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Communities can now build wealth and move toward economic freedom by investing in Bitcoin, said a former chief auditor at the Fed.
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She noted that crypto allows people in Black and Latino communities to access wealth that is otherwise out of reach through the traditional financial system.
Bitcoin has been highlighted as a tool to create generational wealth and deliver economic freedom to more people, according to Charlene Fadirepo, a former executive at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Fadirepo is also the founder of the fintech platform Guidefi, which focuses on providing women and other professionals in underserved communities with access to financial and investment guidance.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance this week, Fadirepo said the flagship cryptocurrency was “absolutely a tool for social justice.”
The former auditor at the U.S. central bank believes Bitcoin has given Black and Latino Americans, in particular, access to financial tools that have largely been unavailable through legacy banks.
Last week, a MarketWatch report revealed a growing gap in credit access along racial lines in the U.S. The report found that people of color (Black applicants) are 84% more likely to be denied a mortgage than white applicants.
“[Bitcoin] allows communities to build wealth in places that have been excluded from a discriminatory banking system,” she told Yahoo Finance.
Fadirepo also believes Bitcoin is poised for further growth as more institutional capital flows into the crypto industry. She expects 2022 and beyond to see an increasing number of investors view Bitcoin as an asset class.
As adoption accelerates and more institutions and high-net-worth individuals add BTC to their balance sheets, Bitcoin’s “big picture” will become even clearer.
She discussed Bitcoin’s performance over the past two years and compared it with gold. Over a ten-year period, the benchmark cryptocurrency delivered an annualized return near 200%, with a roughly 400% surge during 2020–2021.
By comparison, gold returned about 15% during the pandemic period, while the S&P 500 produced around 42% in equity returns.
Individuals can invest in Bitcoin by buying the cryptocurrency and holding it for future appreciation or trading it through brokerages and exchanges. Some participants also earn substantial rewards through Bitcoin mining.
Fadirepo also weighed in on crypto regulation, noting that clear regulatory frameworks will help build trust, improve consumer protections, and ultimately attract more private and institutional investors.
Beyond Bitcoin, other areas of the crypto ecosystem that offer paths to economic opportunity include decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In 2021, the NFT sector saw sales exceeding $44 billion, according to a Chainalysis report.