Bitcoin Forum

I was watching a TED talk the other day that mentioned how Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies could be used as a way to bring transparency to political campaigns, welfare, government/state expenses and other similar areas. We as tax payers will be able to know exactly how much money is allocated for each area and how it is used.

I was thinking also that this could also become the norm for donation centers, foundations and charities.

What do you guys think?

in theory and in practice it is indeed possible.
but getting governments to implement it.. well good luck with that

I think this is one of the most doable ideas really since we are not talking about companies or banks. And it can be just small to start, if I had a little charity I would definitely advertise this as a way to ensure safety and attract more donations. Once the ball starts rolling, this could be copied very fast by others if it works.

The governments (ie the people) want crypto while the rich elites who milk government dry where all against it

and where pulling very hard on the strings of the puppets they had in government, though the growing

strenght of Crypto and the weakening of Fiat has caused the Padagim to have already shifted.

Note: Impending First Cryptoccurency IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange

Well in this case it won't be anonymous of course, that's the point. You would know each "account" and you can see how much it spends, maybe I didn't make myself too clear.

Blockchain ledger is need to kill corruption.

Yes I agree it's a nice way to bring transparency and I would support it all along. The problem is the difficulty of bitcoin usage for the common citizen. Brazil, for example, is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and I doubt this sort of thing would work here in the next 30 years.

This is an awesome idea mate ! This also one of the easiest to realize. If someday at least political parties (States have to keep their expenses secret) could use this sytem could be fantastic. The Libertarian Pary (if something like this exist anywhere on Earth) could be easiest to convince I think :). Communists could be also bringed in the game, so according to them, "everyone could be equal in matter of financial knowledge of the situation of the party". Yeah, that's really a fantastic idea ;) !

Definitely! Well maybe the government in place won't like the sound of it, but an up & coming party can definitely propose it and many people will welcome it in a second! Then all of a sudden it becomes mandatory and the standard way of doing things.

Now, let's get not too carried away, they will most definitely never use Bitcoin itself I guess, but they could use a cryptocurrency tied to the local one for example. The point made is that this is definitely something I can see being used in the real world and solves a problem. Bitcoin in general is a unique technology but there's not much use for the average person that they cannot do with Paypal, Banks or CCs.

Hmm, I think it's a very interesting idea and as far as government spending goes, if the gov't used only a traceable currency there would be no way to fund black ops and such things and it would to some extent put the kabosh on wasteful spending.  I hadn't thought of any of this, as I detest politics, but I'm glad you brought this up as a topic.

I like it!

There is a good and bad side of this.The government will totally oppose this idea.Bitcoin is the best solution to coruption problems.But for it to become a legal currency of any country,government has to approve it.They will approve it but with their own conditions like they will only have their own bitcoin banks or mines or say exchange's.They will introduce corruption in the field.I still prefer bitcoin to be a subjective currency.

Well, Bitcoin transparency is only transparent when you know which Bitcoin address is owned by whoever person or institution. If government identifies the address receiving the money, that is something, but then they will need to identify every single address to which that address sends money too for real transparency, and that would be somewhat complicated.

I would think you'd have an opposite situation? I could post a transaction between two addresses and know one would have any idea how to figure out who they are

I agree it would be complicated, but I have no doubt whatsoever that there are people or government-watch groups who would do it.  There are definitely organizations who would, and there are some people who are so obsessed with government and politics that I'm sure this would be all they do.  Yeah, very neat idea.

Exactly it will be all "open source". Plus it should be very easy to investigate if there is a discrepancy.

Either way, the paradigm shift is that we would all know how much money a certain department or branch has. If there's a payment sent (to hire a cleaning company for example) everyone interested can corroborate it. It won't destroy corruption but at least public funds will be handled in complete transparency.

for independant charity donations yes very possible. infact its already happened
http://bitcoin100.org/charities/
for crowdfunding, again already in the works
https://www.vinumeris.com/lighthouse

but as for government elections.. forget it.

governments like the current postal slip election forms and polling stations for 3 reasons
1) any demograph they dont like.. slips get lost in the mail
2) any demographs they dont like they place the polling stations closer to the demograph they do like and distance it from the bad area's
3) once manually counting the slips.. a few can disapear from one pile and appear in another pile


having a independant voting system where everyone can freely vote without even leaving home without taking more than 2 seconds, does not allow governments t sway demograhs into their favor..

and so i can never see governments implementing such a independant and fully trusted/transparent system

I think it sounds like a great idea, unfortunately trying to get a tool to stop corruption brought into the political arena will face massive hurdles at every turn.  Not to many poloticians are going to want everyone to see where the money goes.................. ;D

you didn't elaborate how bitcoin can prevent corruption and bring transparency.Corruption is any kind of return favor for something and that something can be bitcoin or fiat it doesn't matter

It will make it quite difficult to explain where certain funds came from or where they went. Indeed, it is not really corruption as in taking bribes from companies or something, but it still is corruption if they pay someone to something that is not fully legal for instance.

Bitcoin can play a nice role in it as it would be very easy to audit the money streams.

No. BTC would not change anything, and BTC would not give more information. Most citizens don't bother looking but most countries and big charities have all accounting books open to the general public. I think the most open is the UK. It launched the open government initiative a few years ago, and everyone can check what's going on.

http://www.opengovernment.org.uk/
https://data.gov.uk/

It's very boring to look at, but it's all there if you're willing to take the time to search properly.

it's a good idea, we can track any transaction of goiverment money, so we can look after each use money from the people
but Iam not sure goverment will announcement his address to public, other country also can track how much money was in government, it's very dangerous

Well, to date the only charity entity that has shown via the blockchain that every satoshi has been and is accounted for is the Bitcoin100. As a counter example, it's been a year and a half I've been waiting for The Bitcoin Foundation to show one bitcoin transaction that's extremely relevant to this space.

interesting, where is the link?

is a very smart idea, I think it will work well if it really had the support of all parties, although it requires a process that is not fast, but slowly bitcoin will be entered into the government, hopefully there are countries that started using bitcoin as financial transparency ,

Yes but accounting books are not nearly as transparent as the Bitcoin ledger plus no audit is 100% trustworthy. Every single Bitcoin transaction is accounted for in the Blockchain and can be traced with precision. It is impossible to cheat the system or shift the blame to human error.

government methods are not transparent and not even fast enough . so bitcoin gives government a good compitition and even banks facing the same thread too. we know bitcoin is still not the best ( yes it has many dis advantages and its risky too ) but still it has some points by its side which are better than our government and the banks . we are living in future and soon we will be the most elite gentalmens as soon as bitcoin price reach 2000$

Well, my impression is that Bitcoin can help stop corruption, however if you stick to that permisse you probably are making the wrong use of bitcoin. Bitcoin was devised to give total freedom to the user no matter what his intentions are...

Have no meaning for me this proposal if must be applied for the givers. Everyone who make donation or give money for a foundation or make charities have any kind of obligation to do those. So have no meaning to be controlled. Only thanked. It is another thing the management of this money. There yes, can be place for transparency. Maybe more than in much other areas. Because being money of "no one"; everyone who donate or make similar things rarely is a hard (or even easy) controller of the money that give. They normally give the money pushed by personal convictions to help (and this mean not control because of the nature of this act) or because know the people who manage such activities. This situation make hard for them to ask explanations. And if the money go in wrong hands they vanish before go to the destination. So the proposal made by OP is more than a good one and more than useful. The problem is only one: it is impossible to be fulfilled. Who from them who manage such kind of money would want have such kind of control? Maybe not more than the fingers of our hands. Not enough to be able to impose their will to the remaining people of the same "race".

Yes that is the all essence of the digital currency. To make the running of things better and easier. I am thinking if i really wanted to have a donation to a child who lives on the different continent with me, I will really go through lots of hustle just to have the money reach him or her. The bitcoin when well used will be of great help to us. With the digital currency, we are sure that the accountability factor will be easy since the figures can be extracted and computed when needed unlike today.

i think that is very possible. As we know all transaction is visible for public.

So, everyone know what will our money will be use for what.

That was a little benefit if bitcoin is implemented in government system.

There are some secrets that needs to be protected... paying for intelligence and counter terrorism strategies. Many tenders not related to National security can be made

totally transparent. The problem is, most private companies dealing with governments do not want to publicize this information or even want people to know what their level

of involvement is. You have to be selective, when you apply this strategy to every scenario or event.  ::)

Bitcoin flows over the blockchain which is open ledger and provides maximum transparency to reduce corruption to minimum level.This is very difficult part for any government to let everyone know the spending of their taxed money's usage. Governments has many things to spend on in hidden way.

All governments of the world they have their ways to cover the secret funds even blockchain is transparent.one thing is sure we are moving towards a cashless society and governments have already planned to tackle it for sure.

I had a thought along these lines.  The idea is make it an option to make your tax payments directly to gov depts or organizations you want.  A % of the budget is controlled directly by persons paying taxes and not though your representation.  Bitcoin makes verifying these types of payments possible where checks/credit cards would add too many administration costs.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1265848.msg13078594

i'm sure it will work but only to private organization, it would take a lot of sales talk before you can convince the government to simply say yes to that fact. They want the control and blockchain can never be on their control.
Maybe you'll start on student council/officials as sort of feasibility studies and then results can be shown to the public/online. That will probably be just where to start.

The link is in spanish and doesn't really explain how will it actually work, it was just the idea of how we can keep track of how the state manage its money so I thought it was very interesting. I understand many of you come from countries like the US or western Europe where corruption and bad usage of funds is not as rampant as in my region (South America).

Either way, my idea for the the US would be to implement it in the political campaigns or charities. I know most already make their funds public, but with the blockchain it will be even more easy to control and harder to manipulate or falsify.

Who could check the blockchain to see what's the government is doing?
Does anyone here seriously thinks it's possible?

Do you guys realize that an average country like the UK is doing more than 50 millions transactions each month?
And it's very easy to hide one transaction among thousands others...

The biggest problem is convincing those people to submit their accounts into the blockchain, how are you going to do it unless there is a law that forces them to run all of their money movements transparently throught the blockchain? They will not do it out of good will.

So far bitcoin has achieved quite the opposite. Never has a currency had so high crime rates per total market cap. Volume and percentage of bitcoin transactions that are involved with crime are bigger than any other currency.

Sure, but how could bitcoin bring transparency to political campaigns?

Can you share the link of the TED talk? Thanks.

I'm sure it would be a matter of time until people would figure out a way to launder money using digital currency just like they do with that though it might make it somewhat harder.

It's in spanish and it's mostly an introduction to Bitcoin, he just mentions the idea but doesn't go too deep (well the title is actually "Bitcoin and its threat to corrupt governments").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-h0h2ngdLg

Anonymity has its side effects but if funds are public and known to be in custody of someone then it just becomes more difficult for them to spend it and not declare where they spent it. So in a way it can stop corruption but not crime until it loses anonymity.

I think Bitcoin in particular would be very reasonable and logical to donate in charities, in order to track where the funds are going to, and to see if your funds are being spent how you intended the funds to be spent by the charity.  The problem lies in this fact:

Ex: You want to donate to a charity that feeds starving children in Africa.  You donate funds to the charity and you see it on the blockchain.  Now, the charity can't just use that bitcoin to buy food for the children in Africa, they need to change it into local fiat to be able to buy food.  Now it goes into an exchange so the amount you donated in bitcoin can be changed to fiat.  From there, you have no idea how the funds are being used, and we go back to the same problem before... corruption can still ensue.