Roman Beck, Christoph Müller-Bloch, John Leslie King
Blockchain technology is often referred to as a groundbreaking innovation and the harbinger of a new economic era. Blockchains may be capable of engendering a new type of economic system: the blockchain economy. In the blockchain economy, agreed-upon transactions would be enforced autonomously, following rules defined by smart contracts. The blockchain economy would manifest itself in a new form of organizational design—decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)—which are organizations with governance rules specified in the blockchain. We discuss the blockchain economy along dimensions defined in the IT governance literature: decision rights, accountability, and incentives. Our case study of a DAO illustrates that governance in the blockchain economy may depart radically from established notions of governance. Using the three governance dimensions, we propose a novel IT governance framework and a research agenda for governance in the blockchain economy. We challenge common assumptions in the blockchain discourse, and propose promising information systems research related to these assumptions.
Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank. It is an emerging financial technology enabled by innovation, increasingly popular among global Internet users, and more interestingly, it challenges the existing financial and regulatory rules on the currency and payment systems of the world today. On the other side, certain cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, have been actively used as payment tools for illicit transactions. Both the “promising” and "challenging" faces of cryptocurrency trigger causes for concern for policy makers, not only from financial sector, but also legal and technological sectors. The decentralised nature of cryptocurrency creates unique problems for the government to regulate or impose any regulatory requirements. This article argues that, in order for Malaysia to remain at the forefront of financial and digital innovation, it is timely to look at the question on whether to formulate certain policy and regulatory framework on the use of cryptocurrency in Malaysian market. The answer can pave the way for Malaysian digital citizens to potentially grab the opportunities made possible by the cryptocurrency technology. For this purpose, the researchers seek to study the features of cryptocurrency and the experiences from policymakers in other jurisdictions in dealing with the matter.
Bitcoin, 2009 yılında ortaya çıkan ve ardından sayısız kripto para biriminin dolaşıma girmesine zemin hazırlayan yenilikçi bir dijital para birimidir. Bitcoin; sahip olduğu market kapitalizasyonu, gün geçtikçe artan işlem adeti ve hacmi, zaman içinde daha stabil hale gelen piyasa değeri ile daha fazla birey tarafından kullanılan bir varlık haline gelmiştir. Bitcoin teknik olarak, "blok zinciri" adı verilen tüm işlemleri kapsayan ve kullanıcının bilgisayarının bir işlemin geçerliliğini doğrulamasına izin veren bir altyapı kullanır. Finansal anlamda ise Bitcoin, paranın değişim aracı olma, hesap birimi olma, vadeli işlemlerde ödeme aracı olma ve servet biriktirme aracı olma gibi temel fonksiyonlarını bir şekilde yerine getiren bir varlıktır. Bitcoin aynı zamanda, paranın basılması sürecinde madencilik ( mining ), paranın bireysel ve kurumsal hesaplarda korunumunu sağlayan e-cüzdan uygulamaları, teknik altyapıya odaklanan ve/veya para biriminin değeri üzerine teknik analiz hizmeti sağlayan finansal hizmetler, paranın işlem görmesini sağlayan ve diğer para birimleri ile takasını sağlayan bir borsa işlevi gören değişim aracıları, para biriminin mal ve hizmetlerin alım satımında bir ödeme aracı olarak kullanılmasına imkan veren ödeme işlemcileri ve bu hizmetlerin birden fazlasını sunan şirketlerini içeren yeni bir ekonomi oluşturmuştur. Bu yeni ekonomi fırsatları da beraberinde getirmiş ve risk sermayesi yatırımlarını kendine çekmektedir. Bu çalışma, Bitcoin ve ona bağlı olarak oluşan alt-sektörlerin oluşturmuş olduğu yeni ekonomi hakkında bilgi vermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bununla birlikte çalışma, bu yeni ekonominin geleceğine dair bir perspektif geliştirme amacını taşımaktadır ve bu konuda yapılacak ileriki çalışmalar için bir öncül çalışma olarak kullanılabilecektir.
Цель работы – проанализировать современные тенденции и состояние международного рынка ведущих криптовалют и оценить возможные перспективы их дальнейшего развития и интеграции в мировую финансовую систему.
 Результаты исследования. Ретроспективно прослежена история происхождения и становления Биткоина (Bitcoin), рассмотрены некоторые особенности «Блокчейн» («Blockchain»). Проанализированы положительные и отрицательные стороны работы с криптовалютами. Рассмотрена ближайшая по капитализации к Биткоину криптовалюта Эфир (Ethereum) и проанализированы основные различия между ними. На основе проведенного исследования сформирован прогноз о наиболее вероятном направлении развития рынка криптовалют на ближайшее будущее и о возможности их интеграции в мировую финансовую систему.
 Теоретическое значение исследования. Настоящее исследование и его результаты будут способствовать решению глобальной научной задачи – формированию научно-обоснованного мнения академической науки к новому феномену в экономике – криптовалютам и их роли в мировой финансовой системе.
 Оригинальность/ценность/научная новизна исследования. Работа является одной из немногих, посвященных новому явлению в экономике – криптовалютам; представлены авторские прогнозы о возможных направлениях дальнейшего развития рынка криптовалют.
 Перспективы дальнейших исследований. Настоящая работа открывает возможность дальнейших исследований в области рынка криптовалют, его дальнейшего развития и интеграции в мировую финансовую систему.
 Тип статьи – эмпирическая.
Krovi Rajasekhar, Sri HarshiniYalavarthy, Sravani Mullapudi, M Gowtham
A Blockchain is a ledger of records. It originally came from the digital currency bitcoin. Its main features are transparency and accountability. For this we use chameleon hashing concept which uses a trapdoor key. Unless the trapdoor is used it is hard to find collisions. We can create collisions only if we know the trapdoor and can rewrite the block of data with the new redacted stored files in blocks are permanently recorded and cannot be modified. To overcome this, we use the new redaction capability and expand its usefulness for enterprises and also in financial sector. This could limit uses in financial sector for the services because this must require data to be changed or smashed, coding and transaction mistakes might happen, which can be undone through redaction. An unchangeable record is not useful for the applications that area used for blockchain. Wherever the blockchain is used, either for a code or data there should be a way to redact it in unavoidable situations. The constraints for redacting a blockchain should be strict and can be done with whole block. We use this redaction concept with the bitcoin technology, which is a person-to-person digital cash system.
Bitcoin has emerged as a popular digital currency and arouses the interest not only of programmers, but also of investors and academics. What interests them most is its underlying technology, the blockchain. This thesis aims at giving an overview of the current state of cryptocurrencies and compares their different designs and approaches to Bitcoin. The blockchain technology will be explained, as well as how it could impact many aspects in life by showcasing different applications of Ethereum blockchain-based smart contracts. Based on the evaluation of the different cryptocurrencies and preceding conclusions, specific cryptocurrencies will be applied to the Tasklet system before proposing the implementation of the blockchain technology in such a system, in order to establish a reward system. The paper reviews a heterogeneous, scattered body of knowledge including academic literature, but also non-scientific sources due to the constantly evolving technology. On this basis, the advantages of Bitcoin, but also its weaknesses, as well as the vast potential of blockchain are discussed. Results indicate that although Bitcoin’s framework may be limited, it will still play an important role in the future due to its dominance in the cryptocurrency market. The short display of blockchain-fueled applications and its effects has shown its potential to transform the internet, leading to the rise of the Web 3.0. Keywords: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Distributed Ledger Technology, Smart Contract
Taylor C. Nelms, Bill Maurer, Lana Swartz, Scott Mainwaring
The payments industry – the business of transferring value through public and corporate infrastructures – is undergoing rapid transformation. New business models and regulatory environments disrupt more traditional fee-based strategies, and new entrants seek to displace legacy players by leveraging new mobile platforms and new sources of data. In this increasingly diversified industry landscape, start-ups and established players are attempting to embed payment in ‘social’ experience through novel technologies of accounting for trust. This imagination of the social, however, is being materialized in gated platforms for payment, accounting, and exchange. This paper explores the ambiguous politics of such experiments, specifically those, like Bitcoin or the on-demand sharing economy, that delineate an economic imaginary of ‘just us’ – a closed and closely guarded community of peers operating under the illusion that there are no mediating institutions undergirding that community. This provokes questions about the intersection of payment and publics. Payment innovators’ attenuated understanding of the social may, we suggest, evacuate the nitty-gritty of politics.
Scientific funding within the academy is an often complicated affair involving disparate and competing interests. Private universities, for instance, are vastly outpacing public institutions in garnering large, prestigious, science-related grants and external research investment. Inequities also extend to the types of research funded, with government, corporate, and even military interests privileging certain types of inquiry. This article proposes an innovative type of science research fund using cryptocurrencies, a fast-growing asset class. Although not a total funding solution, staking coins, specifically, can be strategically invested in to yield compound interest. These coins use masternode technologies to collateralize the network and speed transaction pace and may pay dividends to masternode holders, allowing institutions that purchase these types of central hubs to potentially engage in a lucrative form of dividend reinvestment. Using cryptocurrencies as a new funding stream may garner large amounts of capital and creation of nonprofit institutes to support the future of funding scientific research within educational institutions.
This paper reviews what stage the central banks of the world’s leading economies are at in their study and adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to reengineer their various systems and functions. A brief description of DLT will be given, followed by an analysis of central banks’ publications and pronouncements to determine what each central bank is doing on their journey to DLT adoption. It was found that of the central banks for which information was available, all of them have expressed interest in DLT and have evaluated it to some extent. Nevertheless, no central bank has an operational DLT-based system at this point. This is because some issues remain regarding the speed, cost of processing, security, transparency and privacy, legal settlement finality, scalability and network effects of the technology. As DLT matures, the expectation is that these issues will begin to be resolved.
Ying‐Ying Hsieh, Jean‐Philippe Vergne, Philip C. Anderson, Karim R. Lakhani · 5 authors
Bitcoin represents the first real-world implementation of a “decentralized autonomous organization” (DAO) and offers a new paradigm for organization design. Imagine working for a global business organization whose routine tasks are powered by a software protocol instead of being governed by managers and employees. Task assignments and rewards are randomized by the algorithm. Information is not channeled through a hierarchy but recorded transparently and securely on an immutable public ledger called “blockchain.” Further, the organization decides on design and strategy changes through a democratic voting process involving a previously unseen class of stakeholders called “miners.” Agreements need to be reached at the organizational level for any proposed protocol changes to be approved and activated. How do DAOs solve the universal problem of organizing with such novel solutions? What are the implications? We use Bitcoin as an example to shed light on how a DAO works in the cryptocurrency industry, where it provides a peer-to-peer, decentralized, and disintermediated payment system that can compete against traditional financial institutions. We also invited commentaries from renowned organization scholars to share their views on this intriguing phenomenon.
The internet and digital transfer of money is set to fundamentally change the way financial audits are conducted. This paper critically assesses the way that such assets are currently audited when stored in distributed ledgers, transmitted via a blockchain or whose value is stored in crypto rather than sovereign currency form. In it, we identify the self-verifying nature of such financial data which negates the need for traditional audit methods. Despite the promise of such methods, we highlight the many weaknesses that still exist in the blockchain and how these presents issues for verification. We address distributed transaction and custody records and how these present auditing challenges. We suggest how auditors can use smart contracts to address these and at the same time provide arbitration and oversight. Our contribution is to propose a protocol to audit the movement of blockchain transmitted funds in order to make them more robust going forward.
Purpose Blockchain is a distributed ledger, in which the blocks containing transaction details are connected chronologically to form a series of chains, thus raising the possibility of improving the process and innovating business model for the financial institutions. The purpose of this paper is to study the actual cases of Blockchain applied in Korea in 2017, so that a vision of business model innovation of financial institutions can be drawn. Design/methodology/approach The financial institutions in Korea are in the technology verification stage to introduce Blockchain technology. Since there is an insufficient amount of actual measurement data, case study method was adopted. The authors interviewed ICT officers of major banks in Korea. The purpose of the interview was to understand the relationship between Blockchain and business models of financial institutions, and the effects and challenges that Blockchain has on the business model of financial institutions. Findings From the perspective of financial institutions, the emergence of Blockchain does not just have technical significance – emergence of highly efficient database system – but has the possibility that if the business model of existing financial intermediaries disappears or get reduced, the financial services relying on them can disappear altogether, or some of them can be replaced, and financial transaction patterns of consumers can be changed. As a case studies researched for this paper, it was discovered that the distributed characteristic of Blockchain cannot be applied when actually developing financial services.
Purpose In Korea and abroad, this paper investigates the use of blockchains in the financial sector. This study aims to examine how blockchains are applied to the financial sector and how to respond to the Korean conditions. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates the movements of the financial sector and related services using the blockchain in the current market. Findings First, as a result of examining domestic and foreign cases, it can be seen that the areas where blockchains are most actively applied in the financial sector are expanding into settlement, remittance, securities and smart contracts. Also, in Korea, many of the authentication procedures based on the equipment possessed by the consumers are used so that introduction of the blockchain in the authentication part is prominent. Second, the move to introduce a closed (private) distributed ledger that does not go through the central bank is accelerating in payments between banks. Third, domestic financial institutions also need joint action by financial institutions through a blockchain consortium to apply blockchain technology to the financial sector. Fourth, consumer needs and technological developments are changing. At the same time, as the opportunity to infringe on the information held by individuals has expanded, the need for blockchain technology is strongly emerging because of the efforts of the organizations to defend it. Originality/value This paper contributes to understanding the changes in the financial sector using the blockchain.
Objectives: From the area of the research conducted, Malaysian acceptance towards the idea of online payment methods and understanding the concept of cryptocurrency has been studied. Our main area of focus was in the area of Klang Valley, which has been found that they are one of the most technological savvy people in Malaysia. Methods: One of the main areas of our research is the level of acceptance of the Malaysian market towards the idea of the cryptocurrency, which in our area of interest was Bitcoin. Findings: This research can be further used to identify the mitigating factors that influence peoples’ interest towards online payments such as debit/credit card payments and other channel such as PayPal. Technology acceptance among the Malaysian market can be the main factor that affects the use of the online payment method. Besides, it was also been found several factors that affects the consumers choice on the acceptance of the online payment, which was used as the main variable used to measurement on the level on acceptance. Application: Acceptance of Bitcoin by the Malaysian market. Keywords: Bitcoin, Malaysian Market, Online Payment, Technology Acceptance
This paper introduces some of the interdependent components within the multifaceted solution our team is developing towards accelerating the functionality, complexity and versatility of blockchain-enabled services. The focus here is particularly on introducing and bringing together selected individual components of the solution to achieve a synergistic effect in expanding the functionality of blockchain-enforced smart contracts. The contributions of this paper include: (i) proposing a method for automated management of contracts with hierarchical conditionality structures through an hierarchy of intelligent agents and the use of hierarchical cryptographic key-pairs; (ii) proposing a method for efficient and secure matching and transfer of smart-contract underlyings (entities) among disparate smart contracts/subcontracts; (iii) proposing a method for producing an hierarchy of common secrets to facilitate hierarchical communication channels of increased security, and applying this method both in the context of method (i) and method (ii); and (iv) proposing the use of distributed hash tables DHT in building secure and optimized repositories in the context of method (i) and in the context method (ii), where the former involves a DHT repository of smart contracts and the latter involves a DHT repository of entities underlying smart contracts that are being exchanged among different smart contracts and subcontracts. The smart-contract focused methods introduced in this paper contribute to the overall goal towards a sustainable adaptive mechanism for processing evolving volumes, versatility, and complexity of blockchain transactions, traffic, and services. Blockchain-enabled services are efficient, secure, automated, and allowing worldwide distribution of resources. They present a more efficient and sustainable alternative to current service infrastructures within a range of domains, particularly the legal and financial domains. They also set a sustainable infrastructure for emerging Internet-of-things services.
Petros Kavassalis, Harald Stieber, Wolfgang Breymann, K. E. Saxton · 5 authors
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose a bearer service, which generates and maintains a “digital doppelgänger” for every financial contract in the form of a dynamic transaction document that is a standardised “data facility” automatically making important contract data from the transaction counterparties available to relevant authorities mandated by law to request and process such data. This would be achieved by sharing certain elements of the dynamic transaction document on a bearer service, based on a federation of distribution ledgers; such a quasi-simultaneous sharing of risk data becomes possible because the dynamic transaction document maintain a record of state in semi-real time, and this state can be verified by anybody with access to the distribution ledgers, also in semi-real time. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors propose a novel, regular technology(RegTech) cum automated legal text approach for financial transaction as well as financial risk reporting that is based on cutting-edge distributed computing and decentralised data management technologies such as distributed ledger, distributed storage, algorithmic financial contract standards, automated legal text and document engineering methods and techniques. This approach is equally inspired by the concept of the “bearer service” and its capacity to span over existing and future technological systems and substrates. Findings: The result is a transformation of supervisors’capacity to monitor risk in thefinancial systembased on data which preserve informational content offinancial instruments at the most granular level, incombination with a mathematically robust time stamping approach using blockchain technology. Practical implications: The RegTech approach has the potential to contain operational risk linked toinadequate handling of risk data and to rein in compliance cost of supervisory reporting.
Blockchain technology proposes to create value by decentralizing the creation, verification, validation, and secure storage of economic transactions, both within and between organizations. The chapter provides deeper understanding of how these blockchain solutions would be operated and by whom. It focuses on decentralization as the key dimension by which organizational governance forms vary. The chapter utilizes theory on organizational and corporate governance to unpack how blockchain-based organizations operate. It examines the relationship between internal and external governance design features and cryptocurrency returns. Blockchain-based organizations such as cryptocurrencies compete with traditional economic institutions by proposing alternative forms of organizational governance. Demand for cryptocurrencies mainly stems from two sources: first, consumers and merchants using cryptocurrencies as a means of payment; and second, investors holding a cryptocurrency as an investment, hoping that the price will rise. Many cryptocurrencies were created from the open-source Bitcoin software code, and follow the same open-source development model.
This chapter describes a short-lived experiment in organizational governance that attempted to utilize algorithmic authority through cryptocurrency and block-chain technologies to create a social and political world quite unlike anything we have seen before. It details the governance structures that were promised by the developers and community members involved in the making of The decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), and in contrast, those that were observed in its discourses before, during, and after the “exploit.” The DAO was a decentralized, crowdfunded, direct-management organization and investment platform. In the original vision of decentralized autonomous organizations, as proposed by Vitalik Buterin, founder and member of the Ethereum Foundation, a DAO is a pseudo-legal organization run by an assemblage of human and “robot” participants. From the earliest days of The DAO, many community members acknowledged that the enormous complexity of decentralized and algorithmic governance required a new kind of experimental “science” to map the “uncharted territory” The DAO was entering.
In this study, we consider a decentralized agricultural supply chain consisting of a capital-constrained smallholder farmer and an intermediary platform. The smallholder farmer sells the agricultural products through the intermediary platform but lacks the financial resources for production. In addition to the traditional solution of bank financing (provided by a bank) as a source of finance for the capital-constrained farmer to ensure the sustainable production of the agricultural goods, the intermediary platform can also provide loans directly to the smallholder farmer (known as direct financing) or serve as a guarantor if the capital-constrained farmer has insufficient creditworthiness to obtain bank loans (known as guarantor financing). The farmer can thus obtain a loan through three methods: bank financing, guarantor financing, and direct financing. We find that the smallholder farmer produces the most under direct financing and the least under bank financing, and that the intermediary platform prefers direct financing over guarantor financing in a weak sense. Specifically, when the farmer’s production cost is low, the intermediary platform prefers financing the farmer directly; when the cost is in an intermediate range, the platform prefers either direct or guarantor financing; and when the cost is high, it is in the best interest of the intermediary platform to encourage the farmer to raise funds from the banking market. We also assess the best financing format for profitability of the smallholder farmer and the sustainability of the whole supply chain, and find that the farmer prefers bank financing while the preference of the supply chain as a whole depends on the cost. Interestingly, under both guarantor financing and direct financing, the smallholder farmer’s level of production can be higher than that under a centralized chain (where the farmer and the intermediary platform belong to the same entity) regardless of whether the chain encounters financial constraints. Moreover, the decentralized supply chain can be coordinated under direct financing when the farmer’s production cost is relatively low.
This article considers Bitcoin as a system of exchange, and the block chain technology it is built on, in the context of supporting developing nations. If integrated correctly Bitcoin could have far reaching applications, from tackling corruption to empowering women. This article found Bitcoin to be a feasible option, with support from real world applications and global endorsement from users. The discussion is then applied in the context of corruption as it puts forward this emerging technology as an alternative to traditional centralised fiscal systems. The article posits that public libraries could be potential facilitators and a crucial component of this integration.
Platforms are important actors in contemporary cultural economic processes. They include social network sites, online content management systems, streaming media platforms, mobile communication infrastructures, supply chain logistics solutions, and cryptocurrencies. Analysis of platforms and their capitalization should take into account the ways they structure social practice as assets and the constitutive opacity of platforms as configured realities. It explores capitalization by focusing on the problems of counting people and things on platforms. Via a case study of the software repository platform [Github.com] (https://github.com), it analyzes how 'platform numbers’ participate in capitalization. It describes attempts to enumerate the elements of the platform by counting, mapping or listing them. The paper shows how attempts to enumerate people and things encounter forms of association, duplication, combination, imitation and configuration that are crucial to the ensemble but remain refractory to capitalization. It proposes configurative enumeration of the platform numbers as a way of conceptualizing these un-enacted excesses. In a configurative enumeration, the composition, the rhythms of imitation, variation and commutation, and constant relating, repairing and adjusting of configurations crucial to the ongoing formation of platforms come into view. Configurative enumerations engage the inventive realities of platformization, realities that precede and sometimes overflow their capitalization.
Zehui Xiong, Yang Zhang, Dusit Niyato, Ping Wang · 5 authors
Blockchain, as the backbone technology of the current popular Bitcoin digital currency, has become a promising decentralized data management framework. Although blockchain has been widely adopted in many applications (e.g., finance, healthcare, and logistics), its application in mobile services is still limited. This is due to the fact that blockchain users need to solve preset proof-of-work puzzles to add new data (i.e., a block) to the blockchain. Solving the proof of work, however, consumes substantial resources in terms of CPU time and energy, which is not suitable for resource-limited mobile devices. To facilitate blockchain applications in future mobile Internet of Things systems, multiple access mobile edge computing appears to be an auspicious solution to solve the proof-of-work puzzles for mobile users. We first introduce a novel concept of edge computing for mobile blockchain. Then we introduce an economic approach for edge computing resource management. Moreover, a prototype of mobile edge computing enabled blockchain systems is presented with experimental results to justify the proposed concept.