IMF's Lagarde touts distributed ledger as defence against terror

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, has issued new comments on crypto-currencies and distributed ledger technology, DLT, and said that combating the financing of terrorism increasingly requires harnessing the power of financial technology, fintech.

"Fintech can also help protect financial systems against cyber-terrorism. A good example is the distributed ledger technology that underpins virtual currencies and other applications," Christine Lagarde said in a speech delivered at an annual Financial Action Task Force, FATF, plenary meeting in Valencia, Spain, and posted on the IMF's website.

A distributed ledger (also called shared ledger) is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronised digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institutions. There is no central administrator or centralised data storage.

"Of course, fintech is a double-edged sword. It can be used to promote and fund terrorism, including through the anonymity of virtual currencies. But it can also be a powerful tool to strengthen our defences against the financing of terrorism," Lagarde remarked.

"This technology is less vulnerable to a single point of failure and could prove resilient to cyberattacks because the ledger – or record of transactions – exists in multiple copies," Lagarde said.

Lagarde went on to highlight a new research note the IMF issued this week, in which its researchers discussed topics including central bank-issued digital currencies and initial coin offerings.