Abortion rights activists and nonprofits are looking at crypto to speed fundraising, but complexity and traceability of blockchain transactions hamper efforts
Activists and nonprofits are considering digital currencies as a way to raise funds. But can they really do anything other payment methods can't? Tweets: @rjcc , @bradmichelson , @aaronwall , and @neerajka Tweets: Richard Lawler / @rjcc : @Techmeme The crypto zealots who are trying to find a new spin are happy to have this headline out there, even if the entire article is about how on each point, none of what they're promising is actually possible or logical. Brad Michelson / @bradmichelson : Activists are floating ideas for an abortion-focused DAO. They see it as a way to provide money to women in more than two dozen states where abortion services may soon be severely restricted or banned — a kind of “Underground Railroad for abortion.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Aaron / @aaronwall : nice highbrow kick save by the rug pull community https://www.nytimes.com/... Neeraj K. Agrawal / @neerajka : if something is illegal, centralized payment processors are not going to let you do it. you need something that will let you break the law https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The abortion-focused DAO proposal lands in the middle of a stress test of crypto's civic promises. The boom in DAO treasuries, which DeepDAO put at $13B in 2021 after 3,200% growth, proved pooled crypto capital can move fast — but the same coverage documented the infighting and governance friction that came with it. Meanwhile, sex workers who bypassed banks entirely with crypto have already run this experiment and hit the limits of the technology's usability.
The tension in this story is structural: the transparency of a public ledger — usually sold as a feature — is exactly what donors and recipients in restrictive states cannot afford. The article's own framing asks whether crypto can do anything other payment methods can't, and the traceability problem suggests the answer for this use case is no.
First-order effects
- An abortion-focused DAO would route funds to people in restrictive states across public blockchains, where transaction traceability defeats the anonymity the use case requires — the ledger's defining feature becomes its liability.
- Nonprofits considering crypto face an onboarding wall: donors unfamiliar with wallets and chains confront complexity that card-based giving never imposes, shrinking the donor pool at the moment speed matters most.
Second-order effects
- Crypto advocacy voices quoted around the story get a headline that outruns the product — as the Techmeme commentary notes, each promised advantage fails on inspection — which risks burning credibility with exactly the nonprofits they are courting.
- If DAO fundraising stalls, the gap gets filled by conventional rails and off-ramps like the cash-to-crypto swap services that convert local currency into stablecoins and debit cards — but those routes sit squarely in the path of financial oversight, trading one exposure for another.
Third-order effects
- The pattern mirrors the sex-work experience: crypto's public ledger works worst for users who most need discretion, pushing privacy-sensitive finance back toward regulated payment rails or privacy tools that don't yet exist at scale.
- DAOs as vehicles for legally sensitive funds inherit the governance weaknesses of their first boom — infighting, unclear accountability, no clear fiduciary — which becomes a serious problem when the money carries legal risk for recipients.
The trend: Crypto is being auditioned for politically sensitive payments, and the public-ledger transparency that defines blockchains keeps colliding with the privacy those exact use cases demand.