Originally published as "Four ways the United Nations has embraced blockchain and cryptocurrency"
Despite all the progress made in recent years, cryptocurrency and blockchain remain divisive technologies. There are those who embrace them and are going all in, and those who dismiss them as having no social value. This is common with emerging technologies, especially ones with the potential to reshape so many aspects of society.
Historically, large organizations like nonprofits and NGOs have been risk-averse and slow to adopt new technologies, and for good reason. For one, they hold enormous responsibility as stewards of donor funds. Beyond that, the sensitivity of their work, the challenges of testing unproven solutions on programs that impact millions of lives, and the need to overcome the stigma and misperceptions that often surround new technologies add further roadblocks. Sometimes, the roadblocks are simply too much to overcome for nonprofits that are already pushed to the max.
That said, not every organization has been slow to move. Many of the world’s largest institutions have embraced crypto and blockchain. Chief among them is the United Nations, the world’s largest intergovernmental organization, and its agencies and charitable arms, including UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
What began as a handful of cautious experiments has, over the past several years, matured into large-scale blockchain deployments delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and an organization-wide effort to coordinate the technology’s use for global development. In this post, we’ll highlight five ways the United Nations has come out in support of and embraced cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is a massive charitable organization working in over 190 countries and territories, with a mission to advance children’s rights and livelihoods. UNICEF operates several funds designed to catalyze high-impact projects. One of them, the UNICEF Innovation Fund (now part of the broader UNICEF Venture Fund), provides up to $100,000 USD in equity-free funding to support open-source solutions that benefit children and the world.
Recognizing the potential of cryptocurrency and blockchain, UNICEF launched the CryptoFund in October 2019. The CryptoFund became the first vehicle in the entire United Nations to hold and make investments in digital assets, enabling UNICEF to receive, hold, and disburse Bitcoin and Ether to open-source startups tackling challenges faced by children and young people.
Since its launch, the CryptoFund has invested the equivalent of over $4 million USD (5.82 BTC and 2,602 ETH) into early-stage startups around the world, harnessing the speed, transparency, and low cost of blockchain-based transfers. These investments have supported open-source solutions across data science, financial inclusion, supply chain transparency, and more. One standout, StaTwig, built a blockchain-based system for end-to-end supply chain transparency that has been used in Bangladesh to improve vaccine delivery.
Importantly, UNICEF continues to evolve the fund. At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell discussed expanding the CryptoFund’s work to include stablecoins to support humanitarian action, a sign that the organization sees digital assets as an enduring part of its toolkit rather than a passing experiment.
Beyond funding and investment, UN agencies have built blockchain solutions that have scaled to help millions of people. The flagship example is Building Blocks, developed by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian organization focused on food security.
Building Blocks began in January 2017 as a modest proof-of-concept in Pakistan, designed to test whether a blockchain-based platform could authenticate and record beneficiary transactions. The pilot succeeded: aid was distributed safely and efficiently to beneficiaries without the need for a financial intermediary. Cutting out intermediaries matters enormously in this context as it reduces transaction fees, speeds up the delivery of aid, and ultimately delivers more value to those in need.
From there, the program scaled rapidly. In refugee camps in Jordan, Syrian refugees were able to purchase groceries simply by scanning their iris at checkout, a protocol built on a private, permissioned blockchain integrated with the UNHCR’s existing biometric identification technology. Beneficiaries no longer had to worry about safely storing cash or vouchers, and because the system didn’t require a mobile phone to receive or spend aid, it remained accessible to those most in need.
What makes Building Blocks especially powerful is its neutrality. The platform is a network of blockchain nodes, each independently operated by a participating humanitarian organization. There’s no hierarchy of ownership, and every member organization is an equal co-owner, co-operator, and co-governor of the network. This shared, neutral infrastructure lets aid organizations coordinate, transact, and securely share information in real time.
The results, as of 2025, are staggering:
Originally piloted in Jordan and Bangladesh, Building Blocks has since expanded into emergency responses in Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, a clear demonstration that blockchain can move from small experiments to mission-critical humanitarian infrastructure at scale.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country’s banking system came under enormous strain, and getting funds to displaced people quickly became a life-or-death challenge. In December 2022, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) responded with a first-of-its-kind solution: a blockchain-based cash assistance program built on the Stellar network.
In collaboration with the Stellar Development Foundation and the UN International Computing Centre (UNICC), UNHCR began distributing aid directly to displaced and war-affected people in the form of USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. Recipients simply downloaded a digital wallet on their smartphone, and once UNHCR confirmed their eligibility, funds arrived directly in their wallet within minutes rather than the days or weeks traditional banking would require.
The use of a stablecoin was key. It gave recipients a stable store of value they could hold safely and even carry across borders without the risks of transporting physical cash. Additionally, they could cash out through MoneyGram locations when needed, with no bank account required.
Initially piloted in Kyiv, Lviv, and Vinnytsia, the program was designed from the outset to be adaptable worldwide, and it has since expanded to reach more war-affected people. As Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, put it, the collaboration is “realizing the promise of blockchain and pioneering a new future for the delivery of billions of dollars in aid disbursed annually.”
The UNHCR program is a powerful example of how stablecoins can thrive in challenging contexts, routing around broken or inaccessible financial systems to reach individuals directly, when speed matters most.
Cryptocurrency often gets a bad rap for its environmental impact. But the United Nations has long recognized that blockchain, the technology underpinning digital currencies, can play a meaningful role in combating climate change and building a more sustainable global economy.
The UN has acknowledged that while the energy use and volatility of certain cryptocurrencies are legitimate concerns, the underlying blockchain technology can be of great benefit to those fighting the climate crisis. Given that the UN comprises 193 member states and is enormously influential in international development and climate efforts, this kind of endorsement lends real credibility to blockchain’s potential as a tool for environmental good.
This recognition has translated into action across UN agencies. UNICEF’s Venture Fund has supported climate-oriented blockchain startups working on solutions like parametric insurance and citizen-driven climate action, and has even worked to measure and offset the carbon footprint of the CryptoFund’s own holdings using on-chain protocols. Blockchain’s transparency makes it especially well-suited to verifying sustainability claims, supporting carbon credit markets, and tracking environmental data with integrity, all use cases that the UN continues to explore as the technology matures.
Perhaps the clearest signal yet of the UN’s long-term commitment came in June 2026, when the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) officially launched its Blockchain Advisory Group (BAG) at the Proof of Talk 2026 event in Paris.
The BAG is a senior-level advisory body bringing together 26 member organizations from across the blockchain ecosystem, including the Ethereum Foundation, Stellar Development Foundation, Algorand Foundation, Cardano Foundation, Avalanche Foundation, Celo Foundation, and many others. It’s purpose is to advise on how distributed ledger technology can support sustainable development, strengthen digital public infrastructure, and address pressing global challenges.
The group’s inaugural meeting focused on financial inclusion and digital finance, examining barriers like fragmented payment systems, digital identity constraints, and interoperability challenges. Going forward, the BAG will convene twice a year, each session tackling a different theme like public trust and digital governance, inclusive legal identity, climate accountability, or digital labor.
The advisory group didn’t materialize overnight. It builds on years of UNDP pilot projects testing blockchain across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, spanning digital payments, climate finance, digital identity, and public procurement. It also follows the September 2025 High-Level Strategic Dialogue on Blockchain for Development, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where more than 25 blockchain leaders called for a shift from isolated pilots to shared missions and common standards.
The significance here is hard to overstate. With the BAG, the UN is moving beyond one-off experiments toward a coordinated, institutional approach to blockchain, positioning crypto not as a tool for private gain, but as global public goods infrastructure addressing some of humanity’s biggest challenges.
Given the massive reach of the United Nations and its agencies, it’s both impressive and encouraging that they have recognized the value of blockchain and cryptocurrency for social impact and embraced these tools in support of their mission. What was once a set of tentative experiments has grown into large-scale deployments moving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, organization-wide funding vehicles, and a formal advisory body coordinating the technology’s future across the entire UN system.
The trajectory is clear: the UN increasingly sees cryptocurrency and blockchain not as fringe curiosities, but as practical infrastructure for delivering aid faster, more transparently, and more inclusively. It will be exciting to watch how the United Nations continues to innovate with these technologies to drive social good in the years ahead.
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