Stablecoins for Good
* Article: Deploying Stablecoins for Good: Paths to Shared Prosperity with Blockchain. By Jillian Grennan and Jennifer Sturdy. California Management Review,
URL = https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00081256261464630
Abstract
"How can managers, social entrepreneurs, and policymakers seeking to use stablecoins find guidance to advance shared prosperity? Drawing on case studies of Mercy Corps Ventures, Coala Pay, Endaoment, and Regen Foundation, this article demonstrates that stablecoins are most effective when they solve specific coordination and payment problems. The cases illustrate how stablecoins can improve access, reduce transaction costs, strengthen transparency while preserving privacy, and sustain credibility, but only when leaders select high-quality stablecoins and build complementary implementation capabilities, such as digital literacy initiatives and local partnerships for off-ramping. These examples offer a framework for deploying stablecoins in ways that build resilience."
Examples
Regen Foundation Uses Stablecoins to Value What Matters
Jillian Grennan and Jennifer Sturdy:
"Regen’s work begins with a simple idea: value what matters. The organization saw that many carbon and biodiversity credit systems are burdened by red tape and vulnerable to manipulation. In response, Regen created a way for local communities to make credible claims about their environmental and social impact. Instead of top-down verification, Regen uses blockchain technology to build distributed trust systems where communities can verify progress through crowd-sourced evidence. This approach puts control in the hands of those closest to the land, such as Indigenous communities and grassroots organizations, thereby connecting their local work to global sustainability efforts.
Stablecoins make that model more operational. Regen’s contribution is not only that blockchain can help communities identify and verify what they value but also that stablecoins can help translate those locally valued contributions into a more stable, transferable, and usable economic claim. Regen does not always use stablecoins, but when they do, it is in places such as the Upper Amazon in Ecuador, where access to traditional banking remains limited. Using stablecoins enables a direct flow of resources to communities engaged in biocultural stewardship. Within Regen’s “Living Covenants” system, smart contracts automatically distribute funds to groups that meet environmental goals, as verified through a shared attestation registry. By combining stablecoins with other blockchain innovations and community-driven verification systems, Regen offers a way to link finance with regenerative economic and climate solutions. Stablecoins serve as a useful financial tool for rewarding positive environmental action, while blockchain ensures transparent, verifiable claims about impact. In this sense, Regen is giving the local communities it serves a stronger voice in defining what matters and a more workable way to manage the pecuniary value tied to it. They are also extending the stablecoin conversation toward a broader question, namely, how financial infrastructure can help communities sustain the forms of environmental and social prosperity they themselves seek to build."
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00081256261464630)
Excerpts
From the conclusion, 'Lessons Learned':
Jillian Grennan and Jennifer Sturdy:
"Stablecoins are often evaluated in terms of what the technology makes possible. The cases in this article suggest a different starting point. The central question is whether organizations can use stablecoins to solve real coordination and payment problems while protecting the people and institutions on whom successful implementation depends. As Melyn McKay of Coala Pay emphasized in our interviews, poorly designed digital-asset interventions can create real risks for recipients. She recounted a blockchain-based aid pilot in which women were reportedly put at acute physical risk because community members understood the transfers as “Bitcoin,” even though the asset in question was a crypto-collateralized stablecoin backed by bitcoin, not bitcoin itself. The story underscores two broader points that run throughout this article. First, not all stablecoins are the same, and issuer-specific design choices differ in ways that matter for those seeking to use them in operations. Second, stablecoins must be deployed with the same safeguards that have long been used in humanitarian work (e.g., needs assessment and local market understanding).
These cases also suggest a practical way to judge when stablecoins are likely to add value. The relevant questions are whether the stablecoin solution moves the needle on any of our four pillars. Do stablecoins increase financial inclusion through access? Do stablecoins reduce transaction costs? Do stablecoins improve transparency in a way that facilitates trust-building and coordination while still preserving privacy? Do stablecoins increase operational credibility, ensuring that the full value of the aid will be transferred when needed? These four pillars also align with a broader management perspective on resilience. In that literature, resilience refers not simply to bouncing back, but to the capacity of organizations to maintain functioning, adapt, and recover under adversity.27 In the settings studied here, the key question is whether stablecoin solutions help organizations execute on their mission and the broader agenda of enhancing shared prosperity. In this sense, stablecoins may strengthen resilience but only under identifiable conditions. With this framework in mind, we discuss the five lessons that stood out across the various cases.
First, stablecoins work best when they solve a specific payment or coordination problem rather than serving as technology in search of a use case. Mercy Corps used stablecoins to move aid more cheaply and quickly in fragile settings where traditional financial channels were unreliable. Coala Pay used them to reduce devaluation risk and help local partners receive funding more directly. Endaoment used them to improve traceability and reduce frictions in philanthropic recordkeeping. Regen used them to help communities translate locally valued environmental and social contributions into more stable and usable economic claims. What these cases share is an important lesson for managers: stablecoins are most useful when they improve one or more of these four dimensions in response to a clearly defined institutional problem.
Second, the strongest use case today appears to be in the middle mile rather than the last mile. Across the cases, stablecoins were most compelling when organizations needed to move funds across borders or organizational boundaries more quickly and preserve value under volatile or unfavorable monetary conditions. This is where the gains in access, cost, transparency, and credibility were clearest. By contrast, the last mile remains much harder. Because stablecoin solutions are inherently digital interventions, the success of any initiative depends on the user’s ability to engage effectively with the digital application. Digital skills gaps risk leaving communities in need of assistance behind or receiving fewer benefits. To overcome such barriers, digital access and internet connectivity are necessary but so is user education on the safe and effective use of crypto wallets to minimize digital harm. For the last mile, the ability of stablecoins to substitute for cash in households’ day-to-day use is more conditional. Stablecoins are most likely to enhance household welfare when they address a preexisting middle-mile coordination or payment problem, rather than when they are expected to function as direct substitutes for cash in everyday transactions.
Third, stablecoins are not plug-and-play financial tools. The benefit of stablecoin solutions depends on user capability and organizational support. For example, MCV worked closely with local partners to onboard recipients and support them in navigating unfamiliar digital interfaces. Similarly, Coala Pay provided guided wallet setups and hands-on support. Specific advice given by Coala Pay based on their pilots was to onramp once in USD, start KYC early, and build distribution around trusted local off-ramping partners and the fastest local banking rail available. Why? Repeated onramps created avoidable delays and exchange-rate complications, while USD-denominated onramps reduced currency-conversion shortfalls, and fast/trusted partners proved more reliable, enhancing the credibility of the stablecoin solution. For leaders, this is where resilience comes into play. Organizations do not become more resilient merely by adopting a stablecoin solution; they do so by developing the capabilities needed to deploy that technology effectively.
Fourth, local currency systems can work for or against stablecoin solutions, so they must be negotiated. This lesson emerged most clearly in Coala Pay’s Sudan pilot. The key issue was that the formal banking system translated foreign aid into local currency at official exchange rates well below market rates, eroding local partners’ purchasing power. Stablecoins changed the timing and terms of that conversion. By receiving grants in the stablecoin USDT, partners could preserve value and convert smaller amounts into local currency over time as needed. At the same time, stablecoins did not replace the local currency for users. Final usability of the grants still depended on local networks. The managerial implication is that stablecoins do not eliminate dependence on local institutions. Instead, stablecoins create a more flexible way to move through and coordinate activity with local systems that can be slow and inefficient. This is an important distinction for both practitioners and researchers because it shows that what may seem like an ad hoc workaround can be powerful when the stablecoin solution enables compatibility with a persistent yet inefficient institutional practice.
The fifth lesson is that transparency must be balanced against privacy and safety. Endaoment illustrates the trust-building value of traceability in a philanthropic setting. On-chain visibility meaningfully reduces the variance in philanthropic audits and strengthens donor confidence that funds reached their intended destination. But MCV and Coala Pay’s experiences suggest that transparency is not always good. In fragile settings, blockchain’s transparency may inadvertently expose recipients—organizations, individuals, households—as targets, even when the value transferred is relatively small. That is why privacy-preserving tools, like zero-knowledge proofs, and traditional beneficiary protection procedures matter. For managers, the right level of visibility depends on context."
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00081256261464630)