Inca Digital Tasked With Aiding Government Understanding of Cryptocurrency

Inca Digital Federal has received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to aid the government in understanding and visualizing how digital assets can affect national security. Under the Mapping the Impact of Digital Financial Assets project, the company is tasked with creating a cryptocurrency ecosystem mapping tool to analyze financial data and risk.

The mapping tool is intended to enable the federal government and commercial entities to learn how digital asset firms and nondigital asset entities interact, identify how cryptocurrency and traditional financial systems impact each other and elucidate how the blockchain aids money laundering, terrorist financing, and evasion of sanctions, among several other applications, Inca said Friday.

According to CEO Adam Zarazinski, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies need better tools to leverage their authority over global digital asset markets, which are open to abuse and manipulation by criminals and state actors.

Earlier in September, the White House set out to establish guidelines for crypto policy development, consolidating reports from agencies such as the departments of the Treasury, Commerce and Justice. Some steps outlined in the framework include enforcement against illegal practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Department of Energy was tasked with investigating how crypto mining affects the environment.