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Around 2-6% of World Bank foreign aid got siphoned into crypto wallets

Around 2-6% of World Bank foreign aid got siphoned into crypto wallets

11 hours ago
  • We are grateful to Lin William Cong, Sean Foley, John Griffin, Campbell Harvey, Shiyang Huang, Bjorn Jorgensen, Jonathan Karpoff, Wayne Landsman, Chen Lin, Evgeny Lyandres, Mei Luo, Michael Sockin, Eugene Soltes, Charles C. Y. Wang, Gloria Yu, and Che Zhang for their invaluable feedback on this study. We also thank colleagues at Harvard Business School, the National University of Singapore, Cornell University, the University of Hong Kong, and the School of Management and Economics at Tsinghua University for many insightful comments and suggestions. This study further benefited from extensive discussions at the NUS School of Computing Blockchain Labs, the Cornell Fintech Initiative (DEFT Labs), Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF), Tsinghua University Blockchain Research Institute, Midwest Finance Association (MFA), and Asian Bureau of Economics and Finance Research (ABFER). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.


  • Copy Citation
    Sumit Agarwal, Peiyi Jin, Eswar S. Prasad, and Daniel Rabetti, "Crypto Capture of Foreign Aid," NBER Working Paper 35655 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35655.
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