UNICEF report identifies the need for child safeguard initiatives amid mainstream crypto adoption

UNICEF report identifies the need for child safeguard initiatives amid mainstream crypto adoption

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has recently called to incorporate child safeguards inside online child protection initiatives amid financial and exploitative threats that are potentially posed by unregulated cryptocurrency markets.

The latest report by UNICEF titled “Prospects for children in 2022” report has examined the impact of global trends of cryptocurrencies on children highlighting the further mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, hence, concluding there is a need to demonstrate “both the promise of greater financial inclusion and the need for new child safeguards.”

The report has also found that digital currencies emerged into widespread adoption and garnered interest in 87 countries; by the year 2021, a majority of jurisdictions experimented with their own versions of a central bank digital currency. 

As per the report, UNICEF has projected a similar growth trajectory in the year 2022. It states that a potential alliance among governments, larger financial institutions, banks and investment firms against challenger banks and blockchain-based finance might arise in several countries.

The mainstreaming of crypto adoption is further fueled by the economic pressures that have been levied by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the UNICEF report suggests, the economic recovery in high-income countries would see an increase this year, although factoring in future disruptions from the pandemic.

UNICEF said it also expects the collaboration of governments and banks with blockchain and crypto industries and that these developments would eventually require the advent of national and international legal and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, as the world watches the direction of these trends, its implications for children “hang in the balance.”

With cryptocurrencies making it to the mainstream, UNICEF has acknowledged the significant benefits that are bestowed via financial inclusion and “frictionless remittances” and more transparent, instant and efficient social assistance programs.

The United Nations agency, however, has warned about the threats that are posed by unregulated markets to the well-being of children, like the stability of financial systems in addition to deteriorating government revenues. 

The UN has called for new child safeguarding reforms, with the new report outlining that some of the possible negative implicationss of unregulated transactions could be child trafficking, trading of content that depicts child abuse, sexual exploitation, and defrauding or extortion of children. 

As an end note, UNICEF suggested that it is now the time to start integrating online child protection initiatives into cryptocurrency and digital currencies to safeguard children from possible hazards.

A report prepared by the Crypto.com has predicted that global crypto users might reach one billion by the end of 2022. Of now, in the year 2021, the global crypto population had increased by 178 per cent, straight up from 106 million in January to 295 million in December.

The report also estimated that if a similar rate of crypto interest is extrapolated in 2022, we might reach 1 billion crypto users by the end of 2022.