Today you'll discover why the United Nations, one of the world's largest and most cautious institutions, is going full steam ahead on blockchain and crypto. Real at-scale examples of how UN agencies like UNICEF, the World Food Program, and UNHCR are using Web3 tools to deliver aid faster, more transparently, and more inclusively, and why this matters for you, whether you're a nonprofit leader, a builder, or just crypto curious, and some of the other powerful humanitarian use cases worth knowing about. Welcome to CryptoUltris, where we explore the intersections of Web3 and social good to the stories of impact-driven builders and offer actionable insights to empower your journey into the world of blockchain for good. I'm your host, Drew Simon. Now, before we dive in, please remember that this is not financial or legal advice, and always do your own research on any of the projects or investment opportunities that we discuss. Welcome back to the CryptoUltris Podcast. Thanks so much for being here. I'm Drew Simon, and I really appreciate you joining me today. This is gonna be a fun one. It's a solo episode, so just you and me, and we're digging into a topic that I think is underappreciated and maybe not talked about enough. Because when most people think about crypto and blockchain, they think about price charts, speculation, maybe a scam headline or two. What they don't picture is the United Nations. The world's largest intergovernmental organization, quietly building some of the most impactful blockchain deployments on the planet. But that's exactly what's happening. And today I want to walk you through it. How the UN has embraced these technologies, the real world impact they're having, and why, if an institution this careful is going all in, it might be worth your attention too. So let's get into it. I'd like to start by being honest about where a lot of people are at. It's 2026 and cryptocurrency and blockchain are still very divisive technologies. For every person who is excited about them, there's another who dismisses them entirely, as speculation, as volatility, as solution in search of a problem. And you know what? A lot of that skepticism is understandable. The space has had its fair share of scams, crashes, and broken promises. At the same time, there have also been impact use cases tested that were well-intentioned, but simply didn't work out or weren't able to find that product market fit. Now they are on top of that the nature of large institutions. Nonprofits, NGOs, intergovernmental bodies. These organizations are by design pretty risk-averse and for good reason. They have to be. They're stewards of donor funds, they're doing really sensitive work that affects millions of lives. They can't just experiment with unproven technology on programs where the stakes are literally life and death. And they have to overcome the stigma and misperception that surrounds anything new. So when it comes to emerging tech, most of them move slowly, cautiously, if they move at all. Which is what makes this so striking. Because while so many remain on the sidelines, the United Nations is going full steam ahead. And I want to start with the clearest, most recent signal of that commitment. Just this past June in 2026, the United Nations Development Program, or the UNDP, officially launched its blockchain advisory group. It happened at the Proof of Talk event in Paris, and it's a pretty big deal. So what exactly is it? The Blockchain Advisory Group is a senior-level advisory board that brings together 26 member organizations from across the blockchain ecosystem. We're talking about the Ethereum Foundation, Stellar Development Foundation, Algorand, the Cardano Foundation, Celo Foundation, and many, many more. Its purpose is to advise the UN on how distributed ledger technology, the tech underneath cryptocurrencies, can support sustainable development, strengthen digital public infrastructure, and address some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. The group is set to meet twice a year, and each session tackles a different theme. Their very first meeting focused on financial inclusion and digital finance. In future sessions, we'll dig into things like public trust and digital governance, including legal identity, climate accountability, and digital labor. And here's the thing: this didn't come out of nowhere. The advisory group builds on years of UNDP pilot projects testing blockchain across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia Pacific. It follows a high-level strategic dialogue held in September of 2025, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where more than 25 blockchain leaders called for a shift away from isolated, one-off pilots towards shared missions and common standards. So the UN is very deliberately moving from scattered experiments to a coordinated institutional strategy. They're treating blockchain not as a fringe curiosity, but as a public goods infrastructure, one that's serious, long-term, and worth building around. Which raises the obvious question, why? Why would the UNDP, and the UN more broadly, invest this kind of institutional weight and credibility into a technology so many people still dismiss? And I think the best way to answer that is to show you what's already working, because this excitement is built on years of real-world results. So let's walk through some of the most powerful examples of the United Nations putting these tools to work. First, let's start with UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. UNICEF is absolutely massive. I don't think we can really understate that. They work in over 190 countries and territories, with a mission centered on advancing the rights and well-being of children. And they've long operated funds designed to catalyze high-impact innovative projects. So back in October of 2019, that's right, nearly seven years ago, which is actually kind of crazy to think about and shows that high-level actors have been thinking about this tech for longer than I'm guessing most of us, myself included, have been. But, anyways, back in 2019, UNICEF did something that had never been done before anywhere in the United Nations. They launched the Crypto Fund. And with it, UNICEF became the first UN entity to hold and make investments in digital assets. That meant that they could actually receive, hold, and disperse Bitcoin and Ether directly to fund open source startups tackling challenges faced by children and young people around the world. Now, why does this matter? Well, because it signaled a real shift in thinking. Holding crypto on your balance sheet as a UN agency is not a small decision. It requires new policies, new safeguards, new ways of thinking about risk, and UNICEF decided that it was worth it. Since launching in 2019, the crypto fund has invested the equivalent of over $4 million into early stage startups all over the world, taking advantage of the speed, transparency, and low cost that blockchain-based transfers offer. And these investments have gone to some really cool pilot projects. One that I love is a company called Statwig. They've built a blockchain-based system for end-to-end supply and chain transparency, and it was used in Bangladesh to improve vaccine delivery. It's just amazing to think about how, back in the early days of the pandemic, the UN was already embracing this tech for a pretty high-stakes situation that is making vaccines actually reach the children who need them most, verified every step of the way. It's a really cool example of how blockchain can literally help save lives by improving process and logistics. And UNICEF hasn't stood still. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year in 2026, UNICEF's executive director talked about expanding the cryptofund to work with stable coins. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year in 2026, UNICEF's executive director talked about expanding the crypto fund's work to include stablecoins to support humanitarian action. That shows that this isn't a passing experiment, but that UNICEF sees digital assets as a lasting part of their strategy moving forward. So that's UNICEF, the world's largest children's organization embracing crypto. So now let's talk about how the world's largest food security agency, the World Food Program, is doing the same. And I want to start this one with a picture. Imagine a refugee in a settlement outside of their country of origin, disconnected from life that they've always known. They've lost their home, they've lost their sense of security, and now they need to buy groceries for their family. But they don't have a bank account, they don't have cash that they can safely carry, and they maybe don't even have a smartphone. So how do they pay? In the case of the World Food Program's Building Blocks, you walk up to the checkout and you look into a scanner. It reads your iris, and just like that, the transaction is complete. Groceries for your family paid for with nothing but your own eyes. Behind that moment is a blockchain, and the program is called Building Blocks, developed by the United Nations World Food Program, the WFP, which is the world's largest humanitarian organization focused on food security. Now, I want to of course acknowledge the discomfort around biometrics, and I feel that too. It's something that inherently makes me uneasy in many contexts. That said, this is such a cool use case, and wherever you stand on biometrics, there is much to be learned here. So let's go back to the beginning. Building blocks started back in January of 2017 as a modest proof of concept in Pakistan. The goal was to test whether a blockchain-based platform could authenticate and record transactions to beneficiaries. And it worked. Aid was distributed safely and efficiently without needing a financial intermediary in the middle. But what's the big deal with cutting out this middleman? Well, by cutting out the intermediary, it is the potential to drastically reduce transaction fees to fractions of a penny per transaction, speed up delivery, and ultimately get more value into the hands of the people who need it. From that small pilot, it scaled. In refugee camps in Jordan, the iris scan system I just described was built on a private permissioned blockchain integrated with UNHCR's existing biometric identification. Refugees no longer had to worry about storing cash or voucher safely, and because it didn't require a mobile phone, it stayed accessible to the people who needed it most. And here's another part I think is really interesting and might resonate with a lot of you listening, especially if you spend time in the DAO and Web3 worlds. What makes building blocks so powerful is its neutrality. The platform is a network of blockchain nodes, and each one is independently operated by a participating humanitarian organization. There's no hierarchy of ownership, every member organization is an equal co-owner, cooperator, and co-governor of the network. It's a shared, neutral, collectively governed infrastructure, the same principles so many of us are trying to build towards in this space running live at scale in real humanitarian contexts. And the scale really is staggering. As of 2025, building blocks has supported around 6 million people in crisis-affected countries. More than $760 million in assistance has flowed through the platform across more than 40 million individual transactions. By cutting out bank intermediaries, the WFP saved over $3.5 million in transaction fees, money that got redirected into more support for more families. And in Ukraine, the platform's coordinated capabilities prevented an estimated $270 million in unintended overlapping aid, with 159 organizations using building blocks across Ukraine, Syria, and Palestine. So let that sink in. This started as a small experiment in Pakistan. Today it's mission-critical infrastructure, delivering aid to millions. It's an incredible journey from just an interesting idea to an essential tool, and I believe it's proof that blockchain can absolutely operate in complex humanitarian environments at incredible scale. So moving on now to another example, let's stay with the theme of getting help to people when it matters most, because our next example demonstrates the importance of speed in humanitarian crises. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, the country's banking system came under enormous strain. And suddenly, getting funds to displaced people wasn't just difficult, but a life or death challenge. When someone has fled their home with nothing, waiting for days or weeks for aid to clear traditional banking channels simply is not good enough. So in December 2022, the UN Refugee Agency, or the UNHCR, rolled out its first-of-a-kind solution, a blockchain-based cash assistance program built on the Stellar Network. Working with the Stellar Development Foundation and the UN's International Computing Center, UNHCR began distributing a directly to displaced and war-affected Ukrainians in the form of USDC. And for those who don't know, that's a stable coin pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. And here's how it worked: a recipient downloads a digital wallet onto their smartphone. The UNHCR confirms their eligibility, and then the funds arrive directly in their wallet within minutes. Not days, not weeks, minutes. The choice to use a stablecoin was really smart, because unlike a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, which can be volatile, a stablecoin gives recipients a steady, reliable store of value. They can hold it safely, and they can even carry it across borders without the danger that comes with transporting physical cash. And when they need actual physical money in hand, they can cash out through MoneyGram locations with no bank account required. The program started off in Kyiv, Lviv, and Venetia, but it was designed from day one to be adaptable anywhere in the world, and it's expanded to reach more people since. And I think this example captures something important. Stablecoins can absolutely thrive in the hardest of contexts. They can route around broken, strained, or inaccessible financial systems and get help directly to individuals exactly when speed matters most. This is a theme that we've explored many, many times in the show with guests like HesiPay, Pesabase, Needle Labs, and more. And stablecoins to me, and I'm sorry for regular listeners who have probably heard me say this a million times over by now, is quite possibly the most profound Web3 tool for impact. Stablecoins might sound boring, but they are a real game changer in getting money to those who need it most. And they're definitely not going anywhere either, as they have significant backing from the financial sector more broadly. In fact, in 2025, and this blows my mind to think about the scale here, stablecoins processed roughly 33 trillion in transactions compared to a combined 25.5 trillion for Visa MasterCard. That's right, more transactions than the world's two largest credit card companies combined. And now that's of course not just humanitarian stuff. Humanitarian transfers make up probably a small fraction of that, but it just shows the staying power of stablecoins and how they're becoming a real kind of default infrastructure in the broader financial world as well. Now I want to address something head-on, because I know it's on some of your minds probably, and that's that cryptocurrency often gets a bad rap for its environmental impact. And that's a very fair concern to raise. The energy use of certain cryptocurrencies and the volatility are legitimate issues. But here's what's interesting. The United Nations has long recognized that the technology underneath digital currencies, blockchain itself, can actually play a meaningful role in fighting climate change and building a more sustainable global economy. And that's a significant thing for the UN to say. Remember, this is an organization made up of 193 member states, hugely influential in international development and climate efforts. When they lend that kind of credibility to blockchain's potential as a tool for environmental good, it carries very real weight. And it's not just talk. UNICEF's Venture Fund has supported climate-oriented blockchain startups working on things like parametric insurance and citizen-driven climate action. They've even worked to measure and offset the carbon footprint of the cryptofund's own holdings using on-chain protocols. The reason blockchain fits here and why I believe it's such a good tool for environmental solutions is transparency. Its immutability and open access is very well suited to verifying sustainability claims, supporting carbon credit markets, and tracking environmental data with integrity, so you can actually trust that a green claim is what it says it is and combat greenwashing. And these are exactly the use cases the UN continues to explore as the technology matures. We've dug into this on the show too with our conversations on carbon markets and regenerative finance, so check those out if you want to learn more about some of the solutions that are actually creating real impact on the ground. So we've covered a couple different use cases now, and I'd like to take a moment to pause. We've walked through a few different ways that the United Nations has embraced blockchain and cryptocurrency. The crypto fund, building blocks, the UNHCR instellar partnerships, the UNDP Advisory Group, tying it all together. But I titled this episode in Why You Should Too, so let me speak to that directly. And to do it, I want to zoom out beyond the UN because the UN's work doesn't exist in a vacuum. Across the entire humanitarian sector, blockchain is quickly becoming essential rails for humanitarian impact. Let me give you a few examples that I think every nonprofit and change maker should know about. The first is anticipatory action. This is one of my favorite shifts happening in humanitarian work right now. Traditionally, ADA is reactive, a disaster strikes, and then we scramble to respond. Anticipatory action flips that. The idea is to act before a predictable crisis hits. And blockchain, along with smart contracts, is a powerful enabler here. You can pre-position funds and set up automatic payouts that trigger based on real data, like weather thresholds or flood levels. So when the data shows a disaster is coming, the money moves automatically in that critical window before the worst arrives instead of days after. It's faster, it's more transparent, and it can save lives and livelihoods before they're lost. The second is financial access in conflict zones, and the best example here is Hesepay in Afghanistan. This one's close to home because we've had Hesepe and the Algorand Foundation who's backed the project on the show, and we'll link to that in the show notes if you'd like to listen and learn more because it's an incredible project with a lot of really cool lessons to take away. But consider the context. In Afghanistan, only about 6% of people have a bank account. And after the Taliban regained control in 2021, the formal banking sector largely collapsed. Traditional aid delivery became nearly impossible. This is where Hesepay comes in, a blockchain-based payment platform that has become a genuine lifeline. It operates across all 34 provinces of the country, and more than a dozen humanitarian organizations, including the World Food Program, have used it to send funds directly to beneficiaries, with a special focus on reaching women who are so often excluded from the financial system. Hesipe even issues a local Afghani-denominated stablecoin, and it's partnered with UNHCR to deliver aid to returning refugees using simple QR code cards. So for millions of people in one of the hardest environments on Earth, this tool has become a lifeline. As Ahmad Fahim Sitar, a UNHCR staff member based out of Afghanistan, stated, digital cash gives people more than money. It gives them independence. It means they don't have to fear risk being extorted or fear for their safety while traveling to their places of origin. And there's so many more projects I could cover. There's the work being done to decentralize humanitarian aid and last mile cash disbursements with tools like Stellar's Disbursement Platform and Koalape. There's MercyCore Ventures funding a whole portfolio of Web3 solutions for resource coordination, insurance and financial services in crises regions. There are stablecoin cash transfer pilots expanding from Afghanistan into places like Syria. And when you step back and look at all of it together, a clear pattern emerges. These tools shine exactly where traditional bank systems break down. Broken banking, refugee crisis, OPEG supply chains, aid coordination disasters, that's the through line. Resilience in the most difficult of contexts. So why should you care about all this? Let me leave you with three takeaways. The first is separate the technology from the noise. The UN is not out there chasing meme coins. They're using blockchain and stable coins as practical rails to move value and information. And if one of the most scrutinized, cautious institutions on Earth can look past the hype and see the utility, then so can you. The second is that these tools shine where traditional systems fail. That's a lens you can apply to your own work. Wherever you see a system that's too slow, too opaque, too expensive, or that leaves people out entirely, that's exactly where these tools tend to add the most value. So ask yourself where that's true in the work you care about. And the third is that institutional adoption de-risks the space for everyone. When the UN builds shared neutral infrastructure and helps set common standards, it creates a foundation that the rest of us, nonprofits, communities, and builders, can all build upon. The path gets a little clearer and a little safer every time an institution like the UN steps forward. So let's bring it home. What began not long ago as a handful of cautious experiments has grown into something remarkable. Large-scale deployments moving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, organization-wide funding vehicles holding real digital assets, and now a formal advisory body coordinating the technology's future across the entire United Nations ecosystem. The trajectory here is really clear. The UN increasingly sees cryptocurrency and blockchain not as fringe curiosities, but as practical infrastructure that is truly scalable, tools for delivering aid faster, more transparently, and more inclusively than ever before. And that's the Why You Should Too part of the podcast. I'm not telling you to go all in, I'm not telling you to bet the farm on any of this. And to be fair, UN agencies have extensive resources, government backing, and technical and legal teams that many small organizations lack, so some of these initiatives may not be feasible for small or medium-sized nonprofits or NGOs. That said, if the world's largest humanitarian institution has decided this technology is worth serious sustained investment, then it at least is worth your curiosity. It's worth asking the question, where could this help the work that I care about? And considering small and reasonable steps you can take to get involved and explore the possibilities that Web3 unlocks. Because that's really what this podcast and this whole show is about: looking past the noise and finding the good. And if you're new to Crypto and Web3 and want to learn more about the basics, any of these use cases, and the resources out there to help you get started, I'd recommend starting with our Web3 Impact Toolkit. It's a free, self-paced resource built specifically for nonprofits and changemakers who want to move from curiosity to action. It breaks down the fundamentals in plain jargon-free language and walks through real-world cases like the ones we talked about today and points you towards practical tools that you can actually start using. So whether you're looking to just start accepting crypto donations or exploring blockchain for transparency or just want to wrap your head around how all of this works, it's designed to meet you wherever you're starting from. We also have our newsletter, which will be linked in the show notes, where we share a monthly roundup of key developments in the space and the exciting Web3 impact projects that we are keeping an eye on. It's a great place to just learn about what's happening in the ecosystem and to get a regular update on things you should be keeping an eye on. So with that, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to listen today, and I hope that this has inspired you about the possibilities of crypto to help NGOs, changemakers, and activists build real, meaningful, scalable impact. And that wraps up today's episode of Crypto Ultras. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. If you're inspired to explore more stories at the intersection of Web3 and Social Impact, be sure to visit us at CryptoUltras.com for articles, resources, and more. And if you love what you heard, it would mean the world if you could rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast. Your support is huge in helping us reach more listeners like you and keeping the platform going strong. Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to having you back for the next episode. Until then, let's keep showing the world the good of crypto.