Matt Damon partners with Crypto.com around clean water project

Dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy exchange Crypto.com has donat­ed $1 mil­lion to water.org, a clean-water ini­tia­tive co-found­ed by Matt Damon and Gary White in 2009.

The direct dona­tion will go towards sup­port­ing Water.org’s mis­sion of end­ing the glob­al water cri­sis by pro­vid­ing safe water and san­i­ta­tion to peo­ple in need, the com­pa­nies announced Mon­day. The part­ner­ship is also aimed at expos­ing water.org to Crypto.com’s more than 10 mil­lion users, who are also being encour­aged to donate to the project. 

Matt Damon cit­ed the ongo­ing finan­cial trans­for­ma­tion brought on by cryp­tocur­ren­cy as one of the chief moti­va­tions for part­ner­ing with Crypto.com. “As our finan­cial solu­tions and plat­forms evolve, we can use them for good,” he said. “Crypto.com and Water.org are both work­ing toward pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion, and our inno­v­a­tive, finan­cial solu­tions will help change lives and the world.”

Crypto.com has quick­ly emerged as one of the fastest-grow­ing dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy plat­forms in the world. The com­pa­ny rose to promi­nence by offer­ing its cus­tomers a cryp­to-focused Visa card that pays out rewards for stak­ing CRO, the platform’s native cryp­tocur­ren­cy. As Coin­tele­graph recent­ly report­ed, the exchange has expand­ed its insur­ance pro­gram to cov­er up to $750 mil­lion, reflect­ing height­ened con­sumer pro­tec­tion stan­dards in the industry. 

The cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try has ush­ered in a new era of char­i­ta­ble gift­ing as its new­ly rich par­tic­i­pants look to give back to their com­mu­ni­ties. Char­i­ty: water, which has a sim­i­lar man­date as Water.org, raised $1.3 mil­lion in June through a Bit­coin (BTC)-focused trust. Cryp­to dona­tions plat­form The Giv­ing Block has also facil­i­tat­ed char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions for dozens of orga­ni­za­tions by pro­vid­ing them with the tools and resources to begin accept­ing cryp­to contribtuions. 

Relat­ed: Char­i­ta­ble sus­tain­able NFTs for the Unit­ed Nations’ 17 SDGs

Many non­prof­its have opened their cof­fers to cryp­to dona­tions in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August. Cryp­to dona­tions are also being used to sup­port sui­cide pre­ven­tion, eth­i­cal jour­nal­ism and even a uni­ver­sal basic income project.