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Jane Thomason is an Australian academic who spent 15 years running hospitals and doing development work abroad followed by a 20-year stint building a $250-million revenue company.
Thomason — recently a blockchain adviser to the World Health Organization — says she “had an epiphany” while thinking about the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia, in which the lives of over 200,000 people were washed away.
“No one knew the identities of the people coming to the hospitals — all the identity documents were gone, all the bank records were gone, all the health records were gone. People wanted to send money to the people who were alive, but no one could send money directly.”
Thomason believes that if this data had been recorded on a blockchain, “people would be able to reconnect with their data really quickly and access their identity, health and bank records.” The realization convinced Thomason that she needed to play a role in helping the technology scale for humanitarian applications.
“My blockchain story is quite cute,” Thomason says, explaining that she “completely ignored” her son’s advice when in 2010 he encouraged her to buy Bitcoin. He brought the subject up again in 2015, becoming “really frustrated” with Thomason’s inaction.
He said, ‘Listen — Bitcoin is built on blockchain, and blockchain is going to change everything and you need to learn about it.’
Thomason began reading and, after several months, began to feel a strong pull toward the industry. She’s since pivoted into the “blockchain for social impact” niche and is the author of several books including Blockchain Technology for Global Social Change and Blockchainging the World, and acts as a blockchain adviser to various international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Thomason believes that beyond all the talk of cryptocurrency, blockchain is a technology that can solve practical problems for some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world by facilitating and securing identity, health records, banking, supply chains and supporting climate action. Despite the rosy picture, she remains worried about the current state of the industry and questions whether the industry understands its own climate footprint.
Social benefits of blockchains
When it comes to blockchain and identity, Thomason believes that recognition by governments is the biggest hurdle because many people around the world do not have any type of ID, to begin with. Identity is a person’s “window to the world,” making it perhaps the most important problem to solve.
Financial inclusion can be tackled with stablecoins, which people can easily send and receive. Despite being much lauded by the Bitcoin community, Thomason remains skeptical of El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin legal tender due to the inherent volatility.
While running the London Blockchain Week Hackathon in 2017, conveniently sponsored by the Abt Associates, Thomason invited a group of central bankers from the Bank of Papua New Guinea to witness “200 of the smartest people in the world sitting there trying to figure out how to solve this problem of financial inclusion.” The winners then accompanied them to Papua New Guinea to create a proof-of-concept for a new payment system.
They went to a super isolated village, and without electricity and only 2G mobile phones, and were able to make transfers to that village and convert it into fiat in the local store.
As for supply chains, Thomason is quick to point to problems even in the medical sector regarding fake personal protection equipment devices, which began to circulate during the pandemic. If supply chains can be clearly recorded onto blockchains, both manufacturers and buyers can “see transparently right through the entire supply chain and know what’s going on.” The same goes for food and can help farmers avoid exploitation via transparency.
Thomason also sees a bright future for blockchain as a tool for climate action. One opportunity, she says, is the tokenization of green bonds and carbon offsets, as well as NFTs, which can represent carbon offsets. She cites the example of the Brooklyn Microgrid, which is a marketplace for locally generated solar power.
In developing countries, she explains, someone with a solar panel could sell generated power to others for micropayments, making electricity available in places where people might otherwise not be able to keep a mobile phone charged. Developing countries often serve as great proving grounds for new technologies, which could also be implemented on much larger scales in developed economies.
