Since the world’s first virtual currency was issued on the Bitcoin blockchain network in 2009, there has been a proliferation of various other private digital token offerings on blockchain networks—in particular, on the Ethereum blockchain. Milkau and Bott (2018) report that several governments are considering implementing digital currencies as a “complement to cash.” Blockchain technology holds great promise for innovative applications capable of facilitating any number of business operations, and several large companies including IBM, American Express, Toyota, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Walt Disney, Oracle, and Facebook have already invested heavily in the emerging technology. Crowdfunding is also a popular application of blockchain technology. Tech entrepreneurs have issued digital tokens for virtual currency as a means of circumventing the tedious regulations of the SEC governing the raising of capital. The regulatory status of these digital tokens and their associated trading platforms has been approached with a certain degree of ambiguity and controversy. This paper explores and explains the regulatory issues of fintech regarding digital tokens, making a valuable addition to the scarce literature on this topic.
Smart contract technology is reshaping conventional industry and business processes. Being embedded in blockchains, smart contracts enable the contractual terms of an agreement to be enforced automatically without the intervention of a trusted third party. As a result, smart contracts can cut down administration and save services costs, improve the efficiency of business processes and reduce the risks. Although smart contracts are promising to drive the new wave of innovation in business processes, there are a number of challenges to be tackled.This paper presents a survey on smart contracts. We first introduce blockchains and smart contracts. We then present the challenges in smart contracts as well as recent technical advances. We also compare typical smart contract platforms and give a categorization of smart contract applications along with some representative examples.
Smart contracts and blockchain technology have the potential to change tremendously the contractual practices. Together with the development of blockchain-based technology, many well-known companies and other private or public entities such as governments take advantage of smart contracts. On the one hand, there are costs connected with the programming and coding of smart contracts, or training those administering them, on the other hand, however, it seems to be true that smart contracts will bring greater certainty and extra cost saving for those who apply them in their business dealings. During recent years, rapid technological development has resulted in plenty of changes in the way how financial services are conducted. Blockchain technology is predicted to disrupt the current environment of business dealings by enabling the unprecedented ways to cooperate and communicate between the parties of the contract.
Canada has a stable financial system with large national banks that integrate fintech internally to improve operations, products and service. Because of the size and stability of its major banks, Canada has been criticized as lagging globally in consumer fintech adoption rates and fostering new fintech market entrants. The supervisory frameworks for non-bank fintech firms in Canada has some agency fragmentation costs, which can serve as a barrier to entry for new firms. The following report outlines the law of fintech, as it applies in Canada, including the regulatory frameworks for fintech money (e-money, virtual currency and electronic payments); fintech financings (initial coin offerings, peer to peer lending and invoice trading); and fintech financial services (smart contract investing, robo-advisors, algorithmic trading and market automation, artificial intelligence, decentralized autonomous organizations, and crypto hedge funds).
Smart Sukuk structure is the new generation of Sukuk issuances structures. It uses Blockchain technology to allow more investors in both retail and corporate sectors to participate in Sukuk issuances. Through this technology, all financial institutions can issue their Sukuk. All types of documents and information related to the issuance of Sukuk are kept with the issuer's chains and the chains of the Central Registration Institution. Limited research was conducted on the transactions of smart Sukuk structures, such as Sukuk issuance model, traded Sukuk transactions and committed transactions market, from the Sharia compliance perspective and its financing benefits. This paper presents an in-depth study of the AAOIFI Standards, the decisions of Islamic Jurisprudence Academies and Sharia Boards, that related the Sukuk structures, applied in the Islamic bank of the paper's study society and the transactions of smart contracts from Sharia compliance perspective. On the other hand, this paper presents how to apply proposed smart Sukuk structures models that use Blockchain technology and smart contracts, within the largest Islamic bank in Turkey, in order to find out its financing benefits. The research findings indicate that from the Sharia perspective there are some issues in some applicable Sukuk models, such as the issue of capital guarantees. The use of Blockchain technology in smart Sukuk structures reflects several benefits on the financing markets, as it gives more capacity to access to more investors and markets, faster processing capability, transparency, invariance, and low transaction cost.
Gianluca Miscione, Tobias Goerke, Stefan Klein, Gerhard Schwabe · 5 authors
Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible applications. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian agenda rejecting organizations, its developments have illustrated that this ideological framing is being reversed in practice. Based on contrastive empirical cases, the purpose of our paper is to discuss blockchain as an organizational technology. Its peculiar mode of governance, which we name ‘Hanseatic’, needs to mediate between the fluidity typical of Free and Open Source Software development and the immutability that use organizations adopt blockchain for.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the electronic markets hypothesis offered a prediction about effect of information technology on industrial organisation, and many business writers forecast significant changes to the shape and nature of the firm. However, these changes did not come to pass. This paper provides an economic analysis of why, using the transaction cost economic framework of Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson. Non-hierarchical corporate organisation struggled against contracting problems in the presence of possible opportunistic behaviour. Technologies of trust offer an institutional mechanism that acts on the margin of trust, suppressing opportunism. The paper concludes that blockchain technology provides an economic infrastructure for the coordination of economic activity and the possible realisation of the electronic markets hypothesis.
As a tool for human technological advancement, the peer-review system acts as a gateway for ensuring academic paper qualities. However, the system has proven to be slow and expensive. Also, biasedness remains an unsolved problem. Such issues could become a major bottleneck, which can adversely impact research progress and dissemination of knowledge. This paper aims to propose a double-blind paper review system to preserve the authors and reviewers anonymity. This system also addresses issues concerning the reviewers payment, inconsistent review metrics, and biased reviews. The proposed solution utilizes the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The blockchain smart contracts provide a base for financial transactions between paper publishers and the reviewers. Hence, we introduce AcadCoin, a novel cryptocurrency used for supporting said financial transactions. Also, the Hyperledger blockchain provides user access control to achieve double-blindness in reviews. Along with the Hyperledger blockchain, the IPFS is used to store the paper documents, review documents and open metrics documents to reduce the storage requirement of the blockchain. A broad system architecture is constructed to combine the blockchain and the file storage system. This system architecture distributes nodes of the system to related parties. Finally, the blockchain network is implemented and tested using the Hyperledger Composer Playground environment.
Sana Sabah Sabry, Nada Mahdi Kaittan, Israa Majeed
As the Bitcoin keeps increasing in value compared to other cryptocurrencies, more attention has been given to Blockchain Technology (BT) which is the infrastructure behind the Bitcoin, especially on its role in addressing the problems of the classical centralized system. As a digital currency, Bitcoin is dependent on the decentralized cryptographic tools and peer-to-peer system. The digital currency implements a distributed ledger using Blockchain when verifying any type of transaction. In this paper, the aim is to describe how digital currency networks such as Bitcoin provides a “trust-less” platform for users to embark on money transfers without necessarily depending on any central trusted establishments such as payment services or financial institutions. Furthermore, this work comprehensively overviewed the basic principle that underly BT, such as transaction, consensus algorithms, and hashing. This study also provided a novel classification for blockchain types according to their system architecture and consensus strategy. For each type, our contribution was provided with an example which clearly describes the blockchain features and the transaction steps. Our classification intended to help researchers understand and choose the blockchain for their application. The paper ends with the discussion of the differences between each type
M. Ruslianoor Maika, Fidiana Fidiana, Irwan Alnarus Kautsar
Cryptocurrency is predicted to have a bright future as a new form of \nmoney becomes more popular. This research analyses the \npotential disruption of cryptocurrency from an Islamic perspective. \nHowever, this promising Islamic cryptocurrency has shifted from \nnon-asset backed to physical asset- backed of cryptocurrencies. We \nproposed design implementation the most straightforward way of the \ntransaction with cashless wireless payments using one device \nthrough Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) of blockchain \ntechnology. We use digital currency with underlying asset Dinar and \nDirham for a commercial transaction. However, the disruption of \ncryptocurrencies may adapt Dinar and Dirham tokenization in \nexchanging services in the conversion of fiat money into \ncryptocurrency that complies with Islamic. Except comply with \nIslam, it also needs a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) as a party who \nguarantees the existence of assets. It concludes that the \nintermediation function of third parties such a bank will be disrupted \nin the profound shift of digital money based on Islamic \ncryptocurrency
This paper proposes to analyze the agent behavior by means of big data extracted from the search engine « Google trends » and Twitter API to visualize the emotions and the manner of thinking about « Bitcoin » in the Islamic context. Two kinds of sentiment measures are constructed. The first is based on the search query of the word « Bitcoin » with religious connotation all over the world from 14/04/2017 to 14/04/2018 in weekly frequency. The second is built on twitter data from 03/04/2018 to 13/04/2018, by using a Bayesian machine learning device exploiting deep natural language processing modules to assign emotions and sentiment orientations. In the next step, the Granger causality analysis is used to investigate the hypothesis that this sentiment causes the volatility and the returns of « Bitcoin ». The results show that, at a first-level that twitter users of the word « Islamic Bitcoin » improve positive sentiment. Secondly, the Twitter sentiment measure has a significant effect on lagged Bitcoin returns and volatility. Furthermore, this sentimental variable Granger causes Bitcoin returns and volatility. This study contributes to the literature by studying the influence of the doctrinal view towards Bitcoin on his prices dynamics. Knowing that Bitcoin is a new financial asset and there is a large debate on his compliance with shariah
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the operational and regulatory positions of the employment of Blockchain in the insurance industry. Blockchain technology has attracted wide interest from various stakeholders. Many theorists are predicting that this technology will disrupt financial services, including insurance. As stated that the development of blockchain is dependent on regulatory acceptance of this technology, it is essential to establish the current state of play with regard to the application and use of blockchain from a commercial and regulatory standpoints. Design/methodology/approach This review encompasses a number of approaches to view the current status of Blockchain applications. From a commercial approach, this research lists the current applications of blockchain within the insurance industry. From a regulatory point of view, the current positions of the EU and national regulatory bodies are enquired upon to establish how they are examining FinTech and Blockchain technologies within their regulatory processes. Findings This review illustrates a number of Blockchain applications in situ from a commercial point of view. From a regulatory setting and following a call from international and EU levels, it appears that various regulatory bodies have begun the process of formulating testing processes for FinTech applications. There are two predominant types in operation, while others are forming points of contact for advice for FinTechs and a small amount who have not begun the process at all. Research limitations/implications This review illustrates the current state of play of blockchain in insurance from a commercial and regulatory point of view. While this has been observational, this review pulls together information from various sources to encapsulate the regulatory positioning of evaluating FinTech and Blockchain technologies for academia, regulatory and industry audiences. Originality/value This review offers a central resource of information with regard to the current state of blockchain technologies in operation and regulatory approaches to this and other FinTech developments.
Blockchain is currently one of the most important topics in both the academia and industry world, mainly due to the effects that the continuing development of this new technology embraces. The adoption of this technology by FinTech companies constitutes the next step towards the expansion of blockchain and its sustainability. Search results in smart contracts by FinTech companies have shown a deep focus in challenges such as security, scalability, legal and regulatory, privacy or latency, with proposed solutions still to be far from being effective.
Bert-Jan Butijn, Damian A. Tamburri, Willem‐Jan van den Heuvel
Blockchain technology has gained tremendous popularity both in practice and academia. The goal of this article is to develop a coherent overview of the state of the art in blockchain technology, using a systematic(i.e.,protocol-based, replicable), multivocal (i.e., featuring both white and grey literature alike) literature review, to (1) define blockchain technology (2) elaborate on its architecture options and (3) trade-offs, as well as understanding (4) the current applications and challenges, as evident from the state of the art. We derive a systematic definition of blockchain technology, based on a formal concept analysis. Further on, we flesh out an overview of blockchain technology elaborated by means of Grounded-Theory.
Abstract We study the interplay between social ties and financial transactions made through a recent cryptocurrency called $\breve {G}1$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>Ğ</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math> . It has the particularity of combining the usual transaction record with a reliable network of identified users. This gives the opportunity to observe exactly who sent money to whom over a social network. This social network is a key piece of this cryptocurrency, which therefore puts much effort in ensuring that nodes correspond to unique, well identified, real living human users, linked together only if they met at least once in real world. Using this data, we study how social ties impact the structure of transactions and conversely. We show that users make transactions almost exclusively with people they are connected with in the social network. Instead, they tend to build social connections with people they will never make transactions with.
Assistant Professor, SLRTCE Mumbai (Maharashtra), India., Neha Jain
Data security is the key to the development of modern internet technology. By allowing digital information to be distributed but not copied, blockchain technology created the backbone of a new type of internet. It allows storage of all transactions into immutable records and every record distributed across many participant’s nodes. As there is huge increase in the use cases for blockchain technology, nowadays, the primary issue is to enable secure data sharing, data integrity and authentication. The goal of this study paper is to provide a systematic literature survey exploring the use of blockchain as a base technology for securing financial as well as non-financial applications. The purpose is to identify the whether blockchain technology is capable to provide the desired security solutions in various application. The advantages, challenges and the solution provided by previous research is discussed. The survey was focused on various security issues like Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Authenticity, Accountability, and Reliability. The study shows that the Blockchain technology is prospective for financial and non-financial services since it can provide solutions for majority of security issues. Future research needs to provide the implementations of desired solutions discussed in security challenges of Blockchain technology.
Cryptomonnaies et efficience des marchés Les innovations apportées par les cryptomonnaies et leur technologie sous-jacente, la blockchain, ouvrent de nouvelles voies de recherches en finance. Cette thèse de doctorat est composée de trois essais portant sur les cryptomonnaies et est centrée autour de la notion d’efficience informationnelle des marchés. La première étude vise à expliquer comment la blockchain, développée au sein de communautés informelles, est adoptée et intégrée par les organisations. Cette étude apporte un cadre théorique à la technologie blockchain, cadre qui s’appuie sur les approches contractuelle et cognitive de la théorie des organisations. Grâce à une revue de la littérature illustrée, une analyse à deux dimensions présente les possibles utilisations de la blockchain fondées sur l’accès à l’information pour les participants. L’objectif de la seconde étude est double. Premièrement, elle soulève la problématique de la réelle nature du Bitcoin. Après avoir comparé le Bitcoin aux monnaies, à l’or et aux actions, nous basons notre analyse sur l’hypothèse que les cryptomonnaies peuvent être assimilées aux actions. Deuxièmement, la performance financière (la rentabilité ajustée au risque) du Bitcoin est mesurée en utilisant des modèles traditionnels tels que le MEDAF et le model de Fama-French à trois facteurs. Nous trouvons que l’intégration du Bitcoin dans un portefeuille améliore considérablement sa diversification, tout en apportant des rentabilités ajustées au risque positives et significatives dans le monde, l’Europe et l’Asie-Pacifique. La forte volatilité du Bitcoin ainsi que sa haute performance nous conduisent à analyser le caractère de bulle spéculative des cryptomonnaies, ce qui est l'objet de la troisième étude. Nous analysons cet aspect en utilisant le modèle PSY de Phillips and Shi, 2018. Deuxièmement, nous analysons le plus important pic/éclatement du marché des cryptomonnaies à la fin des années 2017 à l’aide du modèle LPPL (Log Periodic Power Law). Les résultats suggèrent des périodes de bulles avec effet de contagion entre les cryptomonnaies. Les analyses théoriques et empiriques de cette thèse contribuent à la littérature académique sur les cryptomonnaies. Nos résultats sont également importants pour les entreprises et pour les investisseurs qui s’intéressent au potentiel des cryptomonnaies et de la blockchain, ainsi que pour les décideurs politiques responsables de leur régulation.
ABSTRACT: The banking sector has undergone tremendous changes in the past decades. This paper seeks to investigate the future of Kenya banks by using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to mitigate financial risk. A cryptocurrency performs the fundamental function of money, as a medium of exchange. The encryption and decentralization of digital currencies are the most important aspects regarding the applicability of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology in Kenya. Digital money supports individual investors as opposed to a dominant market player or authority. The fact that no single authority controls cryptocurrencies is the heart of its applicability in Kenya. Digital money is a unifying factor for the world markets defined by growing inequality and financial malpractices. The Kenyan banking system may take advantage of the smart contracts to address the myriad risks owed to the economic actions of the private and public parties. Banks can use the digital money to eliminate intermediaries that often constrain the capacity of the individual traders to enter into contracts. Cryptocurrencies operate on a user-to-user basis to enhance flexibility and control by the individual traders. The use of the technology can help the state to reduce the risk of loss owed to inaccurate authentication and valuation of assets. KEYWORDS: cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, financial institutions, market risks, Kenia, banking system
The purpose of the research is to investigate the implementation of blockchains (BCs) and smart contracts (SCs) in smart tourism. BCs and SCs in the context of tourism are underexplored. Data were collected and analysed from relevant secondary sources in extensive desktop research between January and August 2018. The results highlight some implemented examples of BCs and SCs in tourism and few that are still in probation phase. The findings are interesting for tourism policy-makers, professionals, academics and tourism suppliers who are interested in real value added of BCs and SCs in tourism.
Audi Ramadhan, Chandra Indira Septiarani, Faisal Dias, Deden Yoga Pratama
Aplikasi trading cryptocurrency merupakan sebuah aplikasi yang relatif baru yang ditandai dengan munculnya banyak cryptocurrency seperti Bitcoin, Ethereum dan lain sebagainya. Oleh sebab itu, analisis penerimaan teknologi pada aplikasi tersebut sangat penting untuk dikaji lebih dalam. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis dan mengukur penerimaan aplikasi trading cryptocurrency yaitu Indodax Trading Platform dengan menggunakan Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) yang diintegrasikan dengan faktor resiko dan kepercayaan. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kuantitatif asosiatif dengan menggunakan kuesioner untuk mendapatkan data primer. Sampel yang digunakan pada penelitian ini sebesar 134 dengan menggunakan teknil analisis Semi Equation Model – Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS). Hasil dari penelitian ini yaitu adanya pengaruh dari perceived usefulness dan trust terhadap penggunaan aplikasi trading cryptocurrency. Sedangkan resiko dan perceived ease of use tidak berpengaruh terhadap penggunaan aplikasi trading cryptocurrency.
Tim K. Mackey, Neal Shah, Ken Miyachi, James E. Short · 5 authors
Scientific research activity is reaching a staggering growth rate, introducing new and compounding existing challenges regarding the quality of peer-review, rise of predatory journals, and larger issues involving academic integrity and fraud stemming from the increased pressure to publish. Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, is well-suited to address some of the challenges specific to scientific publishing. Companies including ARTiFACTS, Pluto, Orvium, and ScienceMatters-EUREKA, along with academic researchers, are exploring blockchain-based solutions to facilitate research data provenance and workflows, optimize the peer-review process, introduce better incentives, and even create new research journals and platforms utilizing blockchain. Building upon a review of these efforts, we propose a governance framework for scientific publishing based on a consortium blockchain model to create a more efficient means of navigating the publishing process. At the center of this framework is a model that adopts shared governance and validated inclusion via a Democratic Autonomous Organization (DAO). A DAO is an entity wherein the organizational rules are implemented and executed via smart contracts. The DAO will be comprised of participants of validated individuals and organizations who are publishers, editors, peer-reviewers, and citizen scientists to manage and oversee the framework. The framework also maps specifically to the publication workflow of submitting, handling, peer-review, and final editorial decision-making for scientific manuscripts. The goal of this framework is to increase transparency of scientific publishing, create a “pedigree” of a manuscript’s research life cycle, and democratize the publication process while maintaining the accepted workflow common to scientific publishing by journals.
Simón Fernández-Vázquez, Rafael Rosillo, David de la Fuente, Paolo Priore
Blockchain is currently one of the most important topics in both the academia and industry world, mainly due to the possible effects that the continuing application of this new technology could have. The adoption of this technology by FinTech companies constitutes the next step towards the expansion of blockchain and its sustainability. The paper conducts a mapping study on the research topics, limitations, gaps and future trends of blockchain in FinTech companies. A total of 49 papers from a scientific database (Web of Science Core Collection) have been analyzed. The results show a deep focus in challenges such as security, scalability, legal and regulatory, privacy or latency, with proposed solutions still to be far from being effective. A vast majority of the research is focused into finance and banking sector, obviating other industries that could play a crucial role in the further expansion of blockchain. This study can contribute to researchers as a starting point for their investigation, as well as a source for recommendations on future investigation directions regarding blockchain in the FinTech sector.
The rise of blockchain has resulted in discussions on (new) governance models with multiple actors collaborating. Incidents and problems occurred due to flaws in blockchain protocols, smart contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Often it is unclear how decisions are made concerning evolvement of blockchain applications. In this paper, we identify and analyze potential challenges regarding governance of blockchain initiatives in various types of decentralized networks using literature and case study research. The governance challenges are classified based on a framework consisting of different layers (infrastructure, application, company and institution/country) and stages (design, operate, evolve/crisis). The results show that in various stages and layers, different challenges occur. Furthermore, blockchain applications governance and blockchain infrastructure governance were found to be entangled adding to the challenge. Our research shows a specific need for further research into governance models for DAO applications on permissionless blockchains, linked to the products and services offered whereas in permissioned blockchains and other type of applications, existing governance models might often be feasible. For developing new governance models, we recommend learning from the lessons from the open source community.