When traditional finance can’t reach people in crisis, Bitcoin has.

Byline: Forbes

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

In the Gaza Strip, a crowdfunding effort was supposed to bring hope, but it has fallen into trouble due to restrictions imposed by traditional finance.

Through GoFundMe, Sami Jamal Al-Shannat raised more than 55,000 pounds (about RMB 500,000) for his family caught in the war. At the time, he believed that the hardest part had already passed. However, after the platform deducted a 3.9% fee, it does not support direct payments to Gaza. The remaining funds must be transferred to a designated beneficiary residing in a supporting country, who then hands the money to Sami’s family.

This arrangement complies with the platform’s rules, yet it places the final delivery entirely on personal trust. Sami said that when his arrangements with his brother-in-law—who was the beneficiary—later broke down, he has still not received the full amount to this day, and the dispute remains unresolved. He described it as not just a loss of money, but also leaving his wife and children in an extremely vulnerable situation.

“Fundraising isn’t the problem,” Sami told me from a displaced camp in Gaza. “The problem starts when we have to rely on others to collect it for us.”

Sami’s biggest hope now is to recover the funds and hold the relevant parties accountable. But in Gaza, he has difficulty finding lawyers, and he lacks the necessary money and connections. He also plans to keep raising funds for his family because wartime inflation has driven up the prices of basic necessities such as food.

GoFundMe did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Compliance traps

Sami’s experience exposes a common problem faced by humanitarian crowdfunding platforms: platforms must comply with banking rules, sanctions regimes, and anti-money-laundering requirements, which strictly restrict the regions where funds can be sent.

When people in crisis cannot receive funds directly, they must route the money through intermediaries. This not only shifts responsibility onto individuals, but may also prevent aid originally raised for them from reaching its intended recipients.

This compliance bottleneck can even leave global human rights organizations paralyzed. Recalling the early stage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, chair of Open Dialogue Foundation, said that platforms including PayPal, GoFundMe, and Wise blocked their fundraising appeals for Ukraine. But by using Bitcoin, the foundation was able to bypass traditional delays and deliver urgent humanitarian aid on the second day of the war.

For years, charities, aid organizations, and technology companies have been working to figure out how to reach people who cannot access the traditional financial system. More and more developers believe the current model relies too heavily on intermediaries—especially when funds need to cross borders or be delivered to jurisdictions where delivery is restricted.

Rebuilding the trust architecture

Michele Morucci, co-founder of the Bitcoin crowdfunding platform Geyser, pointed out that trust is the core issue.

“People think the biggest challenge is moving money—actually, it isn’t. The biggest challenge is deciding who to trust.”

Donors typically do not know the beneficiaries; they rely on platforms, charities, journalists, and community leaders to judge whether projects are legitimate. Removing one intermediary only makes sense if there is an equally trustworthy alternative.

Geyser reviews projects before they go live, requiring creators to provide proof of work, team information, and necessary documents. Projects that do not meet credibility standards will not be approved.

In addition, more than 100 Geyser Field Partners identify and support projects within the communities they are familiar with, forming a trust chain between local communities and global donors. Michele said these partners have helped deliver 12 million sats (about £5,600, equivalent to 0.12 Bitcoin) directly to community projects. He also acknowledged that the model is still new, and the available data remains limited.

Far beyond a single fundraising case

The weakness revealed by Sami’s case is not unique. Crowdfunding platforms can raise money within hours for families facing war, disasters, or oppression, but safely getting the funds into the hands of the intended beneficiaries is far more complex.

GoFundMe is not the only platform that limits payment destinations. Mainstream crowdfunding platforms rely on banks and payment providers and must comply with specific jurisdictions’ sanctions, identity verification, and anti-money-laundering rules.

When direct payments are not supported, organizers may need to designate a beneficiary in another jurisdiction to collect the funds on their behalf. While this meets the platform’s legal and banking requirements, it shifts responsibility to the intermediary. Once the relationship breaks down, the recipients have very limited options to seek recourse through the platform.

Transfer trust to verifiers

Agora takes a different approach. It allows funds to flow directly between donors and beneficiaries, while verification comes from organizations and individuals who have first-hand knowledge of the project.

Mary Kate, co-founder of Soapbox (the team behind Agora), explained that donors may not know the person seeking help, but they might know and trust the organization that verifies the project.

“This shifts trust from the project itself to the verifier. You may not know the person seeking help, but you might know and trust the organization that verifies it.”

This model leaves ultimate decision-making power with donors. Even if the verifier does not support the project, it can still be visible. Meanwhile, trusted organizations can add context and credibility without becoming the only gatekeepers.

Agora also removes the crowdfunding platform from the payment process. Donations are sent directly to a wallet controlled by the beneficiary, reducing the risk that funds are held by the platform or routed through others.

Bitcoin enables funds to move across borders without platform custody or needing to be passed on by beneficiaries. Of course, wallet security, access rights, and exchange-rate risks still remain.

For Mary Kate, this control goes far beyond just moving funds.

“We can’t take your account, we can’t shut down your project, we can’t take your money,” she said. “For those who are going through trauma and lack control over their lives, this can be a huge moment of empowerment.”

Direct payments do not solve everything. Projects still need to be reviewed, donors still need enough information to make informed decisions, and beneficiaries may misuse funds. Agora is working to make these risks more transparent while giving beneficiaries greater control over fundraising conducted in their own names.

Unintended consequences of financial sanctions

Sami’s experience is not an isolated case, because the root problem is widespread. Activists, journalists, and humanitarian organizations around the world have found that as financial regulation becomes increasingly complex—and sanctions affect entire jurisdictions rather than only governments—legal cross-border transfer of funds is becoming harder and harder.

Femi Longe, Global Freedom Tech Strategy lead at the Human Rights Foundation, believes these restrictions often cause unintended harm to people who should receive humanitarian funding.

“Traditional crowdfunding platforms are regulated, and cross-border fund transfers must comply with anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules. The problem is that these rules often end up affecting legitimate opposition groups, non-profit organizations, and ordinary people—not the governments they were originally meant to target.”

Femi noted that even organizations operating legally within sanctioned countries struggle to receive donations. Visible financial ties may expose domestic supporters or relatives to retaliation.

Lyudmyla warned that this issue has gone beyond bureaucratic friction and evolved into “cross-border financial suppression”—where regimes use global anti-money-laundering / anti-terrorist financing rules to deprive dissidents of access to banking services, even in Western countries.

She cited a landmark resolution passed in July 2026 at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The resolution recognizes cross-border financial suppression as a systemic threat and calls for stronger protections for donor privacy and digital tools that protect privacy. Lyudmyla said Bitcoin payment tools are becoming a necessary lifeline for targeted donors and activists.

Political opposition groups, independent journalists, and civil-society organizations often rely on international donations to keep operating. When it becomes difficult to send donations or easier to monitor them, financial infrastructure becomes another form of pressure.

This does not mean regulation should be abolished. Public fundraising requires accountability, transparency, and safeguards to protect donors from fraud. All interviewees acknowledged this challenge and accepted the reality that there is no perfect solution.

Femi believes the goal should be to remove unnecessary intermediaries while preserving accountability.

“If the project operators directly control the wallet that receives the funds, I think that would be better than the current situation,” he added. “Verification and oversight are still indispensable parts of any system that handles public donations.”

Sami’s case highlights a fundamental weakness in humanitarian financial infrastructure. Systems built around banks, payment processors, and jurisdictional boundaries often fall short when transferring funds to people trapped in war, political repression, or humanitarian crises. No one believes technology alone can solve humanitarian fundraising.

Paying directly to beneficiaries reduces one layer of risk, but it cannot guarantee that projects are real, that organizers are honest, or that donations ultimately get used for the stated purpose.

Femi said: “I don’t think Bitcoin can solve everything. Verification of the systems of project creators is still needed; accountability for how funds are used is still needed. These challenges don’t disappear just because payments become direct.”

Michele and Mary Kate’s platforms are also working toward similar ideas: they do not claim to eliminate trust, but instead try to redesign where trust sits.

Next-generation humanitarian crowdfunding is not merely a temporary patch to a broken traditional model—it is a systemic shift. An open payment network enables beneficiaries to directly control funds raised in their own names, while a decentralized trust network helps donors decide who to support.

Even though judgment, verification, and accountability remain indispensable, this open architecture is bypassing the legacy financial limitations and regulatory obstacles that prevent traditional platforms from reaching the people who need help the most.