Abstract:
This master thesis analyzes the relation between financing using blockchain and
international money laundering. Blockchain has had a serious impact on several fields
of business during the last decade but it mostly affected and threatened finance. The
financial application of blockchain aims to bypass central banks and financial
intermediaries through the introduction of new forms of decentralized capital raising
called, in chronological order, Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Security Token Offering (STO),
and Initial Exchange Offering (IEO).
Further, this thesis wants to investigate if there is a correlation between capital raising
through ICOs/STOs/IEOs and money laundering. To assess that, I created a database
which is used to develop a dataset of 17 variables and to calculate the total
capitalization by country. The dataset aims to find which are the most favourable and
reactive legislations. Instead, the national levels of capitalization are compared with
the national GDPs of the countries considered. It emerged that there is no correlation
between them, and that tax havens and offshore jurisdictions are the most used
locations to launch ICOs/STOs/IEOs. Consequently, I conducted a country-by-country
analysis to assess the reasons.
