By Marwa Alnasaa, Nikolay Gueorguiev, Jiro Honda, Eslem Imamoglu, Paolo Mauro, Keyra Primus, and Dmitriy Rozhkov
The emergence of crypto-assets (private digital assets that depend primarily on cryptography and distributed ledger technology for record keeping) has unleashed a plethora of financial innovation that will likely revolutionize the form of money and the ways it is used. These developments create opportunities as well as risks. As noted, for example, by a group of G-20 policymakers, “…technological innovation, including that underlying crypto-assets, has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly,” but “crypto-assets […] raise issues with respect to consumer and investor protection, market integrity, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing.” The pseudonymity of crypto-assets (whereby transactions require only digital identities) makes them a potential vehicle for illicit flows, including flows of proceeds from corruption. This pseudonymity is not an intrinsic feature of the underlying technology, but rather a choice made in the design and practice of most currently existing crypto-assets. Whereas cash provides full anonymity and large denomination bills have long been considered an aid for crime and tax evasion (Rogoff 2017, Chodorow-Reich et al. 2020), crypto-assets in their current form make it possible to move even larger amounts speedily and with greater ease, including across national borders (Graf von Luckner et al., 2021). As crypto-assets rapidly gain macroeconomic relevance (International Monetary Fund 2021) and policymakers consider the optimal degree of regulation, it is urgent to bring empirical evidence to bear on the question of whether crypto-assets facilitate corruption. Likewise, it is helpful to explore the extent to which crypto-assets are used to circumvent capital controls, for countries where these are in place, and whether crypto-assets are more likely to gain traction in countries where the local currency has historically not been a secure store of value. There are also potential benefits of the technologies that crypto-assets are based on. In particular, prudently designed central bank digital currencies could offer additional resilience, safety and availability with lower costs. These technologies could also be used to improve transparency and record-keeping for procurement or other payments related to government projects, thereby increasing accountability, and reducing the scope for corruption. Likewise, property and registry systems could be enhanced, reducing red tape, and streamlining processes. However, these initiatives are currently less advanced or widespread than crypto-assets. Empirical investigation of the factors underlying the growing usage of crypto-assets is in its infancy, owing to data limitations. In this paper, we present a simple cross-country analysis drawing on recently released survey-based data. We explore the correlation of crypto-asset usage with indicators of corruption, capital controls, a history of high inflation, and other factors. We find that crypto-asset usage is significantly and positively associated with corruption and capital controls. Whereas the small sample size and uncertain quality of the data on crypto-assets implies that our results must be interpreted with caution, it is also worth recalling that measurement error tends to reduce the likelihood of finding a significant empirical association; significant results with low-quality data are thus worth paying attention to. With these caveats in mind and considering the urgency of acting before it is too late, rather than waiting for conclusive evidence, we believe that, on balance, our results add to the case for regulating crypto-assets, including know-your-customer approaches, as opposed to taking a laissez-faire stance.
Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2022. 19p.
