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Prashant Jha
Dec 20, 2019
by Prashant Jha

CoinMarketCap is Being Used By The US Government

CoinMarketCap

Table of contents

  2. The Growing Association Of Government Agencies and Private Analytical Firms
A recent report from the Department of Justice revealed that the US government is using the famous cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinMarketCap to evaluate the value of seized cryptocurrencies. CoinMarketCap is the leading data aggregator for cryptocurrencies which offers real-time price, volume, market capitalization for thousands of cryptocurrencies, and also rank them based on their overall market cap. The platform also ranks crypto exchanges whose parameters were recently changed; earlier, the trading volume was used to rank them while now it has been changed to real-time liquidity.

The report makes a note of the list of tools used by the authorities, including CoinMarketCap. It is under the section, "Audit of the Assets Forfeiture Fund and Seized Asset Deposit Fund Annual Financial Statements Fiscal Year 2019." On the thirty-third page of the report under the heading of  "Financial Instruments," CoinMarketCap is mentioned as an example of "Web-based valuation tools".

The report does not give insight into whether the US government uses other similar web-based data tools, and to what extent these tools are used for. The Department of Justice did not respond to the queries whether the government was using other similar tools. The use of publically available web tools by the authorities is nothing new as they have been actively taking in the help of private blockchain monitoring and analytical tools to keep up with the evolving technology.

The Growing Association Of Government Agencies and Private Analytical Firms

Cryptocurrencies being an emerging tech has come a long way, from governments planning to ban them to today outright when feds are taking in input from the same websites and tools which are used by a majority of the crypto community. Earlier, these agencies were taking data from blockchain and crypto surveillance tools to track the use of digital currencies for illicit activities.

Looking at the growing demand for digital currencies across the world and the regulatory issues surrounding it, the association of blockchain and crypto centred analytical firms and government agencies will grow further.

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CoinMarketCap is Being Used By The US Government
Prashant Jha
An engineering graduate, Prashant focuses on UK and Indian markets. As a crypto-journalist, his interests lie in blockchain technology adoption across emerging economies.

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