This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.
While the risks and benefits of AI in government are taking center stage at the White House and on Capitol Hill, another tech industry has been working behind the scenes to help make the government work better: crypto.
Numerous scandals have tainted the reputation of the crypto industry, but some lawmakers still see the potential for blockchain technology to improve the provision of government services. Lawmakers who are interested in modernizing government and reducing the size of the administrative state should not ignore blockchain and should push the passage of simple pieces of legislation promoting the deployment of blockchain technologies in government.
In the simplest terms, a blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that records information across many computers in a way that ensures the data cannot be retroactively altered. Blockchains are best known for underpinning cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, but its applications are far more extensive. The decentralized and cryptographic nature of a blockchain makes it highly secure and transparent, as altering any single record would require the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the consensus of the network majority.
