NONPROFITS TURN TO CRYPTOCURRENCY TO HELP NEEDY VENEZUELANS

Andreina Cordero started the year skipping meals so her three kids could eat. Her husband, a construction worker, was out of a job. And the family’s savings had been devastated by the nation’s hyperinflation, limiting Cordero’s children to a diet of rice, beans, pasta and fried corn patties.

But the family got a break from their daily struggle to feed themselves this spring when a social worker enrolled them in a program run by a Silicon Valley startup that is donating cryptocurrency to hundreds of Venezuelan families.

Every week from February to April, Cordero received a deposit of EOS tokens through a cellphone app. She then traded the digital money for local currency through online transfers and used the funds