The UN Children’s Fund has urged for child safeguards to be incorporated into online child protection measures, highlighting the financial and exploitation risks posed by uncontrolled crypto exchanges.
The UNICEF report “Prospects for Children in 2022,” which looks at the effects of global trends on children, predicts that cryptocurrencies will become more mainstream, “demonstrating both the promise of greater financial inclusion and the need for additional kid safeguards.” According to the research, by the end of 2021, digital currencies had sparked broad interest in 87 nations, with the bulk of jurisdictions testing their own forms of a central bank digital currency. The COVID-19 pandemic’s economic strains are also fueling the demand for crypto’s widespread adoption.
UNICEF recognises the tremendous benefits provided by financial inclusion and “frictionless transfers and more rapid, transparent, and effective social assistance programmes” with the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies. However, the UN agency warns about the dangers that unregulated markets pose to children’s well-being, such as financial system stability and declining government revenues.
The paper also emphasises some potential negative consequences of unregulated transactions that enable child trafficking, sexual exploitation, the sale and purchase of content showing child abuse, as well as child deceiving and extortion.
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