Pineapple Fund - an organisation that mines, buys and trades crytpocurrencies - has announced that it has committed $5m worth of the cryptocurrency to the charity behind a massive universal basic income experiment across parts of Kenya and Uganda, The Independent reported.
The funds have been allocated to GiveDirectly – a charity that provides unconditional cash transfers to people living in extremely poor communities.
According to its website, the fund donates to a number of charities, including several that work towards supplying poor communities with water, promoting gender equality, and one that is campaigning for the legalisation of psychedelic medicine.
According to GiveDirect, the average recipient of its cash in Kenya lives on just 65 cents per day. In Uganda the average beneficiary lives on around 83 cents a day.
GiveDirect uses a system of independent checks to verify that recipients are eligible to get the funds, and those households that are chosen then receive roughly $1,000 – or around one year’s budget.