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The Marshall Islands has introduced a national universal basic income (UBI) scheme that offers payments via cryptocurrency, alongside more traditional methods, which experts say is the first scheme of its kind in the world.
Under the program, every resident citizen of the Marshall Islands will receive quarterly payments of about US$200 as part of a government effort to ease cost of living pressures. The first instalments were paid in late November and recipients can choose whether the money is paid into a bank account, by cheque, or delivered as cryptocurrency on the blockchain through a government-backed digital wallet.
“We the government want to make sure no one is left behind,” Marshall Islands’ minister for finance David Paul told the Guardian.
“$200 per person per quarter, which is about $800 a year, does not compel you to quit your job … but it’s actually like a morale booster for people.”
An archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, the Marshall Islands lies between Hawaii and Australia, and has a population of about 42,000. Paul said the payments were intended as a “social safety net” as the country faces rising costs and citizens leaving.
The UBI scheme is financed by a trust fund created under an agreement with the United States, which in part aims to compensate the Marshall Islands for decades of American nuclear testing. The fund holds more than $1.3bn in assets, with the US committing a further $500m through to 2027.
Dr Huy Pham, associate professor and crypto-fintech lead at RMIT University, said the Marshall Islands scheme “is the world first for a national rollout of a UBI program.” He said the use of blockchain technology is “unique in terms of a nation-wide implementation.”
The cryptocurrency delivery option – which involves the transfer of a digital token known as a stablecoin, pegged to the US dollar – was designed to address the practical challenge of delivering the money across hundreds of remote islands.
“We saw the opportunity in what the blockchain has to offer,” Paul said.
Blockchain is best known as the technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but can also be used to store and transfer more traditional assets – like government bonds – which the Marshall Islands is using to underpin their digital payment scheme.
But according to Pham, digital payments alone do not necessarily provide financial inclusion, especially in a country like the Marshall Islands where internet connectivity is patchy and frequently disrupted.
“Improving internet coverage, improving smartphone penetration – all these kinds of things are the minimum for a blockchain-based economy,” he said.
Most recipients are choosing to receive payments through conventional channels. According to the Marshall Islands Social Security Administration, about 60% of the first round of payments were deposited directly into bank accounts, with the remainder issued as paper checks. Only a small number of people – about 12 so far, officials say – have signed up to receive payments on their digital wallet
Anelie Sarana, the finance manager involved in the rollout, said over the past year her team has travelled to the outermost islands of the country to register people in the scheme.
Sarana said many recipients were using the money immediately for basic needs, like food and essentials, while others used the $200 to pay for celebrations to commemorate the annual Gospel Day holiday which coincided with the first distribution.
“I know they’re happy, because you can see in the streets, there’s so much traffic, it’s like there’s a big something happening,” she said.
This is not the first time the Marshall Islands has experimented with using cryptocurrency. In 2018, the government attempted to create a national cryptocurrency known as the Sovereign, or SOV. The plan ultimately stalled after warnings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF has cautioned that while the technology underpinning the latest scheme is innovative, the blockchain-based delivery of universal basic income carries “financial, fiscal, legal, reputational, and financial integrity risks”, particularly if governance and oversight are not robust.
Dr Monique Taylor, a lecturer in world politics at the University of Helsinki, said it was hard to predict if the Marshall Islands’ experiment with a universal basic income and a cryptocurrency delivery system would succeed.
“Universal income schemes are rare, particularly at national scale, and there are no direct precedents that combine this fiscal architecture with a digital delivery component in a small island state,” she said.
But, she believed the scheme did present benefits for small island nations.
“In a geographically dispersed island state where conventional banking infrastructure can be limited, a digital wallet may lower frictions and make transfers more accessible, particularly in outer atolls,” she said.