European report suggests blockchain for welfare tracking

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Government benefits and assistance might be more important now than ever. But even if you’ve been living under a rock, you know that holding government to account, and ensuring benefits reach their destination with minimal delay is important. A new report published by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) highlights how blockchain technology, like Bitcoin SV (BSV), could make that process more efficient.

The April 2 report looks into several emerging technologies, like Artificial Intelligence, telepresence and robotics, but blockchain came out as the most promising area. They noted it could help with “the delivery and management of benefits.”

While not using BSV as a specific example, the report outlined how blockchain technology could help accomplish the entire mission. “As in the case of the services sector, the use of blockchain technology is in an early phase of adoption in health and social care, where it has been used to pay benefits in cash and to monitor pension contributions,” the report notes. With its public data ledger, and ability to conduct low fee transactions, BSV makes for a perfect solution.

It went on to cite several examples of blockchain technology being used for exactly these purposes. “Identification via blockchain can be used to allocate funding and benefits in cash in a more time- and cost-efficient manner,” it noted. “In the area of social welfare, blockchain has been used by pension providers in the Netherlands to set up a pension infrastructure that allows tax authorities, employers and employees to monitor the contributions made by individuals in different pensions funds (European Commission, 2019a).”

The report goes on to note that previous trials of blockchain in the sphere of managing benefits proved too costly. But with the unlimited scaling of BSV, fees remain incredibly low. And while not anonymous, BSV is indeed private, and addresses the privacy concerns raised by previous trials as well.

There might be no more pressing use case for BSV in the issuance of benefits than the current COVD-19 crisis. Bureaucratic red tape in the Philippines has delayed government assistance from reaching its intended target. If BSV was used as part of a solution, it could have reached the people who need help most in mere moments, while providing perfect traceability for those who want to keep tabs on the government.