Blockchain Papers

Neeraj Samtani

No abstract is available for this record.

Lin William Cong, Zhiguo He, Jiasun Li

The rise of centralized mining pools for risk sharing does not necessarily undermine the decentralization required for permissionless blockchains: Each individual miner's cross-pool diversification and endogenous fees charged by pools generally sustain decentralization, because larger pools better internalize their externality on global hash rates, charge higher fees, attract disproportionately fewer miners, and thus grow more slowly. Instead, mining pools as a financial innovation escalate the arms race among competing miners and thus significantly increase the energy consumption of proof-of-work-based consensus mechanisms. Empirical evidence from Bitcoin mining supports our model predictions. The economic insights inform many other blockchain protocols as well as the industrial organization of mainstream sectors with similar characteristics but ambiguous prior findings.

Manuel Schlegel, Liudmila Zavolokina, Gerhard Schwabe

The blockchain, the ledger that underlies the famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has huge implications for many industries. There have been various papers dedicated to research how blockchain technology will transform businesses and industries. However, current research lacks an overview of what the blockchain implies for the biggest stakeholder of these businesses and industries: consumers. This paper aims to provide an overview of how the blockchain affects consumers. We conduct a systematic literature review and enrich it with interview-based knowledge from blockchain experts to show how blockchain technology changes business sectors, name affected consumers in these sectors, derive implications for these consumers and list existing as well as currently emerging blockchain-based products and services. Finally, we warn of the technical, institutional and human challenges and manifold pitfalls blockchain technology must overcome to gain widespread adaptation among consumers.

Jan-Philipp Arps

With the invention of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2009, the world's first blockchain application was developed. While academic research gradually begins to investigate cryptocurrencies more closely and attempt to understand their functioning, technology is rapidly evolving and ecosystems grow exponentially. The research is still scattered and chaotic and has not produced common guidelines. Therefore, the question remains: how sustainable cryptocurrencies and their digital ecosystems are.Only a few models and frameworks take a holistic view on digital sustainability. Only two frameworks were identified that take distributed ledger technologies (blockchain) or cryptocurrencies into consideration: the three governance strategies for digital sustainability of Linkov et al. (2018) and 10 basic conditions of sustainable digital artifacts according to Stuermer, Abu-Tayeh and Myrach (2016). These two frameworks were combined into a new integrated sustainability framework for cryptocurrencies. The developed integrated sustainability framework consists of four dimensions and 12 categories.Existing secondary data, self-conducted social media interviews and practical insights gained through an ASIC mining experiment were used to fill the framework with sufficient data. It confirms Bitcoin's sustainability problems in energy consumption and scalability, highlights Ethereum's great potential as a blockchain platform and explains the higher scalability and faster payment of Ripple and IOTA.While 2017 marked the temporary peak of the cryptocurrency hype, 2018 was a transformative year in which the leading cryptocurrencies were increasingly occupying more specialised niches.

Rebecca Webster

Although more common internationally, some US companies are paying their employees in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin either internally or using a third-party administrator such as Bitwage.Bitwage boasts two-

Sheila Ogochukwu Nnabuife, Yosra Jarrar

Given the economic hardship in Nigeria in the past few years, Nigerians resorted to finding alternative ways as a survival strategy. Bit-coin and a good number of other crypto currencies formed the long sought economic alternative to such extent that it is gradually getting public acceptance as a means of transaction. Subsequent upon the collapse of MMM, the Nigerian government dismissed the use of crypto as legal means of exchange in Nigeria. This brought about reaction from bit-coin participants, experts and government officials. This study therefore is an examination of online media coverage aimed at ascertaining the slant of coverage, the dominant media source and type and how detailed the reports issued in the media concerning Bit-coin are. The researcher used the qualitative and quantitative content analysis research method to examine the manifest contents of the selected online media while framing and social responsibility theory formed the benchmark for the study. The study spanned for three months covering December 2017 through February 2018. Findings revealed that Nigerian online media gave negative slant to their coverage of Bit-coin crypto currency. It was also found that while government source dominates news source, straight news reports dominated the types of media used in the coverage of Bit-coin crypto-currency. The researcher concluded that the media had played their social responsibility role to the public by providing detailed reports on bit-coin and recommended that the mainstream media should also join hands in delivering detailed messages on salient issues.

Aleksander Bjørnå Spade

This thesis analyzes whether inflation rates, government bonds and corruption levels have an impact on the difference between local prices of bitcoin and prices on the most liquid exchanges globally. Bitcoin may act as a preferred alternative to local currencies in countries with high levels of financial uncertainty, hence people who live in these countries might be willing to pay a premium to purchase bitcoin as they reduce the risk related to the future value of their own fiat currency. Daily average prices on bitcoin, in 15 different fiat currencies, are downloaded from LocalBitcoins and converted to USD at official exchange rates. The data covers the period of Jan.2015-Dec.2017. By calculating daily deviations from the BNC Liquid Index and aggregating to monthly observations, we consider three different panel data models: the static- and dynamic fixed effects and a within-between random effects model. The results suggest that countries with higher average inflation rates has a higher premium, while a within increase in monthly inflation has a negative impact. If the premium on 10Y government bonds increases, the premium increases significantly, but when comparing across countries, the average bond rate is not significant, but positive. A within increase in corruption levels has a positive impact on the premium, but surprisingly we get a negative relationship at country level. Countries with poor economic performance and high levels of uncertainty seems to be willing to pay a premium to acquire Bitcoins

Imran Makhdoom, Mehran Abolhasan, Wei Ni

Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved Bitcoin has revolutionized the decentralized payment system by excluding the need for a trusted third party, reducing the transaction (TX) fee and time involved in TX confirmation as compared to a conventional banking system. The underlying technology of Bitcoin is Blockchain, which was initially designed for financial TXs only. However, due to its decentralized architecture, fault tolerance and cryptographic security benefits such as user anonymity, data integrity and authentication, researchers and security analysts around the world are focusing on the Blockchain to resolve security and privacy issues of IoT. But at the same time, default limitations of Blockchain, such as latency in transaction confirmation, scalability concerning Blockchain size and network expansion, lack of IoT-centric transaction validation rules, the absence of IoT-focused consensus protocols and insecure device integration are required to be addressed before it can be used securely and efficiently in an IoT environment. Therefore, in this paper we analyze some of the existing consensus protocols used in various Blockchain-based applications, with a focus on investigating significant limitations in TX (Transaction) validation and consensus mechanism that make them inappropriate to be implemented in Blockchain-based IoT systems. We also propose a way forward to address these issues.

António Brandão, Henrique São Mamede, Ramiro Gonçalves

No abstract is available for this record.

Dan Freeman, Tim McWilliams, Sudip Bhattacharyya, Craig Hall · 5 authors

Trust is paramount for the effective operation of any monetary system. While the distributed architecture of blockchain technology on which cryptocurrencies operate has many benefits, the anonymity of users on the blockchain has provided criminal users an opportunity to hide both their identities and illicit activities. In this paper, we present a scoring mechanism for cryptocurrency users where the scores represent users’ trustworthiness as safe or risky transactors in the cryptocurrency community. In order to distinguish law-abiding users from potential threats in the Bitcoin marketplace, we analyze historical thefts to profile transactions, classify them into risky and non-risky categories using several machine learning techniques, and finally calculate a reputation score for every unique user based on their past association with any unlawful Bitcoin incident. The Support Vector Machine model based on two key attributes produces an accuracy of 86% and is considered the most applicable for our dataset. Our reputation score ranges from 0 to the total number of transactions by a given user where a higher score indicates greater trustworthiness in making Bitcoin transactions. This score helps to identify reputable users and, therefore, acts as a guideline for safe Bitcoin transactions. In the cryptocurrency marketplace, our self-attestation metric in the form of a reputation score offers a foundation for enhancing trust between transacting parties.

Emanuele Borgonovo, Alessandra Cillo, Stefano Caselli, Donato Masciandaro

No abstract is available for this record.

Wawrzyniec Michalczyk

Streszczenie: Artyku powicony jest tematyce bitcoina, prekursora wrd kryptowalut i wci najwaniejszej z nich. Na drodze do coraz szerszego wykorzystania go jako nowej formy pienidza midzynarodowego stoi wiele barier. Celem opracowania jest identyfikacja i charakterystyka najistotniejszych z nich: stabilizacji kursu, odpowiedniego zakresu i jakoci regulacji na poziomie pastwowym i midzynarodowym, zwikszenia stopnia bezpieczestwa systemu oraz koniecznoci upowszechnienia si bitcoina

Sajjad Hosain

Cryptocurrencies are a sort of digital money created and managed through the use of advanced encryption techniques known as cryptography. This paper has made a simple explanation of cryptocurrencies (particularly Bitcoin) as well as an attempt to make some future assumptions regarding such virtual currencies with the aid of previous literature and published online sources. The various aspects of these virtual currencies are yet to be discovered in detail, but the author hopes that this simple, basic and narrative paper will be helpful to those seeking basic references regarding this newest issue.

Alicemani, P. Likithakariappa

Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency to be traded. There has been drastic increase in the price of bitcoin since 2013. Granger Causality analysis has been carried out to examine whether the price of commodities and the exchange rates helps in predicting the future price of bitcoin. For this study, the price of bitcoin, commodity prices and exchange rates have been considered from Jan 2103-Sep 2017. After the analysis it can be concluded that the price of commodities and the exchange rates does not help in predicting the future price of bitcoin. The past data of the price of bitcoin helps in predicting the future price of copper and British pound exchange rate with that of U.S dollars. Using Regression analysis, it can be determined that when the price increases by 0.0084 dollars there is one unit increase in the volume of transaction. Using variance analysis it can be observed that the price of bitcoin is more volatile compared to the price of commodities and the exchange rates.

Anand Shah, Anu Bahri

No abstract is available for this record.

Harold Szu

The invention of "BiT Coin (BTC)", by Satashi Nagamoto circa 2008, remains as a formidable task. There is a plenty of benefits to motivate a further development of BTC without the rare metal material as the token, as the early Digital Crypto Currency (DCC), e.g. ( "I owe you such under this reneging condition." The major difference in secured feature is taking the available World Wide Web broadcasting one-way to all memberships in the Cloud. However, only the (1) involved trading partners can read with their private keys, (2) no third party banking or broker fee, (3) no International currency exchange fee, and (4) no one can rob the digital bank, etc. These benefits have been endorsed by Small Business Innovative Research.

Juan A. Garay, Aggelos Kiayias, Nikos Leonardos, Giorgos Panagiotakos

No abstract is available for this record.

Anders Tveita, Martin Borander

Blockchain was launched as a social experiment by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, when the person
\nor persons behind the pseudonym launched an online currency named Bitcoin. What started out
\nas a decentralized alternative to traditional finance, has eventually turned into what some people
\nbelieve to be a technological revolution. This may in time alter governments and businesses in
\nthe same way the Internet did when it was popularized.
\nHowever, there has been done little research on corporations and governments adoption of this
\nnew technology. The presented study aims to expand this research, and develop a theoretical
\nmodel that could explain some of the adoption intentions among corporations and their
\nemployees. While being narrow in scope, the research may prove to be a suitable framework for
\nbroader future studies on the technology. The established theoretical framework of the
\nTechnology Adoption Model, with extensions from the Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory
\nof Planned Behavior is the foundation for the research.
\nThe data for this research was obtained through a survey (N=102), before the output was
\nanalyzed. The results show that subjective norm and perceived usefulness are important factors
\nof the intention to use Blockchain technology among Norwegian corporations. All in all, this
\nmodel explains 45.7 % of the variance in intention to adopt the technology.

Mira Nagarajan

Cryptocurrency, or digital currency that utilizes blockchain technology and cryptography to encode transactions, has excited many with the promise of minimizing governance. Although the structure of cryptocurrency is inherently decentralized, cryptocurrency relies upon complex relationships between different actors with various functions and roles.. The execution of cryptocurrency thus depends on the mutually satisfying interactions of these actors, who form the basis for non-technical governance structures.\nThis paper investigates the extent to which technical governance mitigates traditional governance problems by examining the governance structures of two cryptocurrencies. It first gives background into the origin and technical value proposition of cryptocurrency, as well as governance theory, before analyzing Bitcoin and Ethereum to understand whEther technology mitigates actors’ motivations. This paper finds that despite cryptocurrency’s promise of minimizing governance, both Bitcoin and Ethereum rely heavily on trust networks, indicating that elements of non-technical governance are, in fact, crucial to their effectiveness.

Artem Kazakov

The present work aims to provide a general economic analysis of cryptocurrencies. This
\nanalysis refers in a general way to all cryptocurrencies but will mainly focus on bitcoin
\nsince it is the currency with the highest usage and worldwide acceptance. Because the
\nsubject is relatively new, this work begins by summarizing the history and important
\nde nitions of the cryptocurrency ecosystem...

Zoran Jović, Goran Kunjadić

An emergence and a rapid development of cryptocurrencies have its monetary and technological background. From the monetary aspect, cryptocurrencies emerged as one of the solutions to the consequences of the last major World financial and economic crisis. To address the consequences of this crisis, the solution was the expansive monetary policy on the global level. Increasing the quantity of money in circulation leads to the fall of its value, and makes depositors search for the solutions for preserving the value of savings, apart from gold and other precious metals, outside the existing monetary system. In addition to this investment opportunity, the nature of cryptocurrencies as an easily transferable payment method, without an intermediary, further increased their attractiveness. From a technological point of view, the emergence of cryptocurrencies was enabled and supported by the emergence of a blockchain technology as a distributed database. This technology represents a decentralized, publicly available database containing registers of asset and transactions in the socalled peer to peer network run by globally connected computers without the impact of any state institutions or powerful individuals and corporations. Therefore, there is a common belief that transactions with cryptocurrencies are anonymous and, thus, often used on the black market. However, these transactions are only partially anonymous. Governments, as well as other users, may check each and every bitcoin address, the amount of money on these addresses, and the flows of money between those addresses through the Internet. There are also browsers called "blockchainexplorers", on the Internet, where after entering the address, it is possible to obtain information about the cash balance and all incoming and outgoing transactions.

Christian Masiak, Joern Block, Tobias Masiak, Matthias Neuenkirch · 5 authors

We analyse the triangle of Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) and cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin and Ethereum. So far, little is known about the relationship between ICOs, bitcoin and Ether prices. Hence, we employ both bitcoin and Ether prices but also the ICO amount to measure the future development of raised capital in ICOs. First, our results indicate that an ICO has an influence on the subsequent ICO. Second, not only bitcoin prices but also Ether prices play a considerable role with regard to the output of ICO campaigns. However, the effect of Ethereum is of shorter duration on ICO compared to Bitcoin on ICO. A further finding is that the cryptocurrency Bitcoin positively influences Ether. The implications of these findings for investors and entrepreneurial firms are discussed.

O.Y. Yelisieieva, O.V. Voloshina, Serhii Didur

No abstract is available for this record.

OlaOluwa S. Yaya, Ephraim A Ogbonna, Olusanya E. Olubusoye

The present paper investigates persistence and dependence of Bitcoin on other popular alternative coins. We employ fractional integration approach in our analysis of persistence while a more recent fractional cointegration technique in VAR set-up, proposed by Johansen and co-authors is used to investigate dependency of the paired variables. Having segregated the series into periods before crash and those after the crash as determined by Bitcoin pricing, we obtain results of interests. Higher persistence of shocks is expected after the crash due to speculations in the mind of cryptocurrency traders, and more evidences of non-mean reversions, implying chances of further price fall in cryptocurrencies. Cointegration analysis between Bitcoin and alternative coin exists during both periods, with weak correlation observed mostly in the post-crash period. We hope the findings will serve as guide to investors in cryptocurrency.