Data protection is about protecting information about per-sons, which is currently flowing without much control –individuals can-not easily exercise the rights granted by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Individuals benefit from “free” services offered by companies in exchange of their data, but these companies keep their users’ data in “silos” that impede transparency on their use and possibilities of easy interactions. The introduction of the GDPR warrants control rights to individuals and the free portability of personal data from one entity to another. However it is still beyond the individual’s capability to perceive whether their data is managed in compliance with GDPR. To this regard, in this work the proposed approach consists in using decentralized mechanisms to provide transparency through distributed ledgers, data flow governance by using smart contracts and interoperability relying on semantic web technologies.
This Note defends the social value produced by well-regulated prediction markets, then offers a novel approach for liability analysis in the context of markets formed using blockchain technology. After establishing the weaknesses of individual predictions and the benefits that forecasting tools can offer, Section I introduces prediction markets and explains how they generate valuable information. Section II then describes blockchain technology and the properties that make it so effective in the realm of prediction markets. Section III focuses on the regulatory environment surrounding prediction markets and considers the unique complications presented by distributed ledgers. Finally, Section IV depicts frameworks of liability analysis developed in intellectual property common law and proposes a novel application of these principals as applied to blockchain prediction markets.
Seung Min Kim, Tacklim Lee, Seunghwan Kim, Lee Won Park · 5 authors
The Smart Grid has emerged to address the shortcomings of one-way existing grid systems, and is the next generation power grid infrastructure that applies smart ICT (Information Communication Technology) to existing grid. The Smart Grid is expected to greatly improve the efficiency and reliability of future power systems with the demand for renewable energy resources. However, because major power facilities are interconnected through communication networks, Smart Grid’s cyber security is becoming an important issue. Cyber-attacks by malicious intruders can lead to serious incidents such as massive outages and the destruction of power network infrastructure, since the cyber-attacks can damage energy data, starting with personal information leakage from grid members. Therefore, as a solution to this issue we will suggest a secure smart energy management system based on the blockchain. The blockchain is a distributed data processing technology in which all users participating in the network distribute and store data. Applying blockchain technology to the Smart Grid will enable more secure management of energy data, and furthermore, it will contribute to the development of the future smart energy industry in the future.
In the last few years, blockchain technologies have come to the forefront of the research and industrial communities as they bring potential benefits for many industries. Even though the blockchain is a safe, reliable, and innovative mechanism, current blockchain solutions have fatal drawbacks of non-supervision and huge computational overhead. Therefore, they cannot be directly applied for real world operations. To resolve this problem, a novel model is presented in this study where the key idea is to split the transactions among multiple shards while processing them in parallel. To achieve the maximum system efficiency through the shard mechanism, we focus on the cooperative game theory. Based on the egalitarian bargaining solution, total transactions per each time period are divided for each shard. According to the proportional bargaining solution, assigned transactions in each individual shard are validated by blockchain nodes in a distributed manner. The main advantage of our two-phase bargaining game model is to provide an axiom-based strategic solution for the shard-based consensus problem while dynamically responding to the current blockchain network conditions. The numerical simulation results show that the effectiveness and efficiency of our game based approach by comparing the existing state-of-the-art blockchain control schemes. In the conclusion, we present our conclusions and provide important future research directions based on the combination of blockchain with other technologies.
FinTech and blockchain: directions of development of digital economy: The paper looks at the selected issues connected with the digital economy, namely innovations such as FinTech and blockchain, as a possible direction of its development. First, the author discusses FinTech, a technology that aims to compete with traditional methods of delivery of financial services. Next, he raises the question of blockchain that records and maintains transactions made in cryptocurrency in a peer-to-peer network. The relevant definitions, key areas, regulatory framework, benefits and challenges related to both innovations are also presented.
In this work we investigate new computational properties that can be achieved by combining stateless trusted devices with public ledgers. We consider a hybrid paradigm in which a client-side device (such as a co-processor or trusted enclave) performs secure computation, while interacting with a public ledger via a possibly malicious host computer. We explore both the constructive and potentially destructive implications of such systems. We first show that this combination allows for the construction of stateful interactive functionalities (including general computation) even when the device has no persistent storage; this allows us to build sophisticated applications using inexpensive trusted hardware or even pure cryptographic obfuscation techniques. We further show how to use this paradigm to achieve censorship-resistant communication with a network, even when network communications are mediated by a potentially malicious host. Finally we describe a number of practical applications that can be achieved today. These include the synchronization of private smart contracts; rate limited mandatory logging; strong encrypted backups from weak passwords; enforcing fairness in multi-party computation; and destructive applications such as autonomous ransomware, which allows for payments without an online party.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
User Authentication and Security Systems
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Донецький національний університет імені Василя Стуса, Maya M. Savchenko, В.О. Короленко, Донецький національний університет імені Василя Стуса · 6 authors
The article explores innovations in the monetary sphere, namely the emergence of a modern form of money - digital currency. Forms of this currency, such as electronic and virtual money, are defined. The dynamics of development of the first and the most expensive cryptocurrency now - Bitcoin is analyzed. The general state of the cryptocurrency usage in the world is indicated. The advantages and disadvantages of using digital currency are also highlighted. The Top-10 cryptocurrencies in the world for 2019 are highlighted with the largest market capitalization of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple. The dependence of the economic development level of the country and the degree of cryptocurrency implementation is revealed. The world legislative experience in the field of regulation of the cryptocurrency is researched. The possibility of its application in the Ukrainian legislation by the cryptocurrency legalization and minimization of risks in the process of use are studied. Prospects for the spread and further development of cryptocurrencies in Ukraine and in the world are considered. It is noted that providing the improvement of monetary technology, its proper regulation and improvement of infrastructure, this financial instrument will occupy an important place in people's daily life.
Zuzana Rakovská – Masaryk University, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Lipova 41a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ITEMA.2019.241 3rd International Scientific Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology, Tourism, Economics, Management and Agriculture – ITEMA 2019 – Bratislava, Slovakia, October 24, 2019, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS published by the Association of Economists and Managers […]
Bitcoin has emerged to become the most popular cryptocurrency and its presence\nhas the potential to disrupt existing payment and monetary systems. Over the past\ndecade, the bitcoin price has exhibited extreme volatility, puzzling for both academics\nand market practitioners. We examine the dynamic relationship between\ninvestor attention and the bitcoin price using principal component analysis and vector\nerror correction models and discover that investor attention is an important contributor\nin bitcoin price formation. Variance decomposition analysis suggests that\ninvestor attention explain a significant amount of future variations in the bitcoin\nprice, and investor attention can be used to predict direction of future price change.\nOur study offers insight into the bitcoin market and the economic impact of investor\nattention.
"Decentralization and Democratization" is the main promise behind the distributed ledger technology that attracted enthusiasts looking for ways to prop our ailing global socio-economic system. Not surprisingly its best known application "Bitcoin" comes as the "panacea" against the worst offender in the neoliberal order, the Financial Industry. Trends, fads and myths about blockchain technology fuel the imagination allowing for proliferation of hypes and disappointment. This paper offers a discussion of possible blockchain applications for polycentric governance of socio-economic systems in light of building sustainability and resilience. On the opposite side I will analyze the possibility for misuse (e.g. the Internet of Things) of the technology to build ever stronger centralized control system lacking adaptive capacity and leading to total collapse.
Companies can satisfy their customers’ by delivering high value. They can do so by reducing product costs or by improving customers perception of benefits of the products. Blockchain can help achieve these goals.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the main problems deriving from cryptocurrencies in the field of taxation.First, the paper will give a glimpse at the key features of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.Secondly, the paper will deal with the definition of this phenomenon and it will focus on the difficulties faced by different Institutions and entities, at European and International level, to provide a convincing and homogeneous definition of cryptocurrencies.The paper will provide a comparative overview of some different definitions to give an idea of how difficult it is to identify what cryptocurrencies are.Finding out the correct definition is not important as such, but it represents the first step to understand how to tax revenue deriving from cryptocurrencies.In fact, various economically relevant activities are involved in the world of cryptocurrencies, such as mining or exchanging, and such activities need to be taxed.In this scenario, the current legislative framework is not up to date and obsolete and requires robust amendments.How should revenue deriving from cryptocurrencies be taxed?An answer has been given by the Italian Tax Administration, which has issued two responses, following the judgment of the ECJ which, however, do not seem to be conclusive.In fact, the Italian Tax Code does not set forth any provisions regarding cryptocurrencies and the Tax Administration had to interpret the existing provisions.In addition, the paper will explore the approach of a Notice issued by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS Notice 2014-21, March 25, 2014) and the one adopted by the Virtual Currency Tax Reform Act, which is supposed to give a definitive solution to the problem of taxation in the US.In conclusion, the paper will pose some questions regarding the ability of the tax systems to deal with issues related to cryptocurrencies.
The purpose of this thesis is to learn if it’s possible to gain higher risk-adjusted profits than buy-and-hold -strategy on intraday bitcoin markets using moving averages or trading range breakout. Data used is price notations of bitcoin with 1-minute interval from 2017 to 2019. \n \nThere were many strategies that statistically significantly outperformed buy-and-hold -strategy even when trading fees were reduced. Different methods such as stop-loss and bands were able to significantly reduce volatility of returns. However, same trading rules don’t work well in different market conditions. Results from the train-set and test-set differed largely and were therefore not valid. Also, none of the strategies were able to outperform CCi30 cryptocurrency index when fees were reduced. \n \nTherefore, while some support was found to conclude that outperforming the index is possible, more data and research would be needed to validate these results.
We propose a design for securing novelty of archived content in distributed ledgers, called <em>Proof of Novelty</em>. What constitutes as novel is decided through a consensus mechanism together with a similarity function, which is selected according to the content type (e.g. full-motion videos, textual documents). Scalability is guaranteed by forming a validation committee with cryptographic sortition, which use statistical hypothesis testing to decide on the probability of a content being novel or not. The system can trade-off computational with statistical performance by manipulating parameters. We discuss the usage of this design to secure the novelty of full-motion videos and end with a proposal of future lines of research that can extend the systems capabilities.
Open access
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Blockchain has a broad development potential and application prospects. At present, huge storage volume on each node has become one of the primary bottlenecks that restrict the expansibility of blockchain. Optimization for storage mechanism has become a necessary way to accelerate the improvement of blockchain. There are a variety of solutions to relieve the storage burden by modifying the architecture of blockchain, but most of them weaken the decentralization property of the system, which is the core advantages of the blockchain. In this paper, an optimization scheme based on the redundant residual number system is proposed to dramatically reduce the storage volume of nodes in the blockchain system, and fault tolerance mechanism is designed based on the new storage scheme. The simulation experiments are performed to prove the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.