[2017] Blockchains and the G20: Building an Inclusive, Transparent and Accountable Digital Economy

Abstract: Blockchain technologies hold the key to building an inclusive global digital economy that is auditably secure and transparently accountable to the world’s citizens. At a time when governments must fight to restore the public’s faith in cross-border economic cooperation, blockchains can play a critical role in strengthening economic resilience while ensuring the global economy works to the benefit of all. The G20 must take decisive steps to harness this technology in service of its policy goals across the core focus areas of economic resilience, financial inclusion, taxation, trade and investment, employment, climate, health, sustainable development and women’s empowerment. Failure to do so risks further fragmenting the global economy, undermining public trust in international economic institutions, and pushing the most cutting-edge blockchain developments into Dark Web deployments that are beyond the reach of government influence. This paper suggests specific actions the G20 governments should take to embrace blockchains’ socially beneficial properties and minimize their potential downside risks, thereby laying the foundation for a more just, prosperous and truly shared global economy.

@article{maupin2017blockchains,
  title={Blockchains and the G20: Building an inclusive, transparent and accountable digital economy},
  author={Maupin, Julie A},
  journal={Transparent and Accountable Digital Economy (March 17, 2017)},
  year={2017},
  publisher={JSTOR}
}

Shared by @CorujaTejedora in FRP-32: Socioeconomic effects of cryptocurrency redistribution in the Costa Rican rural town of Tinamastes.

Statement: Maupin (2017) proposes a framework to be adopted by the G20 in the search for regulation and expansion of their tasks into the growing market of cryptocurrencies, under the ideal sought after in the G20’s Blueprint for Innovative Growth.

Description: According to Maupin, the G20 is the most capable international organization to take on the task to regulate blockchains for the maintenance of equality, justice, transparency and the continuous fights against poverty, exclusion and unbanked populations.

Comments: Maupin’s proposal for the G20 incorporates idealistic actions to be taken by the organization. While some of these are realistic proposals, some of them assume the G20 is an organization focused on democracy, human rights and redistribution, when this is not the case, on the contrary, the G20 is a group of “developed” nation estates in the search for globalized control based on their own imposed views of global affairs.

Evaluations: For this reason, this article allows us to see the distance between idealistic missions and actual purposes of highly criticized international organizations, many of which have been losing their capacity of evoking trust in our global populations. Additionally, the intent to centralize the undergoings of decentralized blockchains contradicts their original mission and purpose. It mentions the need to regulate to avoid the misuse of blockchains by illegal and terrorist organizations, again, Maupin does not identify or question the generalization made by such perceptions, nor the historical use of criminalization of opposed social movements seeking to access power and representation.

Key Words: G20, centralizing regulations for decentralized blockchains, positivist economy.