According to a The Memo that transfers to the State Department staff and reviewed by Wired, the Trump administration plans to rename the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as the US International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA), and take it directly under the State Secretary. The document, where the politico First reportedIt is said that as part of its re -arrangement, the agency will “transverse blockchain technology” as part of its acquisition process.
“All distributions can be secured and monitored through blockchain technology to radically increase security, transparency, and traceability,” the memo read. “This method will encourage change and efficiency in implementing partners and allows more flexible and responsive programming focused on tangible impacts rather than just complete activities and inputs.”
The memo is unclear what it is particularly mean – whether it covers the making of cash transfers to some type of cryptocurrency or stablecoin, for example, or simply means using a blockchain ledger to monitor decline with assistance.
The memo arrived as staff in USAID were trying to understand their future. The agency is an early target of the so -called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is effectively led by Cenibillionaire Elon Musk. Shortly after President Trump's inauguration, the State Department Put full agency staff on administrative leave, broke its workforceand stopped a portion of payments to the partners' partners around the world, Includes those who make life work. Since then a Federal judge has released an initial injunction Against the agency's dismantling, but the memo appears to indicate that the administration has a plan to continue its mission drastically cutting the USAID and completely folding it into the state department.
Plans for the blockchain also caught guard staff.
Some blockchain -based projects have managed to achieve scale In the humanitarian sector. Linda Raftree, a consultant who helps human organizations adopted new technology, said there is one reason for it – the integration of blockchain technology is often unnecessary.
“It's like a fake technological solution for a problem that doesn't exist,” he said. “I don't think we find an example where people use blockchain where they can't use existing tools.”
Giulio Coppi, an elderly humanitarian officer in nonprofit access now researching the use of blockchain in human activity, said that blockchain technologies, while sometimes effective, offers no obvious benefits to other tools that can be used by tools, such as an existing payment system or other database tool. “No proven advantage is cheaper or better,” he said. “The way shown is this approach to this tech solutionist that has repeatedly proven that there is no significant impact on reality.”
However, there have been some successful opportunities for using blockchain technology in the humanitarian sector. In 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) run a small pilot To provide cash assistance to Ukrainians transferred by the Russia-Ukraine War to a stablecoin. The other pilots are tested in Kenya of Kenya Red Cross Society. The International Committee of the Red Cross, working with the Kenya team, also helped to develop the Humanitarian Token Solution (HTS).
