“Today’s announcement of co‑ordinated international action on cryptoassets is a major step forward, marking another important milestone towards the widespread and co-ordinated approach to combat tax evasion through greater transparency and exchange of information,” Secretary-General Cormann said.

“We strongly welcome the extensive support being shown for quick action to make the international exchange of information collected under the OECD standard on cryptoasset reporting a reality. The international community can count on the OECD and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes to ensure that the tax transparency architecture remains both up-to-date and effective going forward.”

The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is a key component of the International Standards for Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters developed by the OECD under a G20 mandate. It provides for the automatic exchange of tax-relevant information on cryptoassets and comes against the backdrop of a rapid adoption of the use of cryptoassets for a wide range of investment and financial uses.

Project Atlas provides data tailored to the needs of "central banks and financial regulators". It fuses data gathered from "crypto exchanges (off-chain data) with data from public blockchains (on-chain data) gathered from nodes." By connecting various sources, Atlas allows for "data vetting, giving users tools to evaluate these markets' economic significance more accurately."

As part of a first proof of concept, Project Atlas derives cryptoasset flows across geographical locations. The approach uses transactions attributed to crypto exchanges in the Bitcoin network, along with the location of those exchanges, as a proxy for cross-border capital flows.

The initial findings indicate that "although relatively small compared with total on-chain network traffic, identified flows between crypto exchanges are significant and substantial economically. Attributing geographical areas to exchanges (where possible) lays out the structure of cross-border flows. Project Atlas provides a starting point for structural analysis across jurisdictions."

See also: 'Project Atlas - Mapping the world of decentralised finance'.