will join this important venture,” said Ray Youssef, Paxful CEO and co-founder.
Last year, in December 2017, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his concerns over the valuation of the cryptocurrency market and whether the community has done enough to support the global financial system, bank the unbanked, and assist individuals in third world economies with blockchain technology.
“How many unbanked people have we banked? How much censorship-resistant commerce for the common people have we enabled? How many Venezuelans have actually been protected by us from hyperinflation? The answer to all of these questions is definitely not zero, and in some cases it’s quite significant. But not enough to say it’s $0.5T levels of significant. Not enough,” said Buterin.
In regions like Rwanda, wherein the majority of individuals struggle to obtain stable banking services due to poor financial infrastructure, decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin allows anyone to freely transact and settle payments on a peer to peer basis.
As such, with bitcoin donations, even without the existence of an intermediary, projects led by non-profit organizations such as Zam Zam in partnership with Paxful can be funded.
Arthur Schaback, the co-founder and CTO at Paxful, emphasized that the company plans to continue demonstrating the impact a decentralized financial network can have on the entire world.
“We will continue to build and perfect this model so that the entire world can see what a real difference can be made with bitcoin. We take the same philosophy with our product and are building the Paxful wallet as the model financial services application for the entire world,” Schaback said.
