Can crypto be more than crypto?

Nepal earthquake, 2015

Under the noise of trading tips, "expert" price predictions, and the ever present "HODL!" war cry (or death rattle, depending on which way the market's moving) I think it's important for the community to be reminded once in a while that this whole crypto thing could be about more than just profits and trips to the moon. Case in point, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, tweeted this out late last year:



Good point: can crypto actually achieve something meaningful for society? I come from a humanitarian background, having responded to different types of of crises from man-made (post civil war Angola, Darfur, Syria, Afghanistan) to natural disasters (the Indian Ocean tsunami, Ebola, Haiti earthquake, Nepal earthquake). So to me, one of the most exciting applications of this new technology is potentially improving the way life saving humanitarian aid is delivered.



"No condition is permanent" truck outside an Ebola Treatment Unit in Liberia

Progress is already being made on this front, from food voucher distribution (https://qz.com/1118743/world-food-programmes-ethereum-based-blockchain-for-syrian-refugees-in-jordan/) to helping the refugee or the stateless prove their identities (http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/id2020-blockchain-microsoft/). And new initiative was launched today, supported by the American, Canadian, and UK governments - the Humanitarian Grand Challenge.

The Humanitarian Grand Challenge (http://humanitariangrandchallenge.org/about-challenge) seeks to connect humanitarians with private sector actors (I'm looking at you, cryptosphere) to focus on the following key areas:

Safe Water and Sanitation. Energy. Life-Saving Information. Health Products and Services.

So? Are the brightest minds in crypto ready in 2018 to lend their expertise to trying to solve some of the planet's toughest problems? Or do we, as Buterin suggests, still have some maturing to do?

If crypto is to be about something bigger than quick profits, what better application that improving the way life saving humanitarian aid is implemented?