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5,834 results · page 234 of 244
Ulrich Petschow
In zunehmendem Maße wird das Finanzsystem von digitalen Technologien beeinflusst. Welche Potenziale bringen diese neuen Technologien für das Geld- und Austauschsystem mit sich? Und wie können diese für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung eingesetzt werden?
Kim Kaivanto, Daniel Prince
Fintech business models based on distributed ledgers -- and their smart-contract variants in particular -- offer the prospect of democratizing access to faster, anywhere-accessible, lower cost, reliable-and-secure high-quality financial services. In addition to holding great, economically transformative promise, these business models pose new, little-studied risks and transaction costs. However, these risks and transaction costs are not evident during the demonstration and testing phases of development, when adopters and users are drawn from the community of developers themselves, as well as from among non-programmer fintech evangelists. Hence, when the new risks and transaction costs become manifest -- as the fintech business models are rolled out across the wider economy -- the consequences may also appear to be new and surprising. The present study represents an effort to get ahead of these developments by delineating risks and transaction costs inherent in distributed-ledger- and smart-contracts-based fintech business models. The analysis focuses on code risk and moral-hazard risk, as well as on mixed-economy risks and the unintended consequences of replicating bricks-and-mortar-generation contract forms within the ultra-low transaction-cost environment of fintech.
Karen Levy
This paper critiques blockchain-based “smart contracts,” which aim to automatically and securely execute obligations without reliance on a centralized enforcement authority. Though smart contracts do have some features that might serve the goals of social justice and fairness, I suggest that they are based on a thin conception of what law does, and how it does it. Smart contracts focus on the technical form of contract to the exclusion of the social contexts within which contracts operate, and the complex ways in which people use them. In the real world, contractual obligations are enforced through all kinds of social mechanisms other than formal adjudication—and contracts serve many functions that are not explicitly legal in nature, or even designed to be formally enforced. I describe three categories of contracting practices in which people engage (the inclusion of facially unenforceable terms, the inclusion of purposefully underspecified terms, and willful nonenforcement of enforceable terms) to illustrate how contracts actually “work.” The technology of smart contracts neglects the fact that people use contracts as social resources to manage their relations. The inflexibility that they introduce, by design, might short-circuit a number of social uses to which law is routinely put. Therefore, I suggest that attention to the social and relational contexts of contracting are essential considerations for the discussion, development, and deployment of smart contracts.
Marcella Atzori, Mihaela Ulieru
No abstract is available for this record.
Lynden Griggs, Rod Thomas, Rouhshi Low, James Scheibner
Electronic conveyancing is here. But how will it evolve with the development of blockchains being touted as one means by which fraud in relation to land can be minimised, if not eliminated? With centralised land registries requiring expensive risk minimisation strategies such as a government-funded assurance fund, or the taking out of private title insurance, can blockchains provide a systemic level of security that can improve the land titles system, and lessen the need for other forms of risk minimisation? Advocates of blockchain technology are high on hyperbole with what it can offer to support smart transaction types in a number of fields. For others, blockchains have no great advantage when applied to physical assets such as real property, and are limited in their utility.This article seeks to advance the discussion, particularly in the context of land administration. Against a backdrop of fraud occurring in title by registration systems, the authors explain what blockchain technology is, before testing its validity by outlining four common fraud scenarios within land administration, and asking whether blockchain technology would have eliminated the frauds in question. The findings show that blockchains would have prevented the fraud in two of the scenarios, but not in the remaining two. In addition, the findings note some of the known unknowns that will need to be resolved prior to any enactment of a blockchain solution. The articles conclusion is that where the process leading to registration is in some way unreliable, blockchains may offer some advantages. However, once the entry of the transaction is registered, blockchains can play no role in testing or checking the veracity of that entry. The authors also consider that, in the context of derivative interests in land, such as easements, mortgages and fee simples, blockchain technology is limited in capacity. Similarly, joint ownership of land is routine, yet the security nuances of blockchains may make joint ownership within a blockchain context difficult. These last two limitations restrict the current applicability of blockchains and make its application questionable for existing, soundly established land administration systems.
David Meijer
Blockchain technology is increasingly being seen as a general purpose technology with far reaching (institutional) effects. However, the ongoing empirical blockchain discussions on these effects are unstructured, due to high complexities. Both practitioners and researchers therefore struggle to get to the core of blockchain technology consequences. We use a Grounded Theory approach to map the ongoing blockchain discussion, which leads to our empirical core category that explains the core of the blockchain discussions: the disintermediation of trust in environments with highly institutionalized values. Blockchain technology is thus often related to trust in our empirical data. However, following the conceptualization of Reliance – Trust and Control by Nooteboom, we show that blockchain technology should be more related to control, instead of trust. Futhermore, we argue that complete control is not always possible in blockchain- systems due to inherent character of decentralized decision making and thus, trust is still a factor in some blockchain environments. We conclude that blockchain technology is a technology that increases control over counterparties in a transaction, but decreases control from a systems-perspective. A transfer of power in the system therefore takes place in blockchain environments. We therefore present our final core category as: power transfer in environments with highly institutionalized values. This strong conceptualization of blockchain technology helps actors understand and discuss the essence of blockchain technology, and provides a much- needed empirical basis for further scientific research. Further development of this conceptualization of trust and control is needed to structure the ongoing blockchain discussions in both scientific literature and practice.
Jason Potts, Ellie Rennie
No abstract is available for this record.
Laura Jutila
Industries and old ways of doing business have been reshaped or become entirely obsolete due to the new digitalization trends. The current technology to truly revolutionize and disrupt especially industries that rely on trust, such as the financial sector, is the blockchain technology. The core idea of this technol-ogy is that it is a public, shared and tamperproof ledger that allows people who do not know or even trust in each other to share information in a trustworthy ledger, where any sorts of immaterial infor-mation of value can be stored. This thesis is a literature review that provides a theoretical framework to examine how the blockchain technology affects particularly the financial sector. As this thesis acknowledges, the blockchain technology has the ability to enhance efficiency, increase transparency, reduce risks when less assets are tied up during transactions and reduce expenditures, such as transaction costs in the financial sector. One of the most ambitious application of the blockchain technology is smart contracts, but there are other applications as well that can benefit the financial sec-tor. The technology has great potential to disrupt the current financial system, but since the technology is still in its initial stage of development, it is too early to say what the blockchain technology will exactly enable. The most extreme hypothesis is that the blockchain technology makes banks unnecessary. How-ever, this thesis argues that the financial institutions are more likely to take advantage of the blockchain technology than to become obsolete because of it.
George Allayannis, Aaron Fernstrom
This technical note explains what blockchain is, what it allows, as well as discusses its advantages and potential issues to consider further. It also provides an example of an application in which blockchain technology is used and describes regulatory and governance considerations. It can be used in a financial institutions or fintech course along with a case on digital currencies. Excerpt UVA-F-1810 Rev. Dec. 7, 2017 An Introduction to Blockchain I love this stuff—bitcoin, blockchain technology—and what the future holds…huge new markets and products will be built on these platforms. Abby Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Introduction . . .
Usman Chohan
No abstract is available for this record.
Rui Torres de Oliveira
No abstract is available for this record.
David Lee Kuo Chuen
No abstract is available for this record.
H. Anthony Park
Securities regulators in the world do not actively regulate cryptocurrency yet. For an effective, active securities regulation, I introduce four novel propositions for the regulators. First, the cryptocurrency technology and its peer-to-peer network are meaningless without the activities of the involved people. Second, the private key of cryptocurrency should be utilized as an identification tool. Third, the active regulation should include a mandatory reporting provision of cryptocurrency transactions and balance. Fourth, the transaction size and ledger length of cryptocurrency should be used as regulatory risk measures. My propositions are founded on a combined analysis of law, finance, math, and technology. Then, I discuss a possible unification of currencies across the globe, with the potential to establish an international cryptocurrency authority.
Xiang Li
In December 2013 the People's Bank of China announced the restriction of Bitcoin from being involved in any services offered by financial institutions in China, fearing that the speculative risks inherent in Bitcoin is too new for Chinese investors and may endanger the national financial system. This article reviews the Bitcoin's evolvement both as currency and as investment asset around the world. Also, the regulatory treatment for Bitcoin in America is discussed. Then I used detrended ratios to compare the volatility of Bitcoin market and China's stock market, concluding that the risks inherent in Bitcoin are not unacceptable for Chinese investors. Moreover, I searched into the relationship between Bitcoin return and some fundamental economic variables, finding that Bitcoin doesn't have enough correlation with the national economic system to depress investors further during an economic downturn and that Bitcoin actually has excellent diversification benefit as portfolio component.
Khanh Dang Ngo
No abstract is available for this record.
Dirk Andreas Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner, Linus FFhr
No abstract is available for this record.
Julie A. Maupin
No abstract is available for this record.
Usman W. Chohan
No abstract is available for this record.
Cardozo Law Tech Talks
No abstract is available for this record.
Michael Mainelli, Bernard Manson
An abundance of new technologies and new technology interactions has created the buzz surrounding ‘InsurTech’, the emerging combination of insurance and technology. Smart contracts are an increasingly popular point of discussion as people realise that computer code can be embedded in distributed ledger technology. Yet, smart contracts do not need distributed ledgers and could promote straight-through-processing (STP) in the London wholesale insurance Market with current technology. This guide aims to give insurance executives an overview of smart contracts that should aid them in discussions about the technology future of the Market. The guide tries to explain the concept, give a taste of the technology and applications, and look to the longer-term risks and rewards.
Darcy W E Allen
No abstract is available for this record.
Randolph Robinson
In less than a calendar year, initial coin offerings or “ICOs” have become the fastest growing capital market in the world. In 2016, an entity called The DAO raised $160 million by selling crypto-tokens to over 15,000 individual purchasers around the globe. This massive fund raise would give rise to an entirely new capital ecosystem. In 2017, initial coin offerings would explode, raising a collective $3.5 billion in just the first three quarters of the year. All of this was done without a single registration being filed with the SEC, and many of these initial coin offerings — including several $100 million raises — were based on little more than a white paper and few lines of sample code. Welcome to the new Digital Wild West. With the seemingly overnight success of this new funding mechanism, there is little if any legal scholarship addressing initial coin offerings and how, or if, such offerings should be regulated. This article provides a non-technical legal audience with a foundational understanding of how the blockchain works, and the role initial coin offerings play in this new economic ecosystem. The overarching thesis of the article is that our current securities law framework, a framework that dates to the days of the great depression, is ill-equipped to handle this new world of decentralized, global, pseudonymous fund raises on public blockchains. Instead, governmental regulators should be working with core development teams to build a regulatory framework that integrates investor protections directly into the computer code governing these systems. By embracing “code as law,” both regulators and core development teams can protect the innovation being funded by initial coin offerings, while at the same time injecting some much needed investor protections into this new ecosystem. This article begins with an introduction to the coming decentralized world, including an overview of both public blockchain technology as well the Ethereum platform, the primary public blockchain upon which initial coin offerings are being deployed. Central to this introduction is an explanation of how the decentralization and disintermediation brought by the blockchain has the potential to dramatically reshape our economic and social systems. Next, the article explores the recent explosion of initial coin offerings, discussing how these offerings are structured, and how this new funding mechanism, if developed properly, has the promise of democratizing opportunities for economic innovation. The article then examines the SEC’s early statements on initial coin offerings to illustrate the potential problems with applying a dated legal framework to this new technology. Finally, the article concludes that the traditional securities law framework is ill suited for the coming decentralized world because the SEC’s enforcement power over global blockchain platforms is limited. Recognizing that external legal frameworks cannot be forced upon public blockchain platforms, the article argues for a collaborative process where governmental regulators work with core development teams to build a regulatory framework into the very fabric of these platforms, thereby providing investors protection, while at the same time embracing the concept of code as law.
Luca Brunoni, Olivier Beaudet-Labrecque
The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief explanation regarding the authors’ current research in the field of the possible uses of smart contracts in cybercrime, focusing in particular on how the technology could provide a substitute for trust both in client-criminal transactions and in transactions taking place within criminal organizations. The authors share the conviction put forward by Alharby and Moorsel [1] in their 2017 analysis of blockchainbased smart contracts that there is a ”lack of studies on criminal activities in smart contracts”: while quality research does exist, including a paper by Juels et al. [2] detailing three types of such activities that can be facilitated by the technology, it is evident that the subject deserves a more widespread attention. Quality research, in fact, could play an important role in aiding authorities and regulators to understand the issue and react accordingly.
Jeppe Hallgren, Malte Hallgren, S. S. Fisher, Nicolai Garhøj Larsen · 5 authors
No abstract is available for this record.