We live in an era where Internet is one of the daily needs of human life. People use Internet banking instead of going to banks, they use email rather than postal mail.This leads to a robust digital way of living, but this also means people are trusting middle companies and third parties for their online services. The need of having a digital form of money that is not being controlled by one entity is plain to see. \nBitcoin is the first and the most popular decentralized virtual currency. It is based on cryptographic functions to remove the need of a central bank and regulates the generation of new units. \nIn this thesis, we would like to look at available tools to facilitate users in holding and using Bitcoin by a perspective on usability and security, and then evaluate the possibilities for a small business to accept Bitcoin payments. Our focus is on the usability of these tools and developing a useful framework for comparing and eval- uating future tools. While many security tools have been studied from a usability perspective, our work is the first to look at Bitcoin.
As drivers of human civilization, Knowledge Management (KM) processes have co-evolved in line with General-Purpose-Technologies (GPT), such as writing, printing, and information and communication systems. As evidenced by the recent shift from information scarcity to abundance, GPTs are capable of drastically altering societies due to their game-changing impact on our spheres of work and personal development.<br><br> This paper looks at the prospect of whether a novel Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept supported by a prototype system has got what it takes to grow into a transformative General-Purpose-Technology. Following up on a series of papers, the KM scenario of a decentralizing revolution where individuals and self-organized groups yield more power and autonomy is examined according to a GPT's essential characteristics, including a wide scope for improvement and elaboration (in people's private, professional and societal life), applicability across a broad range of uses in a wide variety of products and processes (in multi-disciplinary educational and work contexts), and strong complementarities with existing or potential new technologies (like organizational KM Systems and a proposed World Heritage of Memes Repository).<br><br> The result portrays the PKM concept as a strong candidate due to its personal, autonomous, bottom-up, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and creativity-supporting approach destined to advance the availability, quantity, and quality of the world extelligence and to allow for a wider sharing and faster diffusion of ideas across current disciplinary and opportunity divides.
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This paper sets out to explore the hedging capabilities of bitcoin by applying the asymmetric GARCH methodology used in investigation of gold. The results show that bitcoin can clearly be used as a hedge against stocks in the Financial Times Stock Exchange Index. Additionally bitcoin can be used as a hedge against the American dollar in the short-term. Bitcoin thereby possess some of the same hedging abilities as gold and can be included in the variety of tools available to market analysts to hedge market specific risk.
It doesn't matter whether its coin, banknotes or even gold the usual currency in circulation in our communities. But have we ever thought of using virtual currency in the real world, with a higher value to that of gold. Bitcoin have caused waves across the globe, it is believed to be the most valuable currency in the future. This article describes the sensation caused by the global virtual currency Bitcoin, the rise resulting in principle and practical instruction on how to get Bitcoin currently in use.
The objective of the article is the accumulation and review of existing regulatory material regarding the decentralization process, namely the implementation of fiscal decentralization, and financial and legal analysis of the current state of local Finance and their legal regulation reform in modern conditions of development of Ukraine taking into account foreign experience. The relevance of the research topics is the need of the modern understanding of legal regulation of decentralization processes in public administration of Ukraine and the state of development of law in these processes. Doclet themes. The problem of decentralization of financial resources and authority devoted a lot of research scientists (N. Bykadorova, A. Bondarenko, N. Kaminska, I. Karchevsky, P. Kolody, B. Krajnik, I. Legkostup, J. Ostroshenko and others) both in Ukraine and abroad. The author explores the concept of decentralization, financial decentralization, the decentralization of power. Analyzed the legal value of laws of Ukraine: "On principles of state regional policy" and "On voluntary consolidation of territorial communities" for further reform actions in Ukraine. Analyzed components of the new system in the formation of profitable and account parts of local budgets, the determination of the principles of transfer policy and intergovernmental relations. The main objectives of such a system and ways of their implementation are as follows: 1. Ensure fiscal autonomy and financial independence of local budgets 2. The consolidation of local budgets in the stable sources of income and stimulate podatkovni communities. 3. Strengthening the responsibility of relevant ministries for the balance of financial resources and sectoral policies, in particular through the mechanism of providing educational and medical subsidies, subsidies for personnel training. 4. The expansion of spending powers of local authorities by transferring funding from the local budgets of individual budget programmes and agencies, which are now financed from the state budget. 5. The introduction of a new mechanism of budgetary regulation and equalization. In Ukraine the process of fiscal decentralization takes place quite actively, consistently, with a fairly full legislative regulatory the development of this process, which is a positive thing for Ukraine in the historical development of both areas and the state.
Bitcoin gains more and more attention in the general public and is already the most popular virtual currency. At the same time, the acceptance of Bitcoin as a speculative asset and also as a payment vehicle increases. This is an indication that we might now be entering an era of parallel currency systems. Therefore, one could state that the Bitcoin network and the central banking system could become two rival systems with respect to issuing payment vehicles and providing cross-border payment systems. Our aim is to analyse the central bank incentives for establishing a network model that includes hacking. With our model we are able to explain why central banks have no incentive to advance Bitcoin regulation at the current stage of development, as this would reduce the critical mass of Bitcoin users. Finally, in combination with a central bank loss function, we are able to calculate an optimal level of central regulation.
Ayush Dubey, Greg D. Hill, Robert Escriva, Emin Gün Sirer
Graph databases have become an increasingly common infrastructure component. Yet existing systems either operate on offline snapshots, provide weak consistency guarantees, or use expensive concurrency control techniques that limit performance. In this paper, we introduce a new distributed graph database, called Weaver, which enables efficient, transactional graph analyses as well as strictly serializable ACID transactions on dynamic graphs. The key insight that allows Weaver to combine strict serializability with horizontal scalability and high performance is a novel request ordering mechanism called refinable timestamps. This technique couples coarse-grained vector timestamps with a fine-grained timeline oracle to pay the overhead of strong consistency only when needed. Experiments show that Weaver enables a Bitcoin blockchain explorer that is 8x faster than Blockchain.info, and achieves 12x higher throughput than the Titan graph database on social network workloads and 4x lower latency than GraphLab on offline graph traversal workloads.
In the smart grid, large consumers can procure electricity energy from various power sources to meet their load demands. To maximize its profit, each large consumer needs to decide their energy procurement strategy under risks such as price fluctuations from the spot market and power quality issues. In this paper, an electric energy procurement decision-making model is studied for large consumers who can obtain their electric energy from the spot market, generation companies under bilateral contracts, the options market and self-production facilities in the smart grid. Considering the effect of unqualified electric energy, the profit model of large consumers is formulated. In order to measure the risks from the price fluctuations and power quality, the expected utility and entropy is employed. Consequently, the expected utility and entropy decision-making model is presented, which helps large consumers to minimize their expected profit of electricity procurement while properly limiting the volatility of this cost. Finally, a case study verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model.
Recent years have witnessed the emergence of digital currencies - digital representations of value which are transferred using IT technologies and used as a medium of exchange but are not recognised as official means of payment. Bitcoins are one of such currencies and their popularity in Europe and in Poland has been growing. Hence it is a good time to consider to what extent Polish law is prepared to face the phenomenon and what potential problems may arise from it for the judicial system. The main objective of the paper is to analyse Polish tax regulations in the context of bitcoin transactions, as broadly understood.
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is an important analysis tool in the study of the social mechanisms of technology adoption, and has received considerable attention and study in the literature. Though empirical support for the model has varied depending on situation specifics, it remains a popular and useful conceptual framework for analysis of factors contributing to technology acceptance or rejection by the relevant constituencies. In this paper we use the TAM framework to analyze aspects of the technology acceptance process in the case of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an entirely digital distributed currency whose disruptive and disintermediating nature has fueled the tremendous growth of the financial technology space over the past few years. Bitcoin's distributed, verifiable, and immutable public transaction ledger, the blockchain, holds out the promise of fast, cheap, peer-to-peer financial transactions, as well as significant efficiencies in the transfer of other assets via overlay networks. In this study, we break down, describe, and analyze the various factors affecting the past and future adoption curve for Bitcoin in the context of the Technology Acceptance Model.
This article focuses on the role of local institutions in mitigation and adaptation to climate change, considering learning experiences in promoting public-private partnerships in to resilient actions. It does so under the belief that climate impacts will affect disadvantaged social groups and small-communities more disproportionately, and that local institutions centrally influence how different social groups gain access to and are able to use assets and resources. Looking at the increasing awareness that global temperatures will raise, a mentality "Climate-smart" must be adopted by all levels of decision-making. This approach involves the search for synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation, wherever is possible. As for mitigation, for adaptation we consider similar pre-conditions. Base on this pre-conditions we identify Public Private Partnerships as a challenge possibility to finance decentralized renewable energies and green infrastructure for resilient communities. The article aims to demonstrate two main unclear topics in existing understanding about institutions and climate change responses: the correlation among Public Private Partnerships and participatory process and how it lead to win-win climate responses funding, a learning experience from Sustainable Energy Action Plan - Within the MED Programme project ZeroCO2[1] - and Local Adaptation Plan development – within the LIFE+ project BLUE AP[2]. [1] Kyoto Club was partner of the MED Project ZERO CO2 www.medzeroco2.eu [2] Kyoto Club is partner of the LIFE+ Project BLUE AP Bologna Local Urban Environment Adaptation Plan for Resilient City – www.blueap.eu
The anonymity of the Bitcoin system has some shortcomings. Analysis of Transaction Chain (ATC) and Analysis of Bitcoin Protocol and Network (ABPN) are two important methods of deanonymizing bitcoin transactions. Nowadays, there are some anonymization methods to combat ATC but there has been little research into ways to counter ABPN. This paper proposes a new anonymization technology called Transaction Remote Release (TRR). Inspired by The Onion Router (TOR), TRR is able to render several typical attacking methods of ABPN ineffective. Furthermore, the performance of encryption and decryption of TRR is good and the growth rate of the cipher is very limited. Hence, TRR is suited for practical applications.
Open access
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cs.CR
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Bitcoin es un sistema de dinero digital descentralizado que está amenazando el uso del dinero convencional. Este sistema ha aumentado su popularidad atrayendo la atención de los medios, la comunidad y los organismos de control, dado su anonimato y estructura, donde los usuarios son quienes generan la moneda y verifican que las transacciones sean efectuadas por medio de un proceso criptográfico. El artículo evidencia el estado de arte de las diferentes formas de dinero que ha utilizado el ser humano, desde la aparición del trueque a partir del 9000 a.C, hasta llegar al Bitcoin como forma de dinero digital en la última década. Para el desarrollo de la investigación se hizo una búsqueda con las palabras: dinero (money), historia del dinero (history of money) y Bitcoin, principalmente en las bases de datos de las revistas: IEEE, ScienceDirect, Jstor-Journal Storage y Business Source Complete, de la Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas y de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (SINAB), donde se encontraron 355 documentos pero se seleccionaron 162 que favorecieron la revisión. Finalmente se concluye que el Bitcoin es considerado como una moneda experimental por lo tanto carece de reconocimiento dentro de la economía global, pero a futuro puede ser una alternativa a los costosos sistemas tradicionales, logrando aumentar el acceso de los negocios en la red.Bitcoin transversal alternative monetary exchange in the digital economyAbstractBitcoin is a decentralized system of digital money that is threatening the use of conventional money. This system has increased in popularity attracting media attention, community and control bodies, given their anonymity and structure where users are who generate the currency and verify that transactions are carried out by means of a cryptographic process. The article demonstrates the state of art of different forms of money used humans, since the emergence of barter from 9000 BC until the Bitcoin as a form of digital money in the last decade. For the development of research, it was searched with the words: money (money), history of money (history of money) and Bitcoin, mainly in databases of journals: IEEE, ScienceDirect, JSTOR-Journal and Storage Business Source Complete the District University Francisco Jose de Caldas and the National University of Colombia (SINAB) where 355 documents were found but 162 of them were selected because favored the review. Finally we conclude that Bitcoin is considered an experimental currency therefore lacks recognition within the global economy, but the future can be an alternative to expensive traditional systems, achieving increasing access network businessKey words: Bitcoin, criptocurrency, digital money, history of money, minning Bitcoin, money.
The aim of the article was to evaluate the risks of investing in Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Particular attention was paid to the risk of investment on the Polish exchanges: Bitcurex, BitBay, BitMarket.pl and LocalBitcoins. To evaluate the risk there was used VaR measure. There were compared the risk of investing in Bitcoin cryptocurrency and the risk of investing in the selected "traditional" currencies. There was also paid attention to the effect of day of the week on the Bitcoin’s exchanges. The investment in cryptocurrency was characterized by higher risk than investing in “traditional” currencies. The Polish Bitcoin exchange LocalBitcoins was characterized by the highest risk and highest average daily rate of return.
Bitcoin is the first technology for the final transfer of digital goods online, facilitating instant global payments without intermediation. Bitcoin’s operation is based on a distributed, decentralized, and transparent asset ledger that acts as an ongoing chain record of all transactions. The system issues coins to reward those who contribute processing power to the network’s operation. The possibilities created by this innovation are significant for the world’s poor, who could skip traditional political and financial institutions and move to digital currencies in the same way they have gone straight to using mobile phones and skipped landline telephones.
Peggy Valcke, Niels Vandezande, Nathan Van de Velde
The research looked at which third party payment providers (TPP’s) are covered by the PSD2 and AMLD4 directives, the consequences thereof, as well as to what extent such coverage goes; and sought to analyse the potential for the regulation of cryptocurrency in terms of combatting money laundering and terrorist financing. TPP’s gain possession of a significant amount of sensitive information, for instance by providing a gateway from which consumers log in to their bank accounts using their unique identifiers and credentials. As a result, these entities are drawing increasingly more attention from legislators and regulators.Under the framework of the PSD2, TPP’s will be subject to stringent regulatory standards similar to those placed on traditional payment service providers under the PSD. In the US, regulation of TPP’s must be assessed on a state-by-state basis. In Florida, for instance, they can be considered as money transmitters, thus putting them under that regulation, as well as the federal Bank Secrecy Act. In Asia, the number of TPP’s has grown significantly over the past years. In China, these actors are regulated by the People’s Bank of China, and are subjected to a number of requirements similar to those found in the EU, such as minimum capital requirements and anti-money laundering rules.Another notable development is that of alternative payment methods – a prime example here are cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The bitcoin ecosystem is decentralized, meaning that no single entity controls the system. Currently, there exists no convincing arguments to consider virtual currencies as regulated under the EU’s Payment Services Directive or the Second E-money Directive. While the PSD2 does introduce new terminology and significantly amended scope exemptions compared to the original Payment Services Directive, there is no wider inclusion of virtual currencies under its scope. A similar argument can be made for the recently adopted AMLD4, where virtual currencies have been omitted from its scope despite earlier signs that this development may be included. The researchers conclude their paper with several public and private sector recommendations.
The rhetoric in Satoshi Nakamoto's "White Paper" on the origins of Bitcoin suggests that the digital currency was envisioned as an entirely autonomous money. Due to the increase in popularity and circulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an intense regulatory debate has been sparked at the global level. These debates reveal a fundamental tension regarding the role of the state in establishing money. While the digital currency community insists that Bitcoin is money, states and monetary authorities have declared Bitcoin a commodity, a declaration that can be traced back to Georg Friedrich Knapp's foundational text The State Theory of Money and reinforced by A. Mitchell Innes' The Credit Theory of Money. Circulating alongside state monies, Bitcoin is then neaccessory money,' unable to satisfy tax obligations and behaving as a commodity. This chartalist account of Bitcoin is refuted by what I identify as a libertarian/von Misean understanding of money motivating the circulation of digital currencies. I argue that the circulation of digital currencies is better explained by the chartalist narrative. I then prescribe Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money, a broader understanding of money in which more abstract monies might create a supranational economic society, as an ideological alternative to digital currency advocates -- one that better conforms to the nature of money gestured to in Nakamoto's "White Paper". However, even through the lens of Simmel, the limitations imposed by domestic authorities and taxation prevent digital currencies from reaching the envisioned state of autonomy. Synthesizing these understandings of money, Bitcoin may exist as a compromise, a means of international money transfer that weakens the abstract, international economic borders created by state monies.
Government policy is one of the most important factors in engaging the private sector in providing universal access to electricity. In particular, the private sector is well positioned to provide decentralized electricity products and services. While policy uncertainty and regulatory barriers can keep enterprises and investors from engaging in the market, targeted policies can create opportunities to leverage private investment and skills to expand electricity access. However, creating a sustainable market requires policies beyond traditional electricity regulation. The report reviews the range of policy issues that impact the development and expansion of a market for decentralized electricity services from establishing an enabling policy environment to catalyzing finance, building human capacity, and integrating energy access with development programs. The case studies in this report show that robust policy frameworks--addressing a wide range of market issues--can lead to rapid transformation in energy access. The report highlights examples of these policies in action Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico, and Nepal.
Ady Soejoto, Waspodo Tjipto Subroto, Suyanto Suyanto
Goal of this research is promoting human development in Indonesia through fiscal decentralization. In general, funds decentralization, economic growth, public expenditure, and a decline in total poor population in the autonomous region provide significant positive effect on human development index, thus increasing decentralization funds as balance grants to autonomous regions can be used to finance local expenditure, especially public social expenditure in education and health increased more years. Fiscal decentralization policy is instrumental in supporting the success of Indonesia&#039;s human development. In particular the research of fiscal decentralization policy yield in promoting human development as an economic overview of democracy in Indonesia counties and cities were assessed based on a review of theoretical and empirical can be concluded as follows: (1) Increased decentralization funds proven to provide significant positive effect on the amount of public expenditure. (2) Increased decentralization funds proved to have a positive effect on economic growth. (3) The increasing of total poor population in the autonomous region. (4) Regional economic growth is increased not provide significant effect on reducing total poor population. (5) Decentralized funds that transferred from central government to autonomous region proven to provide significant positive effect on human development index. (6) Economic growth provides significant positive effect on human development. (7) Public expenditure of autonomous regions provides significant positive effect on human development. (8) The decline in total poor population of autonomous region provide significant positive effect on human development. (9) In general decentralization funds policies have positive impacts on human development of each autonomous region counties and cities.
Abstract This paper identifies and analyzes BitCoin features which may facilitate BitCoin to become a global currency, as well as characteristics which may impede the use of BitCoin as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value, and compares BitCoin with standard currencies with respect to the main functions of money. Among all analyzed BitCoin features, the extreme price volatility stands out most clearly compared to standard currencies. In order to understand the reasons for such extreme price volatility, we attempt to identify drivers of BitCoin price formation and estimate their importance econometrically. We apply time-series analytical mechanisms to daily data for the 2009–2014 period. Our estimation results suggest that BitCoin attractiveness indicators are the strongest drivers of BitCoin price followed by market forces. In contrast, macro-financial developments do not determine BitCoin price in the long-run. Our findings suggest that as long as BitCoin price will be mainly driven by speculative investments, BitCoin will not be able to compete with standard currencies.
This paper explores the financial asset capabilities of bitcoin using GARCH models. The initial model showed several similarities to gold and the dollar indicating hedging capabilities and advantages as a medium of exchange. The asymmetric GARCH showed that bitcoin may be useful in risk management and ideal for risk averse investors in anticipation of negative shocks to the market. Overall bitcoin has a place on the financial markets and in portfolio management as it can be classified as something in between gold and the American dollar on a scale from pure medium of exchange advantages to pure store of value advantages.
Liang-Ao Zhang, Xingming Sun, Zhihua Xia, Qiuju Ji
Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) is a promising cryptographic primitive to implement access control for secure data storage in the cloud. Since the data owner may frequently change the access policies defined in the ciphertext, it is significant to provide the capacity for dynamic policy updating. However the cloud should also authenticate the owner because the adversary may modify the access policies of the files in the cloud to prevent the legal users from accessing them. In this paper, we focus on the owner's authentication in the ABE systems and propose a novel scheme which enables access control with authenticated dynamic policy updating in the cloud. We adapt the Pedersen commitment and Zero Knowledge Proof of Knowledge (ZKPK) to realize the anonymous authentication of the owner's policy updating key without increasing any secret information to the owner side. The analysis shows that our scheme is authentic and efficient as well as adaptive to different types of access policies.