Since the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as Daesh and ISIL) in 2014, antiquities have been a widely publicized source of funding for what has become one of the most technologically savvy terrorist organizations of the modern era. The globalization of technology and rise of popularity in cryptocurrencies has changed the face of black-market trade and the actors that carry out these crimes. While art and antiquities have long served as a market with susceptibilities to laundering, the emergence of Dark Web markets, identification-masking software, and untraceable cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have opened new doors to potential vulnerabilities. The anonymity that is offered by these technologies acts as a roadblock for authorities, while attracting the likes of terrorists and transnational criminals. Investigative research using cyber security platforms to identify digital artifacts connected to potential traffickers provides the opportunity to unmask the seemingly untraceable actors behind these activities. The evidence of illicit antiquities trafficking on the Dark Web displayed in this article can generate a new discussion on how and where to study black-market antiquities to gain needed insight into combating the illicit trade online and the transnational criminal groups it may finance.
Blockchain, the rapid developing technology behind Bitcoin, is increasingly becoming popular. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that distributes digital transactions peer-to-peer to a decentralized network of nodes that verify the transactions and keep a cryptographic secured copy of the entire history of transactions. The network automatically reaches consensus about the correct history of records, which makes the database transparent and immutable. This consensus role makes it possible to take away the third party in certain processes, such as the bank or the notary. Blockchain also enables digital payments and smart contracts. Smart contracts are digital contracts that can be executed automatically by the blockchain. This enables digital registration of for example identity, birth certificates and votes. But smart contracts have many more automation applications that can be coded in computer code, which has the potential of making many processes in both the public as the private sector more efficient and less costly. Governmental services are especially applicable for blockchain, as they could become more efficient and can even be made obsolete in some cases. <br/><br/>Project teams that develop blockchain powered smart contract applications have to work with nascent tools and technology, and a lack of real life use cases. This leads to a lack of empirical knowledge on how to implement smart contracts in governmental services. An overview of guidelines that assist developing project teams is non-existent, which slows down the implementation process. Blockchain technology is not well-researched and smart contract implementation research is even more scarce. A comprehensive overview that shows design phases, design principles and design dilemmas is non-existent, but could greatly assist project teams that implement smart contract applications. Such an overview would speed up the implementation process and can lead to an acceleration of use cases. Therefore, this research focused on answering the main research question: “How can blockchain powered smart contracts be implemented in governmental services?”. <br/><br/>We used the design science approach in order to answer the main research question. The design science approach allowed us for using several sub methods. We started with a literature review and desk research to understand and analyze blockchain technology and smart contracts, followed by a literature review in order to draft the first version of design principles. These were improved by conducting four case studies. With the second version of the design principles, we built the first version of the design framework. These were assessed by six experts, which allowed us to refine the design principles and design framework into a final version. <br/><br/>The 36 design principles are guidelines to aid project teams that implement smart contracts in governmental services. We incorporated these design principles in a framework, that shows which design principles are applicable in the following five phases of smart contract implementation: exploration, conceptualization, testing, implementation and expansion. Each of these phases has its own results and applicable design principles, which is comprehensively indicated in the framework. However, various pairs of principles affect each other, which we call design dilemmas.
There is no doubt that Cryptocurrency is a word that provokes a very strong response these days. On one hand, Team Crypto proclaimers the arena as the next big thing as they speak in blue sky terms about the future of this new form of currency that takes digital shape and is beyond restriction. In direct opposition is Team Tradition that warns of the perils of decentralization and fraud around pure digital currency. Indeed, there was nothing short of a frenzy around trading on the CBOE Bitcoin futures a few days ago, while the day after reports detailed a large digital heist surrounding Ethereum. Doomsday sentiment around this new area of tech convergence with thaof the financial spectrum is plentiful. Just why is there so much fear around the area of cryptocurrency, and what will 2018 mean for this pioneering area, particularly as we move to a general cashless society that is easily driven and adopted by the massive Millennial demographic?
Bitcoin provides freshness properties by forming a blockchain where each block is associated with its timestamp and the previous block. Due to these properties, the Bitcoin protocol is being used as a decentralized, trusted, and secure timestamping service. Although Bitcoin participants which create new blocks cannot modify their order, they can manipulate timestamps almost undetected. This undermines the Bitcoin protocol as a reliable timestamping service. In particular, a newcomer that synchronizes the entire blockchain has a little guarantee about timestamps of all blocks. In this paper, we present a simple yet powerful mechanism that increases the reliability of Bitcoin timestamps. Our protocol can provide evidence that a block was created within a certain time range. The protocol is efficient, backward compatible, and surprisingly, currently deployed SSL/TLS servers can act as reference time sources. The protocol has many applications and can be used for detecting various attacks against the Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin provides freshness properties by forming a blockchain where each block is associated with its timestamp and the previous block. Due to these properties, the Bitcoin protocol is being used as a decentralized, trusted, and secure timestamping service. Although Bitcoin participants which create new blocks cannot modify their order, they can manipulate timestamps almost undetected. This undermines the Bitcoin protocol as a reliable timestamping service. In particular, a newcomer that synchronizes the entire blockchain has a little guarantee about timestamps of all blocks.
In this paper, we present a simple yet powerful mechanism that increases the reliability of Bitcoin timestamps. Our protocol can provide evidence that a block was created within a certain time range. The protocol is efficient, backward compatible, and surprisingly, currently deployed SSL/TLS servers can act as reference time sources. The protocol has many applications and can be used for detecting various attacks against the Bitcoin protocol.
The recent decade has witnessed an extraordinary degree of innovation in the financial sector. Developments in financial technology, computing power, and networking theory have allowed decentralized online platforms such as Bitcoin to fundamentally change the way that financial services are provided. While these innovations have been applauded by many as bringing a welcome degree of competition to a sector long dominated by powerful incumbents, they also create a set of challenges for current financial regulation. How do fiduciary standards apply to algorithms? How does online finance affect the behavior of investors? And more generally, how can regulators monitor and constrain the financial industry when it is increasingly run by autonomous, dispersed computer networks? This Article argues that current financial regulation is inadequate to address the unique problems presented by the rise of Bitcoin and other fintech industries. In particular, these innovations raise concerns about the ability of financial regulation to promote three inter-related financial goals: the efficient allocation of capital, the protection of consumers, and the prevention of systemic risk. These goals, at the core of current approaches to financial regulation, are all challenged by fintech’s defining feature: its reliance on disembodied institutions and complex algorithms for its functioning. These traits render the traditional tools used by regulators to discipline markets—substantive behavioral obligations, the threat of sanctions, and the constraining effect of reputation—largely ineffective. The Article concludes by proposing a set of principles to guide lawmakers in designing a more effective financial regulatory structure for the Bitcoin era.
We introduce a new diffusion process Xt to describe asset prices within an economic bubble cycle. The main feature of the process, which differs from existing models, is the drift term where a mean-reversion is taken based on an exponential decay of the scaled price. Our study shows the scaling factor on Xt is crucial for modelling economic bubbles as it mitigates the dependence structure between the price and parameters in the model. We prove both the process and its first passage time are well-defined. An efficient calibration scheme, together with the probability density function for the process are given. Moreover, by employing the perturbation technique, we deduce the closed-form density for the downward first passage time, which therefore can be used in estimating the burst time of an economic bubble. The object of this study is to understand the asset price dynamics when a financial bubble is believed to form, and correspondingly provide estimates to the bubble crash time. Calibration examples on the US dot-com bubble and the 2007 Chinese stock market crash verify the effectiveness of the model itself. The example on BitCoin prediction confirms that we can provide meaningful estimate on the downward probability for asset prices.
The blockchain, as underlying technology of Bitcoins, has implications that reach far beyond the original intent as virtual currency. In this paper, we investigate how blockchain technology can be encompassed in the innovation process and bring huge benefits to the patent system as well as copyrights, trade secrecy, defensive publications, and open innovation. We further explore the institutional support for the technology necessary for a successful implementation, in form of legislations and governmental projects. We find out that numerous authorities have started voting favorable legislations and recognizing the technology as a valid public ledger. Ultimately, we confirm our findings by interviewing three actors involved in the innovation process. Keywords: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Intellectual property, Legislation, Innovation
Digitalni novac pojavio u devedesetim godinama prošlog stoljeća. Kriptovaluta je podvrsta digitalnog novca koja funkcionira na temelju na kriptografskih algoritama. Bitcoin je prva kriptovaluta u povijesti te prvi oblik digitalnog novca koji za prijenos vrijednosti koristi kriptografske algoritme. Primjerice, bitcoin adrese kreiraju se iz privatnog ključa temeljem asimetrične kriptografije. Nadalje, sve bitcoin transakcije uključuju digitalne potpise, što je također metoda iz područja kriptografije. Nakon što je bitcoin dobio na popularnosti pojavile su se mnoge kopije ove digitalne valute. Ono što je zajedničkom svim tim kopijama je da također u svojoj srži sadrže kriptografske algoritme, te stoga kopije bitcoina također nazivamo kriptovalutama. Od siječnja ove godine vrijednost najpoznatije svjetske kriptovalute bitcoin skočila je višestruko i trenutna cijena je 18.755 dolara, a ona ovisi o broju kupaca i matematičkim izračunima. Pitanje je dana kad će tržište bitcoina premašiti stotinu milijardi američkih dolara. Uz njegov nagli rast stižu i upozorenja da bi i taj balon mogao brzo puknuti, kao i mnogi drugi proizvodi na koje su se navukli ulagači.
Reproducibility is the ability of recreating identical binaries under pre-defined build environments. Due to the need of quality assurance and the benefit of better detecting attacks against build environments, the practice of reproducible builds has gained popularity in many open-source software repositories such as Debian and Bitcoin. However, identifying the unreproducible issues remains a labour intensive and time consuming challenge, because of the lacking of information to guide the search and the diversity of the causes that may lead to the unreproducible binaries. In this paper we propose an automated framework called RepLoc to localize the problematic files for unreproducible builds. RepLoc features a query augmentation component that utilizes the information extracted from the build logs, and a heuristic rule-based filtering component that narrows the search scope. By integrating the two components with a weighted file ranking module, RepLoc is able to automatically produce a ranked list of files that are helpful in locating the problematic files for the unreproducible builds. We have implemented a prototype and conducted extensive experiments over 671 real-world unreproducible Debian packages in four different categories. By considering the topmost ranked file only, RepLoc achieves an accuracy rate of 47.09%. If we expand our examination to the top ten ranked files in the list produced by RepLoc, the accuracy rate becomes 79.28%. Considering that there are hundreds of source code, scripts, Makefiles, etc., in a package, RepLoc significantly reduces the scope of localizing problematic files. Moreover, with the help of RepLoc, we successfully identified and fixed six new unreproducible packages from Debian and Guix.
Bitcoin may not last, but blockchain could be the real dealEconomist Nouriel Roubini, aka Dr. Doom since he predicted the 2008 financial crisis, called it "the mother of all bubbles."The head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Howard Davies, invoked Dante's Inferno to warn investors off it.JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon flat-out called
The evolution of the economic processes is reflected on the way the currency work. The recent development of new methods of payment based on the computer systems – and, in particular, the electronic-based systems used to register the debit\credit position, the operationalization of the market – have elicited the growth of the phenomenon of cryptocurrency, and bitcoin is nowadays the most common. There is still no precise definition of cryptocurrency at the moment, due to the complexity in matching the cryptocurrency with the proper related case in issue. That said, it is crucial as in the face of a growing interest in bitcoins, the predisposition of an adequate control mechanism, still missing, is assuming a more and more importance; and in such a critical context, this lack treats the potential traders in this new segment. The awareness of the effective consistency and diffusion of the phenomenon should encourage the authorities in taking actions against the potential risks, especially for those inexperienced operators that are not able to identify and evaluate them, attracted by the promise of high profits with low investments. One of the most critical aspect in subiecta materia is the fiscal treatment of those bitcoin operations with particular regard to money laundering and terrorism financing. The growing phenomenon of crypto currencies – in addition to introduce potential danger (with evident damages for those who use them improperly) – emphasizes the need to move forward new forms of regulation of such complex matter, so that it can be redefined under the competence of the public authority.
Any online transaction that involves digital money is a bit of a challenge these days with the rising threats of hackers trying to steal bank details posted online. This leads to the invention of various kinds of crypto-currency, Bitcoin being one of them. The technology behind using the Bitcoin is popularly called as Blockchain. Blockchain is a digitized, de-centralized, public ledger of all crypto-currency transaction/s. Blockchain tries to create and share all the online transactions, stored in a distributed ledger, as a data structure on a network of computers. It validates the transactions using peer-to-peer network of computers. It allows users to make and verify transactions immediately without a central authority. Blockchain is a transaction database which contains information about all the transactions ever executed in the past and works on Bitcoin protocol. In this analysis paper we discussed what is Blockchain?, SWOT analysis of BC, Types of BC and how Blockchain works along with its advantages and disadvantages.
Nabeel Younis, Muhammad Anas Imtiaz, David Starobinski, Ari Trachtenberg
Efficient and reliable block propagation on the Bitcoin network is vital for ensuring the scalability of this peer-to-peer network. To this end, several schemes have been proposed over the last few years to speed up the block propagation, most notably the compact block protocol (BIP 152). Despite this, we show experimental evidence that nodes that have recently joined the network may need about ten days until this protocol becomes 90% effective. This problem is endemic for nodes that do not have persistent network connectivity. We propose to mitigate this ineffectiveness by maintaining mempool synchronization among Bitcoin nodes. For this purpose, we design and implement into Bitcoin a new prioritized data synchronization protocol, called FalafelSync. Our experiments show that FalafelSync helps intermittently connected nodes to maintain better consistency with more stable nodes, thereby showing promise for improving block propagation in the broader network. In the process, we have also developed an effective logging mechanism for bitcoin nodes we release for public use.
Financial innovation has entered a new era in which a digitalized system and cryptocurrency have been created. This paper examines the factors that influence the price movement of bitcoin. This is not a legal currency in Indonesia; the Indonesian government has not made any regulations legalizing bitcoin’s use, but it has also not issued any new laws to prohibit the trade in bitcoins and other digital currencies. The demand for, and price growth of, bitcoin are interesting matters to study, especially for Indonesians who still have questions about the progress of Bitcoin transactions and the factors that influent them. In Indonesia itself, without any protection from the government, the bitcoin price on December 14, 2017 had already reached more than IDR224.5 million, compare to IDR60 million in October 2017. Bitcoin is the first peer-to-peer currency, and was introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Since its inception, bitcoin has served more than 17 million users, including Indonesians. Bitcoin behaves in a different manner, compared to traditional currencies and the one that affects bitcoin’s price is its attractiveness for investors. The Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is applied to analyze the short-term and long-term influences. VECM is used in this research because the data is stationary in the first difference and has a cointegration relationship. To make the interpretation clearer, the impulse response function and variance decomposition also are included in this research. The result indicates that the macroeconomic indicator, represented by the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the demand for bitcoins and the gold price influence bitcoin’s price fluctuations in the short-run and long-run. Bitcoin’s supply does not influence its price fluctuation in the long-run but does influence it in the short-run. The implication of this research is bitcoin could compete as an alternative investment compared to the capital markets and gold.
Rolf van Wegberg, J.J. Oerlemans, Oskar van Deventer
Purpose -This paper aims to shed light into money laundering using bitcoin. Digital payment methods are increasingly used by criminals to launder money obtained through cybercrime. As many forms of cybercrime are motivated by profit, a solid cash-out strategy is required to ensure that crime proceeds end up with the criminals themselves without an incriminating money trail. The authors examine how cybercrime proceeds can be laundered using services that are offered on the Dark Web.
The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been prominently featured in the news recently. Its ascension in value has been nothing short of extraordinary. This article briefly explains what Bitcoin is and how it works. The more challenging question is what Bitcoin—this cryptographic breakthrough—really is: currency, like the U.S. dollar, an asset, more like gold, or something else? Further, can this astonishing run-up in value continue or will Bitcoin be added to the long list of so-called "asset bubbles" that eventually burst, causing pain for those that own them?
By thinking loudly about putting the regulation of cryptocurrencies on the agenda of the G20, governments seem to have managed to keep the Bitcoin bubble from inflating into a systemic risk, so far. In a tongue-in-cheek sense, this behavior of supervisory and regulatory authorities can be described as the distributed ledger technology of financial supervision. It is distributed because it does not have a clear center. The G20 seems to be the common reference point for many actors, but it does not speak itself. It is like a shared code.