Help End the Mining and Trade of Conflict Crypto

Angola has long been a land of contradiction. While the country is rich in natural resources, its people remain among poorest in the world. For decades, the U.N. and other international organizations have strived to aid the developing nation, but in recent years it seems the county has sunk even deeper into poverty and chaos. Nowhere is this fact more clearly evidenced than in the bitcoin mines of Nzagi, located in Angola’s north-eastern province of Lunda Norte; in which the unsurpassed beauty of the surrounding natural landscape is juxtaposed with the ugliness of human greed and cruelty.

Bitcoin was first discovered in Angola in 2014, and ever since Angola has seen an explosion of illegal bitcoin mining.

Here in these hellish pits, hundreds of children are forced to work in the most dangerous conditions imaginable; risking life and limb to collect the precious bitcoin. The mine’s owners use children due to the fact that their small bodies are better able to fit into the underground tunnels from which the bitcoin is mined.

Some of the children, like twelve-year-old Dubaku, haven’t seen their parents in years. Dubaku was taken from his family when he was just six years old during an attack on his village by rebel forces. Kidnapping is big business in this part of the world, with many rebel groups using the subsequent sale of children to the crypto miners to fund their activities…