Bitcoin, the first per-to-peer based cryptocurrency, has gained attention globally since its inception. The currency has experienced an exponential increment in its market capitalization over the years, highlighting the growing investors interest in the decentralized currency. However, despite its leading position compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Etheruem and XRP, the number of studies conducted previously to identify the determinants of Bitcoin prices is scare. Additionally, studies with a focus on the drivers of Bitcoin prices in the Indian macroeconomic environment are few. With this backdrop, the presented study is aimed at empirically analysing the determinants of Bitcoin prices in the India for a period 156 weeks spanning 2017-2019 using VECM. The empirical findings indicate that Bitcoin supply, gold prices, money supply, and Bitcoin trade volume significantly impact the Bitcoin prices to remove the deviations from its equilibrium price.
Mahmuod Lafee Obeedan Khalaf and Thamer Ali Alnwairan
Several major developments have occurred in the world in the field of information technology. That led to the occurrence of several changes in political, social and economic areas of life. The most prominent changes are the ones that occurred in economic areas. Such changes include: the development of virtual currencies. The most prominent virtual currency is Bitcoin. There has been a debate about the use of virtual currencies among contemporary economists and the ones specialized on Fiqh3. Some people support the use of virtual currencies, whereas others are against using them. The present study aims at identifying the meaning of (virtual currencies). It aims to identify the stand of Islamic economy on the use of virtual currencies. There is a need to identify these things due to the increasing use and prevalence of such currencies. Its expected that virtual currency shall become number one currency in the future. It was found that the use of virtual currencies is associated with several risks and suspicious issues which may negatively affect individuals and countries. Therefore, such currencies mustnt be sold, bought, or exchanged until providing clear mechanisms for controlling their use.
Recently, cryptocurrencies have drawn considerable attention from investors around the world. Such digital assets have also raised numerous hot issues in academic fields. Among them, Bitcoin is the most well-known and most notorious. After it was created in 2009, Bitcoin kept rising in price and reached its peak in late 2017. After that, it plunged dramatically. Coincidentally, Bitcoin futures also launched in December 2017. We are curious about the role Bitcoin futures play in the Bitcoin market. In this study, we investigate the relationship between Bitcoin and Bitcoin futures. First, we compare the optimal hedge ratios using three different hedge strategies, the na?ve hedge, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method, and dynamic hedging with the bivariate BEKK-GJR-GARCH model. Dynamic hedging is the most effective of the three methods; the level of risk reduction is around 59%. Then we test whether the volatility of Bitcoin would be significantly different before and after Bitcoin futures (BTC) launched. Our results support the hypothesis.
Investors tend to sell their winning investments and hold onto their losers. This phenomenon, known as the \\emph{disposition effect} in the field of behavioural finance, is well-known and its prevalence has been shown in a number of existing markets. But what about new atypical markets like cryptocurrencies? Do investors act as irrationally as in traditional markets? One might suspect this and hypothesise that cryptocurrency sells occur more frequently in positive market conditions and less frequently in negative market conditions. However, there is still no empirical evidence to support this. In this paper, we expand on existing research and empirically investigate the prevalence of the disposition effect in Bitcoin by testing this hypothesis. Our results show that investors are indeed subject to the disposition effect, tending to sell their winning positions too soon and holding on to their losing position for too long. This effect is very prominently evident from the boom and bust year 2017 onwards, confirmed via most of the applied technical indicators. In this study, we show that Bitcoin traders act just as irrationally as traders in other, more established markets.
Classified protection is one of primary security policies of information system in many countries. With the increasing popularity of blockchain in various fields of applications, it is extremely necessary to promote classified protection for blockchain's risk assessment in order to push forward the sustainable development of blockchain. Taking the Level 3 in Chinese classified protection 2.0 as an example, this paper proposes the common evaluation rules on blockchain to ensure that blockchain can meet the needs of countries to build it as critical infrastructure. Both assessment requirements and enforcement proposals are presented and analyzed from the standpoint of blockchain's core technologies, e.g., peer-to-peer network, distributed ledger, contract's scripting system, and consensus mechanism. Moreover, the assessment results on three main platforms, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger, are summarized and analyzed in compliance with the control points specified in the level 3. Our investigation indicates that the current blockchain is able to satisfy the requirements of evaluation items in many aspects, such as software fault tolerance, resource control, backup and recovery, but further improvements are still needed for some aspects, including security audit, access control, identification and authentication, data integrity, etc., in order to satisfy the requirements of important fields on national security, economic development and human life.
The article addresses the prospects of using distributed ledger technologies – blockchain and artificial intelligence – for the purpose of systematizing the rights to the results of intellectual activity for their subsequent commercialization. The authors describe the key characteristics of the distributed ledger technology and review various legal problems pertaining to the use of blockchain technologies. The authors draw conclusions regarding the prospects of using blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies as measures for rapid prevention and elimination of intellectual rights violations. They also express their views on the process of commercializing intellectual property and reducing the number of conflicts related to the inclusion of intellectual property objects into distributed ledger systems. The article was prepared with the financial support of the Ministry of Higher Education and Science of the Russian Federation within the framework of the research “Scientific and methodological support for the development of theoretical and applied legal structures (models) of accounting and disposal of rights to the results of intellectual activity (technology transfer)
Fintech in simple terms is leveraging technology to deliver banking and financial solutions to individual and enterprise customers. This is one of the fastest-growing sectors in both developed & developing countries with India amongst the top three fintech startups globally. Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, AI, Data Analytics, Machine learning, Big data, Robotics, and Cloud are some of the top technologies leveraged by fintech firms to deliver products. Domestic & global broadband connectivity setup by telecom service providers made available basic infrastructure needed for fintech growth. One of the early fintech innovations was the installation of the first ATM by Barclays Bank in 1967. Post global financial crisis in 2008, many ex-employees of financial firms came up with innovative fintech products. The objective of this paper is to identify globally emerging fintech trends. The Qualitative research methodology was used relying on a review of literature, discussion with the professionals and researchers. The emerging trends include IMF focus on leveraging fintech for cross border payments using distributed ledger technology, Augmented reality for customer satisfaction, Digital insurance, Digital invoicing, Crowd-funding, Crowd investing, Robotics investment advisory, Future relationships between Banks and Fintech firms, Central bank regulatory role. It also came out that although there are many research papers on fintech globally, however, there is not much research work carried out on fintech in India and there is an opportunity for further research on innovation and growth of fintech in India.
Modern energy grids are rapidly evolving into complex cyber-physical systems. Decentralisation of energy resources, shift away from the current traditional centralised model of power supply, the widespread introduction of new information technologies requires the creation of a safe, efficient and reliable cyber infrastructure that can ensure the proper level of confidentiality and automation of the processes of buying and selling electricity. The growing popularity of Blockchain distributed ledger technology can solve these challenges. The technology provides for distributed computing, a secure environment for interaction between network members and reliable storage of information. Blockchain ensures that each network member isa supplier of energy, rather than only a consumer, and organises a “digital” environment for this. At the same time, energy will be sold directly between the members, with no middleman, using smart meters and adaptive algorithms for reciprocal payment that interact in real time. In 2017, Blockchain was rated by top executives as a key breakthrough digital technology for the next five years. According to the Deloitte 2019 poll, 53 % companies called Blockchain a “strategical priority” technology, a 10 % rise y.o.y. At the same time, projects that have entered the market and received financing over the past two years are more complex and industrially spesific. Among the leading countries are USA, Germany and the UK. Half of the Blockchain projects in the electric power industry are registered in five states: USA (50 projects), Germany (22 projects), Great Britain (15 projects), Australia (13 projects) and Japan (13 projects). At the same time, Russia accounted for only 4 projects.
Nowadays, we frequently encounter the term of “digital assets†within the financial market’s terminology and media. As this native asset class is maturing, the uncertainty with regards to the underlying value, remains. The cause is clearly the agitated history that transcended the space of cryptocurrencies, which during its evolving stages, created confusion and misconceptions with regards to the purpose and viability of digital asset classes across various industries. In order to understand the real potential of digital assets and its underlying technology, it is important to clearly assess and classify this novel assets class, outlining the benefits for all financial actors and institutions, before projecting the future of finance around Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). This paper will focus on the evolution of financial digital assets and the impact Financial Technology played in the adoption of novel financial services as a new emerging asset class within the Alternative Investment Spectrum.
Mohammad Wazid, Ashok Kumar Das, Sachin Shetty, Minho Jo
The Internet of Intelligent Things (IoIT) communication environment can be utilized in various types of applications (for example, intelligent battlefields, smart healthcare systems, the industrial internet, home automation, and many more). Communications that happen in such environments can have different types of security and privacy issues, which can be resolved through the utilization of blockchain. In this paper, we propose a tutorial that aims in desiging a generalized blockchain-based secure authentication key management scheme for the IoIT environment. Moreover, some issues with using blockchain for a communication environment are discussed as future research directions. The details of different types of blockchain are also provided. Some of the widely-accepted consensus algorithms are then discussed. Next, we discuss different types of applications in blockchain-based IoIT communication environments. The details of the associated system models are provided, such as, the network and attack models for the blockchain-based IoIT communication environment, which are helpful in designing a security protocol for such an environment. A practical demonstration of the proposed generalized scheme is provided in order to measure the impact of the scheme on the performance of the essential parameters. Finally, some of the future research challenges in the blockchain-based IoIT communication environment are highlighted, which will also be helpful to the researchers.
Vangelis Malamas, Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou, Thomas K. Dasaklis, Mike Burmester
The health care ecosystem involves various interconnected stakeholders with different, and sometimes conflicting security and privacy needs. Sharing medical data, sometimes generated by remote medical devices, is a challenging task. Although several solutions exist in the literature covering functional requirements such as interoperability and scalability, as well as security & privacy requirements such as fine-grained access control and data privacy, balancing between them is not a trivial task as off-the-shelf solutions do not exist. On one hand, centralized cloud architectures provide scalability and interoperable access, but make strong trust assumptions. On the other, decentralized blockchain based solutions favor data privacy and independent trust management, but typically do not support dynamic changes of the underlying trust domains. To cover this gap, in this paper, we present a novel hierarchical multi expressive blockchain architecture. At the top layer, a proxy blockchain enables independently managed trust authorities to interoperate. End-users from different health care domains, such as hospitals or device manufacturers are able to access and securely exchange medical data, provided that a commonly agreed domain-wise access policy is enforced. At the bottom layer, one or more domain blockchains allow each domain (e.g. a hospital or device manufacturer) to enforce their policy and allow fine-grained access control with attribute-based encryption. This architecture is designed to provide the autonomous management of trusted medical data/devices and the transactions of mutually untrusted stakeholders, as well as an inherent forensics mechanism tailored for granular auditing. Smart contracts are used to enforce decentralized policies. Ciphertext-policy attribute based encryption (CP-ABE) is used to distribute the decryption process among end users and the system, as well as support an efficient credential revocation mechanism. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed architecture through a proof of concept implementation. Finally we analyse the major security and performance characteristics.
Blockchain is expected to have a transformational effect on supply chain and logistics due to its promise to improve the information flow between the supply chain partners. However, despite their high hopes, incumbent companies from supply chain and logistics are still struggling to deliver on this promise. In this explorative, qualitative interview study, we identify how incumbent companies try to make use of Blockchain in supply chain and logistics and we also analyze the barriers hampering them. The analysis of twenty-four semi-structured expert interviews and extensive secondary data collates a comprehensive picture of incumbent companies' activities around Blockchain adoption. We find that companies use Blockchain to drive digital transformation, constitute new business models and unify the industry through consortia. The main barriers to such solutions are a lack of technological usability and long-term uncertainties. The results of our study provide evidence for theoretical constructs and guide managerial practice.
To ensure safety and security of imported goods, customs authorities perform risk assessment on incoming goods. European customs use declaration data provided by traders to execute risk analysis. Lacking availability of this data to customs authorities currently hinders proper risk management and poses threats for the European socio-economy. To solve this issue, this research analysed how Blockchain, an emerging and promising technology, could solve the issue at hand. Using a design-oriented approach, the process to be supported was analysed, the requirements were elicited, and the core blockchain components were identified. This was instrumental to develop a blockchain-based platform to support the availability of declarations data to customs authorities. The feasibility of the designed platform was evaluated through a comparison with TradeLens, an existing supply chain platform underpinned by blockchain technology, and possible implementation issues were identified by using a blockchain governance framework. The platform design contributes to the import control system implementation and research on blockchain technology. The next step is the development of a Proof-of-concept to analyse whether the designed platform supports the process at stake.
H. R. Navneeth Vittal, Deeksha Raj, B. B. V. L. Deepak, Neela Neela · 5 authors
An Unmanned-Automated Guided Vehicle (U-AGV) is a wheel based computer controlled system that runs inside an industrial environment and operates without human intervention while in contact with the ground. It helps in transportation of raw materials and final products to different distribution units. Many industries like automotive, chemical, manufacturing etc. has a setup to move heavy and hazardous materials by employing human resources and manual vehicles. This process consumes time in turn increasing the expenditure of the entire product and also human life is at stake. The present work is an attempt to overcome these disadvantages by developing the proof of concept of AGV that can be deployed in material handling systems. An articulated robotic arm is used to shift materials and for testing the sample using a framework known as ROS. An automatic test facility is developed for demonstration of an industrial environment. Automatic sample tester will determine the parameters from the samples provided by the AGV. An application is developed to determine the position of the robot with respect to the stations and also battery percentage of the robot.
Vladimir P. Kamyshansky, Garmshev, M. A., Anna S. Shekhovtsova, Екатерина Анатольевна Новикова · 5 authors
The authors examined the concept and signs of a smart contract through a comparative legal analysis of the legislation of Russia, Belarus, the EU and the USA. The key characteristics of a smart contract as a contract, its types, ways of development and improvement are highlighted and substantiated, the examples of smart contracts from the practice of these countries are given, problematic aspects of legal regulation in this sphere are identified
Abstract Initial coin offerings (ICOs) represent a novel funding mechanism where digital tokens are issued on the blockchain and sold to investors. One major reason for the success of this financing model is the fact that the issued tokens can immediately be traded on secondary markets. This event study analyzes 250 exchange cross-listings of 135 different tokens issued through ICOs on 22 cryptocurrency exchanges. We find significant abnormal returns of 6.51% on the listing day and 9.97% over a seven-day window around the event. Further analysis shows that the results clearly differ for individual cryptocurrency exchanges, as listings on individual exchanges yield returns of up to 34% on the event day, while others are negligible. An investigation of liquidity-related metrics shows that lower prior trading volume and asset market capitalization have positive effect on listing returns. Investors use phases of high market liquidity to sell off positions around the period of cross-listing events. The results on the cross-listing effects of ICOs may be of relevance to investors/traders, ICO projects, cryptocurrency exchanges and regulators.
We examine the price discovery contributions of cryptocurrency exchanges in the presence of market microstructure noise. Cryptocurrency markets exhibit a decisively higher level of microstructure noise compared to the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. Therefore, traditional measures of price discovery are potentially biased. To overcome this concern, we draw on the information leadership share (ILS) proposed by Putninš [2013, J.Emp.Fin]. Based on the ILS, we find that Bitfinex is the leader in the price discovery process. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for different levels of noise when evaluating price discovery contributions
Cybercrime, including cryptocurrency-related cybercrime, has become widespread in recent years. Despite a thorough study of cybercrime issues, there is still no legislative position on the legal regulation of cryptocurrencies and the responsibility for cryptocurrency-related cybercrime in Ukraine. The authors classify and characterize all cryptocurrency-related cybercrimes into five groups. In view of the spread of cryptocurrency-related cybercrimes, the EU’s counteraction measures have been analyzed. Ways to prevent and counteract to cryptocurrency-related cybercrimes in Ukraine are suggested.
Open access
Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies
Ukrainian Legal and Forensic Studies
Legal, Health, Environmental and COVID-19 Challenges
Cryptocurrencies (e.g., Bitcoin and Ethereum), which promise to become the future of money transactions, are mainly implemented with blockchain technology. However, blockchain suffers from scalability issues. Sharding is the leading solution for blockchain scalability. Sharding splits the blockchain network into sub-chains called shards/committees. Each shard processes a sub-set of transactions, rather than the entire network processing all transactions. This raises security issues for sharding-based blockchain protocols. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology to analyze the security of these protocols (e.g., OmniLedger and RapidChain). In particular, this methodology estimates the failure probability of one sharding round taking into consideration the failure probabilities of all shards. To illustrate the effectiveness of the estimated failure probability, we conduct a numerical analysis of our methodology based on a huge number of trials. Finally, we compute confidence intervals to accurately estimate the failure probability and compare our methodology with existing approaches.