Andreina Cordero started the year skipping
meals so her three kids could eat. Her husband,
a construction worker, was out of a job. And
the family’s savings had been devastated by
the nation’s hyperinflation, limiting Cordero’s
children to a diet of rice, beans, pasta and fried
corn patties.
But the family got a break from their daily struggle
to feed themselves this spring when a social
worker enrolled them in a program run by a Silicon
Valley startup that is donating cryptocurrency to
hundreds of Venezuelan families.
Every week from February to April, Cordero
received a deposit of EOS tokens through a
cellphone app. She then traded the digital money
for local currency through online transfers and
used the funds to shop in market stalls.