Salaries to remittances: Afghans embrace crypto amid financial chaos

Afghan men sit next to stacks of banknotes as people exchange money at a currency exchange market in Kabul, Afghanistan on Oct 7, 2021. Adoption of cryptocurrencies is growing quickly across the world, with El Salvador last month becoming the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, despite fears of excluding the nations’ poor. — Reuters

When Roya Mahboob began paying her staff and freelancers in Afghanistan in bitcoin nearly 10 years ago, little did she know that for some of these women the digital currency would be their ticket out of the country after the fall of Kabul in August.

Mahboob, a founder of the non-profit Digital Citizen Fund along with her sister, taught thousands of girls and women basic computer skills in their centres in Herat and Kabul. Women also wrote blogs and made videos for which they were paid in cash.