Cryptocurrency, Virtual Assets, and Open Government

Virtual assets (VAs)—including cryptocurrencies—may make corruption even easier. People may use virtual assets to hide bribes and VAs help move dirty money back into the regular economy (money laundering). Dirty money often includes bribery, kickbacks, or embezzled money. Non-Fungible Tokens can be appraised at any value (like art) or tokens, which represent real world assets, allowing easy cross-border movement of money when they are over-appraised.

Governments are learning, however, that anonymity may be greatly exaggerated. Those of us that are working against corruption and money laundering can fool ourselves into thinking that these issues are overly difficult, technical, or require a radical overhaul of our financial intelligence and law enforcement systems. However, this is not the case.

The OGP Support UnitThe OGP Support Unit is a small, permanent group of staff that work closely with the Steering Committee and the Independent Reporting Mechanism to advance the goals of the Open Government Partnership.... has put together this basic explainer for the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More community and beyond on where, when, and how open government can help to ensure that we apply the rule of law to these new technologies.

Crypto-markets need to be regulated. But it matters how those markets are regulated. It can be done in an arbitrary, ad hoc manner, or it can be done in a way that balances competing rights and favors democracy and fairness. The explainer above offers cases of enforcement and guidance on how civil society, journalists, and other watchdog groups can ensure that innovation does not reward unlawful behavior.