Floods, earthquakes and hurricanes: How crypto can speed up humanitarian aid

​Crypto companies have become increasingly visible after earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, donating millions to emergency responses around the world. Ripple is the latest to step in after catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Beyond the donations themselves, can crypto technology actually make humanitarian aid work better?

Ripple said it will contribute $300,000 to World Central Kitchen and Mercy Corps, which are providing meals, clean water and sanitation support in affected communities. The floods, triggered by a glacial collapse on August 26, have killed more than 900 people, while thousands remain missing as rescue teams struggle to reach areas cut off by damaged roads and bridges.

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World Central Kitchen is working with local restaurants to distribute meals in Nepal's Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts, while Mercy Corps is coordinating water and sanitation assistance. The contribution also extends Ripple's existing work with both organizations, including projects that use blockchain technology to move humanitarian funding.

Crypto companies have responded to disasters before

Ripple has supported World Central Kitchen since 2020 and says it has donated cash and XRP following hurricanes and other disasters. Other crypto companies have experimented with both conventional donations and sending digital assets directly to people affected by emergencies.

After the Turkey-Syria earthquakes in 2023, Binance distributed BNB worth around $100 to eligible users in the worst-affected areas. The company later donated $3 million to the Spanish Red Cross following the Valencia floods, while Binance Charity pledged up to $1.5 million after the Myanmar and Thailand earthquake.

Why can crypto be useful after a disaster?

Speed is perhaps the clearest advantage because international humanitarian funding can pass through banks, correspondent networks and local financial institutions before reaching organizations or individuals. Blockchain payments can operate around the clock and cross borders without passing through the same chain of intermediaries.

That can matter when hours rather than days count. World Central Kitchen has been testing Ripple Payments and RLUSD to pay local restaurants and other partners, with the organization saying the technology can reduce settlement times from days to hours.

The benefit is not that digital money can replace damaged physical infrastructure. Disaster relief still depends on rescue workers, hospitals, food suppliers, roads and functioning local organizations. Blockchain may instead improve one specific part of that system: getting financial resources to those organizations and people more quickly.

Cash is already an important form of humanitarian aid because recipients and local organizations can decide what they need most. UNICEF distributed $688 million in cash assistance to 3.5 million households in 2024, providing a sense of the scale at which humanitarian payments already operate.

Stablecoins are changing how crypto aid works

Early crypto philanthropy largely involved donations in Bitcoin or other volatile assets. Stablecoins offer a different proposition because they can move using blockchain infrastructure without exposing an aid organization to the same price swings. An NGO receiving $10,000 can reasonably expect to have close to the same amount available when it needs to pay suppliers.

UNICEF has been experimenting with crypto since launching its CryptoFund in 2019 and expanded the program to accept USDC in 2026. The organization sees stablecoins as potentially useful for humanitarian payments because they combine blockchain settlement with relative price stability.

Ripple and Mercy Corps are testing a more automated model in Kenya. Their program uses satellite data to monitor drought conditions and smart contracts to trigger RLUSD assistance when predefined conditions are met. Recipients can access the value through Kenya's M-Pesa system, connecting blockchain infrastructure with a payment method already widely used locally.

Direct crypto payments also create problems

Sending digital assets directly to disaster victims can create problems at the last step. Recipients may need a smartphone, internet access and some understanding of digital wallets, while exchange-based distributions can depend on people already having verified accounts. After the Turkey-Syria earthquake, some recipients also struggled to exchange donated crypto for local currency or spend it directly.

One response is to keep much of the crypto infrastructure behind the scenes. In a UNHCR program for displaced Ukrainians, USDC was transferred to digital wallets and could then be converted into local currency through MoneyGram. The aim was not to turn refugees into crypto users, but to provide another route to cash when conventional banking access was difficult.

Blockchain can also make transfers easier to trace, although that transparency has limits. A ledger can show that $50,000 reached a particular wallet, but it cannot prove that the money bought medicine or that assistance reached the people who needed it most.

Crypto may be most useful when people barely notice it

The Nepal and Tibet contribution shows that traditional donations remain valuable. Ripple's $300,000 does not need to arrive in XRP or RLUSD to finance meals, water and sanitation, while established organizations on the ground still determine where those resources are needed. The more interesting development is happening behind those donations, as stablecoins are tested for paying suppliers, delivering cash assistance and releasing support when predefined conditions are met.

The strongest humanitarian use case may therefore be one in which disaster victims barely encounter crypto at all. Whether money traveled through a blockchain matters far less to a family than whether assistance arrived when it was needed and could actually be used. If crypto can consistently shorten that journey without making the final step more difficult, natural disasters may become one of the clearest tests of whether the technology can solve problems beyond crypto itself.