Helder Miguel Correia Virtuoso Sebasti�ã, o N.A., Paulo José Osório Rupino da Cunha, Pedro Manuel Cortes�ã · 5 authors
This paper presents an overview of the main developments of cryptocurrencies and discusses their future perspectives. First, it briefly reviews the history of cryptocurrencies since the creation of Bitcoin, presents the main market trends, and discusses the key features of cryptocurrencies in the context of blockchain. Second, it analyses current cryptocurrency projects, like the Libra project, and other applications of the blockchain technology. Third, it presents a systematic economics and financial literature review on cryptocurrencies. Fourth, it examines the challenges, benefits, and future perspectives of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, with a focus on the environmental issues and central bank digital currencies.
Hyeong Joon Kim, Hye Hyeon Kim, Hosuk Ku, Kyung Don Yoo · 11 authors
BACKGROUND The Health Avatar Platform provides a mobile health environment with interconnected patient Avatars, physician apps, and intelligent agents (termed IoA 3 ) for data privacy and participatory medicine; however, its fully decentralized architecture has come at the expense of decentralized data management and data provenance. OBJECTIVE The introduction of blockchain and smart contract technologies to the legacy Health Avatar Platform with a clinical metadata registry remarkably strengthens decentralized health data integrity and immutable transaction traceability at the corresponding data-element level in a privacy-preserving fashion. A crypto-economy ecosystem was built to facilitate secure and traceable exchanges of sensitive health data. METHODS The Health Avatar Platform decentralizes patient data in appropriate locations (ie, on patients’ smartphones and on physicians’ smart devices). We implemented an Ethereum-based hash chain for all transactions and smart contract–based processes to guarantee decentralized data integrity and to generate block data containing transaction metadata on-chain. Parameters of all types of data communications were enumerated and incorporated into 3 smart contracts, in this case, a health data transaction manager, a transaction status manager, and an application programming interface transaction manager. The actual decentralized health data are managed in an off-chain manner on appropriate smart devices and authenticated by hashed metadata on-chain. RESULTS Metadata of each data transaction are captured in a Health Avatar Platform blockchain node by the smart contracts. We provide workflow diagrams each of the 3 use cases of data push (from a physician app or an intelligent agents to a patient Avatar), data pull (request to a patient Avatar by other entities), and data backup transactions. Each transaction can be finely managed at the corresponding data-element level rather than at the resource or document levels. Hash-chained metadata support data element–level verification of data integrity in subsequent transactions. Smart contracts can incentivize transactions for data sharing and intelligent digital health care services. CONCLUSIONS Health Avatar Platform and interconnected patient Avatars, physician apps, and intelligent agents provide a decentralized blockchain ecosystem for health data that enables trusted and finely tuned data sharing and facilitates health value-creating transactions with smart contracts.
Existing studies on blockchain within land administration have focused mainly on replacing or complementing the technology for land registration and titling. This study explores the potential of using blockchain technology to enhance the transparency of all land administration processes using an integrative review methodology coupled with a framework analysis. This study draws on the Ghanaian land administration perspective to make this insightful. It appears possible to apply a permissionless public blockchain across all land administration processes. This integrates all departments, processes, and stakeholders of land administration to enhance openness, improve availability and accessibility to information, and foster participation for transparency simultaneously. This can change the transparency variation in land administration to be more equal and homogenous regardless of land type. This, however, depends on the standardization of processes across the divisions, as well as negotiation and consensus amongst all stakeholders, especially with chiefs. Limitations include: limited storage and scalability, as well as huge electricity consumption for operation. This study’s policy implications are a review of all paper-based land transactions, a comprehensive digitization of land administration processes, public–private partnership on blockchain-based land administration, and professionals and stakeholder education on the technology.
Ludwig Trotter, Mike Harding, Peter Shaw, Nigel Davies · 9 authors
Recent work has questioned the largely unconditional nature of charitable donations and explored the value of conditional giving with contemporary donors. In this paper, we extend this work by exploring how to operationalise features of conditionality in charitable giving, situated in the context of large international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Building on prior engagements with international aid organisations, we present design considerations and a conceptual architecture supporting real-time, conditional giving for individual and institutional donations. Our architecture leverages properties of distributed-ledger technologies (DLT) to empower donors to (i) attach conditions to their donation, (ii) store funds in a secure, decentralised escrow and (iii) automatically release funds once conditions are met. Unlike prior work that envisions radical disintermediation and the removal of intermediate NGOs using DLT, our work recognises the expertise of NGOs in tackling complex global problems and instead investigates compelling new way for charities to increase transparency and accountability by introducing dynamic pledge controls.
As the most popular blockchain that supports smart contracts, there are already more than 296 thousand kinds of cryptocurrencies built on Ethereum. However, not all cryptocurrencies can be controlled by users. For example, some money is permanently locked in wallets' accounts due to attacks. In this paper, we conduct the first systematic investigation on locked cryptocurrencies in Ethereum. In particular, we define three categories of accounts with locked cryptocurrencies and develop a novel tool named CLUE to discover them. Results show that there are more than 216 million dollars value of cryptocurrencies locked in Ethereum. We also analyze the reasons (i.e., attacks/behaviors) why cryptocurrencies are locked. Because the locked cryptocurrencies can never be controlled by users, avoid interacting with the accounts discovered by CLUE and repeating the same mistakes again can help users to save money.
In this commentary, we argue that studies similar to Cennamo, Marchesi, and Meyer (2020) should distinguish four dimensions of control in blockchain governance, all of which could be more or less decentralized. For some of these dimensions, decentralization is likely beneficial, while for others centralization may be preferable. Cennamo et al. (2020) provide evidence that the initial design stages of blockchain systems benefit from centralization. Future research is needed to provide empirical insights for other dimensions of control in blockchain governance.
Zusammenfassung Blockchain verspricht, Intermediäre wie Banken überflüssig zu machen und durch dezentrale Peer-to-Peer-Netzwerke zu ersetzen. Dieser Beitrag stellt die Frage nach der Realisierbarkeit dieser Ankündigung sowie danach, welche gesellschaftlichen Implikationen damit verbunden sind. Eine historisch informierte theoretische Analyse zeigt, dass die Erzeugung von Kreditgeld durch Banken ein für kapitalistische Gesellschaften existenzieller Vorgang ist. Die Fiktion des Geldwerts bedarf ihrerseits glaubwürdiger Intermediäre, die dauerhaft in der Lage sind, die zeitliche und räumliche Stabilität des Geldes zu inszenieren. Explorative Interviews mit Akteuren im Finanzsektor in Kombination mit einer inhaltsanalytischen Auswertung von einschlägigen Blogs, White Papers und Artikeln der Wirtschaftspresse lassen vermuten, dass Blockchain Intermediäre keineswegs ausschaltet, sondern diejenigen mächtiger werden lässt, die in der Lage sind, die Technologie ihren Bedürfnissen entsprechend umzugestalten.
Jaydeep Deshpande, M.M. Shankare Gowda, Manish Dixit, M S Khubbar · 6 authors
Hundreds of public procurement projects are undertaken every day all over the country. The tenders for these projects are given to the winning contractor in an auction-like setting which have massive security issues. After a contractor wins a tender, the specifics of the progress of the work done are rarely properly monitored. The details of the finances spent on the project can be easily manipulated. To enable integrity, non-repudiation and immutability to the data requires the desirable technology to support the above requirements. Hence, the proposed system uses blockchain technology to provide transparency and trust to all parties involved in the network. The entire system consists of two modules such as the Tender Bidding system and Tender Monitoring system using a multi-organization blockchain network in the Hyperledger Fabric. The whole bidding process is improved by creating a decentralized descending auction system that will carry it out fairly and transparently. The Tender Monitoring system employs a custom endorsement policy to attain 100% consensus for attesting every transaction made regarding the progress of the project so that vital steps are ratified and recorded with evidence supporting their integrity. The main aspects of the system, its many components, deployment and drawbacks are viewed.
This perspective proposes that, by virtue of its sophisticated trust and consensus finding mechanisms, blockchain has the clear potential to substantially upgrade the processes and organization traditionally underpinning academic science and commercial technology development comprising funding, project delivery, generation of intellectual property, documentation and publication. For supporting this hypothesis, striking analogies between the concepts underlying blockchain technology with research are identified, and applied to the generation of verified knowledge in science and technology development. It is then elaborated how a blockchain-enabled token economy can efficiently and transparently incentivize and coordinate an integrative and community-inclusive participatory approach to fuel crowdsourcing of collective intelligence for contributing ideas, work, infrastructure, funding, data, validation, management, assessment, governance, arbitration and exploitation of projects. Quality, credibility and direction of projects are optimized by demanding collateral “skin-in-the-game” from contributors based on blockchain-enabled staking, reputation systems and prediction markets. This way research progress emerges as a chain of community generated and independently vetted blocks of scientific knowledge; these new blocks are concatenated with the state-of-the-art according to transparent consensus mechanisms.
The combination of smart contracts with blockchain technology enables the authentication of the contract and limits the risks of non-compliance. In principle, smart contracts can be processed more efficiently compared to traditional paper-based contracts. However, current smart contracts have very limited capabilities with respect to normative representations, making them too distant from actual contracts. In order to reduce this gap, the paper presents an architectural analysis to see the role of computational artifacts in terms of various ex-ante and ex-post enforcement mechanisms. The proposed framework is assessed using scenarios concerning data-sharing operations bound by legal requirements from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and data-sharing agreements.
Bitcoin is an emerging digital asset and is getting more attention in the media as of writing. Though, despite the regulatory matters, this paper is more concerned with the factors that influence the behavioral intention to use Bitcoin by the Malaysian. Although there are some recent studies on the intention and acceptance of Bitcoin, yet there is limited evidence from Malaysia. Therefore, this study intends on shedding some light on the current stance of the Malaysians on Bitcoin by examining the factors that affect the behavioral intention to use Bitcoin in Malaysia grounded on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. The data was collected using an online self-administered questionnaire through the relevant local Malaysian forums and local cryptocurrency groups. The result shows that performance expectancy has the greatest influence on the users’ behavioral intention to use Bitcoin, followed by other factors such as social influence and facilitating conditions. Additional analysis of variance and moderation analyses show no significant difference in the mean of the behavioral intention between different demographic characteristics, and the interactions of the demographic characteristics and the UTAUT factors also demonstrate an insignificant effect on the behavioral intention to use Bitcoin. The result suggests that the behavioral intention to use Bitcoin by the Malaysian may increase if the use of Bitcoin can provide convenience to the public and businesses, but it is also influenced by the social and facilitating conditions. The result well reflects the main function of Bitcoin, that is as a currency and also as an investment tool. The finding echoes the effort and policies of the government of Malaysia to find an equilibrium between the use and the abuse of digital currencies as a currency, as well as the risks and returns of digital currencies as an investment tool.
Virtual currency is a type of unregulated digital currency that is only available in electronic formThe term came into existence around 2012, when the European Central Bank (ECB) defined virtual currency to classify types of "digital money in an unregulated environment, issued and controlled by its developers and used as a payment method among members of a specific virtual community". The legality of Virtual Currency varies from country to country. Since Virtual Currency has little to no supervision from a third party jurisdiction such as a Central Bank, which is the case for regular currencies, it has not ruled in favour of many governments organisations. One of the main reasons why financial regulators are choosing not to accept Virtual Currency as a mode of transaction in their countries is because it poses certain unique threats such as terrorism funding, threat to market integrity, severe lack of consumer and investor protection, etc. which may damage financial stability.("Cryptocurrency and security", n.d.). The United States of America allows the trade of Virtual Currency, only under strict supervision and regulation by The Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The European Union has not granted Virtual Currencies the legal status of currency, nor money. It depends on the status of digital assets in the EU or a member state("list of countries where Bitcoin/ICO/Cryptocurrency is legal & Illegal", 2019). In India, The Reserve Bank of India has completely banned the usage of virtual currencies, both directly and indirectly, by the entities regulated by the RBI. However, this ruling was challenged by The Internet and Mobile Association of India, due to which the end result reflects no clarity on the aspect of cross border virtual currency trading.(NEWS & News, 2019). Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency in a digital medium of exchange. It was launched in 2009 by an individual or group, who refer to themselves as Satoshi Nakamoto. It was created in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis as a way for people to control their money without relying on any company, bank or government, owing to a newfound lack of trust.("The Evolution of Cryptocurrency", n.d.). Bitcoin was the first Cryptocurrency which was created in the year 2009.Bitcoin makes up 63.8% of crypto's market value. Cryptocurrency uses cryptography which is a method to encrypt and decrypt financial data to secure communications in the presence of third-parties with ill intentions.There are currently 5,201 cryptoassets.The crypto market has a total market capitalization of over $155 billion ("Crypto in Numbers: 50+ Cryptocurrency Statistics and Facts | Finivi", 2020). Security is one of the major concerns for cryptography users and investors. While cryptographers claim that each unit of currency is encrypted with the help of highly advanced coding to ensure safety, there is no denying that there have been numerous attempts in the past wherein hackers have hacked digital wallets of investors, and partaken in crimes such as phishing, supply chain hacking, and scamming, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars. In the first quarter of 2019, the amount of losses due to hackers in the virtual currency system amounted to USD 1.2 billion, further stimulating the already existing fear of virtual currency amongst the general public. In terms of legality, in 2020, the Supreme Court of India has lifted its initial ban on cryptocurrency, thereby rendering it with a legal status in India. Cryptocurrency had been banned in 2018, and after two years of Indian enthusiasts fighting in favour of Cryptocurrencies, their case against the RBI was finally won, and the Supreme Court of India passed a judgement declaring that the trading of Cryptocurrency would now be legal in India. Despite its variations in legality, there is no denying that Cryptocurrency is fast growing in terms of popularity, with a current market evaluation of USD 1.05 billion, with a projected growth to USD 1.40 billion by 2024. This study addresses the volatility of cryptocurrency. The market itself is unpredictable in nature owing to the fact that any relatively small transaction would impact the whole currency. While this results in consumers hesitating to invest in cryptocurrencies, speculative traders, on the other hand, depend on the volatile nature of cryptocurrency to invest big, and earn bigger profits, even while risking major losses at the same time.
With technology brazenly breaching through society’s barriers in countless diverse fields, the 21st century has revolutionized many age-old industries. One of the largest areas within society influenced by the progress of technology are the fields of finances, economy, and investment, coupled with the aspect of social influence. With this shift in society parallel to the advancement of contemporary technologies, thus becoming increasingly reliant on the tools made available, the complex yet traditional world of finance has pivoted, becoming contingent upon the use of cutting-edge technologies. This critical shift has introduced the world of Fintech, providing many innovative fiscal opportunities. The coined term, Fintech, is a general term referring to products as services for fiscal activities developed by entities unrelated to banks, insurance firms, nor online companies, providing alternatives to the traditional options available to the general public. (Gulamhuseinwala, Bull and Lewis, 2015). Resultantly of this Fintech trend, one of the largest and most promising fields of contemporary investment is recognized as that of Cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin and Ethereum being the most recognized and heavily traded currencies. Many positive traits can be used to define the novelty of this new economy, with one of the main aspects being its peer to peer (P2P) nature of its trading process. However, beyond the tremendous advancements visible within the process of Cryptocurrency production and trade, one of the most important aspects is the influencers upon the valuation of the different currencies. Similarly to the progression of the economy which has transported the financial world to a digital economy, so has the social world, advancing discourse regarding many topics to the online environment. Thus, it is critical to analyze and assess the nature of online discourse regarding Cryptocurrencies. Explicitly, the chatter preceding to sharp rises and falls with Bitcoin and Ethereum, the most recognizable coins. Additionally, it is imperative to appraise the trends in the behavior and quantity of online discourse prior to a significant drop in Ethereum & Bitcoin.Within the online arena, there are countless different outlets and platforms for people to express themselves in general, or more importantly in this instance regarding the topic of Cryptocurrencies. By using platforms that are designated for discussion regarding financial topics or general social media platforms, the public is provided a critical platform utilized by countless individuals, many of whom are increasingly involved with the aforementioned topics. These platforms stipulate a stage for these individuals, who have become critical by voicing their opinions, thoughts, and experiences. Many of these influencers are sought after for their knowledge, specifically influencing the behavior of others. However, it is critical to evaluate the importance of additional aspects beyond the superficial such as who are the influencers, rather elements such as the content or nature of what is being discussed. Resultantly to trends of content, nature, and volume of what is being discussed in the online arena., people’s behavior regarding investments, specifically within Cryptocurrencies, are very possibly subjected to the influence of others, leading to rises and falls in coin valuation.
Blockchain technology has a wide scope of applicability for accounting and auditing purposes, separate from Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. However, although blockchain technology is identified as a popular topic within the field, there currently exists a lack of consensus on how it will be realistically applied. This paper aims to map the presently existing international auditing literature and offer clarity to an otherwise heterogeneous field. The mapping analysis will aid in examining the underlying theme employed within studies. Through the use of the Bibliometrix R-Package "Biblioshiny", a sample of 112 studies were downloaded from the Web of Science Core Collection and analyzed. This study's results show that the topic has gained increased international popularity and separated into distinct research streams; Encrypted Private and Secure Information Sharing, Distributed Ledger, Smart Contracts, Continuous Audit, Audit Trail and Tokenization. However, there still exists a research gap that must be addressed to hasten the adoption of blockchain technology in auditing.
Vladimir Yussupov, Ghareeb Falazi, Uwe Breitenbücher, Frank Leymann
Although historically the term serverless was also used in the context of peer-to-peer systems, it is more frequently associated with the architectural style for developing cloud-native applications. From the developer's perspective, serverless architectures allow reducing management efforts since applications are composed using provider-managed components, e.g., Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) offerings. Blockchains are distributed systems designed to enable collaborative scenarios involving multiple untrusted parties. It seems that the decentralized peer-to-peer nature of blockchains makes it interesting to consider them in serverless architectures, since resource allocation and management tasks are not required to be performed by users. Moreover, considering their useful properties of ensuring transaction's immutability and facilitating accountable interactions, blockchains might enhance the overall guarantees and capabilities of serverless architectures. Therefore, in this work, we analyze how the blockchain technology and smart contracts fit into the serverless picture and derive a set of scenarios in which they act as different component types in serverless architectures. Furthermore, we formulate the implementation requirements that have to be fulfilled to successfully use blockchains and smart contracts in these scenarios. Finally, we investigate which existing technologies enable these scenarios, and analyze their readiness and suitability to fulfill the formulated requirements.
Health protection has always been a primary concern for mankind. Despite its important social role, current systems for managing the health records are slow, complicated, sometimes expensive and exposed to human errors and misunderstandings. In the health sector, the Medicalchain project seems to have the potential to become a new standard for managing health records using blockchain technology as a platform. In this paper, we propose a new model consisting of a permissioned blockchain to manage and store the electronic health records (EHR) of registered patients. This system guarantees transparency and especially immutability, which are essential for secure management and storage, ensuring a system that is efficient both for doctors and patients and, hopefully, bringing about renewed trust in the public health system. Our aim is that our work may contribute to gain momentum on the application of the blockchain technology to EHR and stimulate further discussion with health institutions to fully exploit the potential of the technology.
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are one of the major innovations that characterize the digital revolution of financial markets. Among the expectations created by the digital revolution is the democratization of entrepreneurial finance, defined in terms of the creation of more equality regarding the access to financial resources by categories known to be underrepresented among potential entrepreneurs. Following this line of research, we investigate, through two complementary empirical studies, whether gender, ethnicity, and geography affect the choice of ICOs vs. traditional financing alternatives. Additionally, we assess whether these characteristics increase the amount of money an entrepreneur can raise. In Study I, we compare 390 ICO ventures to a sample of 1,078 VC-backed blockchain ventures, identifying a negative correlation between the choice of an ICO (vs. VC-backing) and a location in an urban area. In Study II, we compare 160 ICO ventures to 163 real estate investment trusts (REITs), reaffirming the results of Study I. The findings show significant participation and likelihood of successful campaigns for ethnical minorities in ICOs, with the latter also being able to collect, ceteris paribus, larger amounts of funding. In contrast, female entrepreneurs do not have higher chances to participate nor raise funds in ICOs.
Milla Sepliana Setyowati, Niken sila De Utami, Arfah Habib Saragih, Adang Hendrawan
The utilization of new technology in the form of blockchain technology for a Value Added Tax (VAT) acceptance system is relatively new and has not been widely encountered thus far. This research analyzes how blockchain technology can be applied to a VAT system, particularly for electronic invoices (e-Invoice). A qualitative approach was used in this study to analyze blockchain technology models that could be applied in a VAT system. The results of this study indicate that due to its characteristics, blockchain technology can only be applied to taxpayer data that do not require privacy. Data that are considered safe if distributed to nodes in the blockchain technology network include the Tax Invoice Serial Number (TISN). A TISN system based on blockchain technology will produce a faster and more efficient system. Transactions on the TISN in Indonesia can also be monitored and tracked directly by the Directorate General of Taxation (DGT). Blockchain technology can be applied in the TISN system by using a permissioned private blockchain type.
A Chatbot is a popular platform to enable users to interact with a software or website to gather information or execute actions in an automated fashion. In recent years, chatbots are being used for executing financial transactions, however, there are a number of security issues, such as secure authentication, data integrity, system availability and transparency, that must be carefully handled for their wide-scale adoption. Recently, the blockchain technology, with a number of security advantages, has emerged as one of the foundational technologies with the potential to disrupt a number of application domains, particularly in the financial sector. In this paper, we forward the idea of integrating a chatbot with blockchain technology in the view to improve the security issues in financial chatbots. More specifically, we present BONIK, a blockchain empowered chatbot for financial transactions, and discuss its architecture and design choices. Furthermore, we explore the developed Proof-of-Concept (PoC), evaluate its performance, analyse how different security and privacy issues are mitigated using BONIK.
The development of information technology encourages technological growth in the financial sector, namely cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies created by private parties still have many shortcomings in terms of security. So it needs an important role from the competent institution. In addition, during the Covid 19 pandemic, cash was considered a medium for spreading the virus. So one of the reasons China started releasing its own digital money was under the strict control of the People's Bank of China. Indonesia is the country with the highest number of positive indications for Covid-19 in Southeast Asia, especially in Jakarta. Therefore, this study examines the planning behavior of the people of DKI Jakarta to adopt cryptocurrency as a transaction tool, using the theory of planning behavior (TPB). 207 research samples were analyzed using covariance-based SEM method with the SmartPLS 2.0 tool. The results showed that only attitudes significantly affect individual intentions to use digital money. Meanwhile, subjective norms and behavioral control do not significantly affect individual intentions to adopt cryptocurrency
Blockchain can reduce bureaucracy and increase the efficiency and performance of administrative processes through a platform possessing features and attributes such as storing and exchanging electronic messages in a decentralized environment and executing high level of security transactions and transparency, if used in government public service delivery. Many scholars believe that this distributed technology can bring new utilizations to a variety of industries and fields, including finance and banking, economics, supply chain, and authentication and increase economic productivity and efficiency dramatically by transforming many industries in the context of today's economy. The present study, presents the characteristics of the localized blockchain and e-currency conceptual model for the evolution of e-government services. It also examines the impact of the blockchain and e-currency model on the economy and electronic financial transactions as a viable, practical and constructive solution (rather than blocking and filtering of e-currency and blockchain). Ultimately designing a localized block chain and e-currency model, has played an effective role in exploit its high potential to speed up the administrative processes and reduce costs related to electronic transactions and payments in e-government and increase e-government revenues and ultimately it can speed up the customer service delivery and increase their satisfaction with the government.
Abstract We study the fundamental differences that separate: Litecoin; Bitcoin Gold; Bitcoin Cash; Ethereum; and Zcash from Bitcoin, and draw some analysis to how these features are appreciated by the market, to ultimately make an inference as to how future successful cryptocurrencies may be invented and behave. We use Google Trend data, as well as price, volume and market capitalization data sourced from coinmarketcap.com to support this analysis. We find that Litecoin’s shorter block times offer benefits in commerce, but drawbacks in the mining process through orphaned blocks. Zcash holds a niche use for anonymous transactions, benefitting areas of the world lacking in economic freedom. Bitcoin Cash suffers from centralization in the mining process, while the greater decentralization of Bitcoin Gold has generally left it to stagnate. Ether’s greater functionality offers the greatest threat to Bitcoin’s dominance in the market. A coin that incorporates several of these features can be technically better than Bitcoin, but the first-to-market advantage of Bitcoin should keep its dominant position in the market.
Kim P. Huynh, Christopher S. Henry, Gradon Nicholls, Mitchell Nicholson
The Bank of Canada commissioned the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey in 2016 to monitor trends in the adoption and use of Bitcoin and other cryptoassets. This report presents findings from the latest iteration of the survey, which was conducted in 2018. We find that between 2016 and 2018 the share of Canadians who were aware of Bitcoin increased from 62 percent to 89 percent and those that owned Bitcoin increased from 3 percent to 5 percent. However, the share of past owners also increased, suggesting an influx of Bitcoin owners who subsequently divested after the steep rise of prices in 2017. The main reason for owning Bitcoin remains speculation, though this share decreased slightly since 2017. On the other hand, the share of Canadians who reported using Bitcoin for transactions a few times a month or more increased. Finally, we discuss how Bitcoin adopters differ from overall Canadians with respect to their financial literacy and cash holdings.
Ayman Esmat, Martijn de Vos, Yashar Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Peter Pálenský · 5 authors
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading, which allows energy consumers/producers to directly trade with each other, is one of the new paradigms driven by the decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization of the energy supply chain. Additionally, the rise of blockchain technology suggests unprecedented socio-economic benefits for energy systems, especially when coupled with P2P energy trading. Despite such future prospects in energy systems, three key challenges might hinder the full integration of P2P energy trading and blockchain. First, it is quite complicated to design a decentralized P2P market that keeps a fair balance between economic efficiency and information privacy. Secondly, with the proliferation of storage devices, new P2P market designs are needed to account for their inter-temporal dependencies. Thirdly, a practical implementation of blockchain technology for P2P trading is required, which can facilitate efficient trading in a secured and fraud-resilient way, while eliminating any intermediaries’ costs. In this paper, we develop a new decentralized P2P energy trading platform to address all the aforementioned challenges. Our platform consists of two key layers: market and blockchain. The market layer features a parallel and short-term pool-structured auction and is cleared using a novel decentralized Ant-Colony Optimization method. This market arrangement guarantees a near-optimally efficient market solution, preserves players’ privacy, and allows inter-temporal market products trading. The blockchain layer offers a high level of automation, security, and fast real-time settlements through smart contract implementation. Finally, using real-world data, we simulate the functionality of the platform regarding energy trading, market clearing, smart contract operations, and blockchain-based settlements.