The State Department should submit a report on the use of cryptocurrencies as a viable reward payout with evidence that suggests it's more encouraging for whistleblowers.
The us lawmakers have projected an change to the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 that features info on crypto rewards and payouts.
The proposed amendment below the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) needs the Department of State, an executive department of the U.S. federal government chargeable for the country's foreign policy and relations, to tell concerning any crypto payouts or rewards among 15 days of making it.
The NDAA is that the name for every of a series of us federal laws specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The official document read:
“Not later than 15 days before making a reward in a form that includes cryptocurrency, the secretary of State shall notify the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate of such form for the rewards.”
Apart from the 15 days data period, the State Department should additionally submit a report back to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and therefore the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate inside 180 days of enactment of the act, justifying the use of cryptocurrencies as rewards.
The report should include evidence that suggests crypto rewards would encourage more whistleblowers to come forward compared to alternative “rewards paid out in the us dollars or alternative forms of money or nonmonetary things.”
Related: United States ethics advisory on federal employee’s crypto has basis in legislation
The said report should additionally examine whether the use of cryptocurrency could provide bad actors with additional “hard-to-trace funds that would be used for 16 criminal or illicit purposes.”
The proposed amendment could offer more transparency into the State Department’s expenditure on cryptocurrency rewards. Once passed the policy may additionally offer insight into the federal government’s views on cryptocurrency use for illicit activities, a primary argument used by policymakers against cryptocurrencies.
The Biden government published the ‘first-ever’ comprehensive framework for crypto in Sep this year following Biden’s executive order in March. The framework offered six principal directions for crypto regulation within the U.S. The framework is sum total of nine totally different reports on crypto over the years combined together
(PRASHANT JHA, Cointelegraph, 2022)