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.
This research intended to understand the factors affecting the acceptance of Bitcoin technology in Indonesia. It adopted the model of Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), which took into account four influencing factors. Those were performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. The factors of gender and age were assumed to moderate the relations between those four factors and use and behavioral intention. The empirical data for those factors were collected by questionnaires from 49 respondents. The statistical significance of the relationships was evaluated by multivariate regression analysis. The result is a model that matches the data with R2 = 0,678. It demonstrates a high level of fitness. The analysis suggests that the performance expectancy factor and the social influence factor greatly affect the behavioral intention to use Bitcoin with the values of t-statistic of 3,835 (p-value = 0,000) for the former factor and 1,948 (0,059) for the latter factor. However, the social influence factor has less profound effect on the behavioral intention.
Collection of intelligence is one of the key elements to organize more sophisticated methods of attacks. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a technique used by attackers for reconnaissance purposes to gather information about specific targets. The accessibility to critical information about emerging systems through OSINT leads exposure of vulnerabilities and exploitation of these vulnerabilities to form widespread attack. Blockchain is one of the emerging technologies that exposed the use of crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This research paper explains the use of OSINT to gather critical information about cryptocurrency miners such as Bitcoin Antminer and Ethereum Claymore and expose the vulnerabilities to exploit the configuration file of the miner manager. The research outcomes expose the vulnerability of the existing crypto currencies and use of OSINT for detection and analysis of cyberthreat in crypto currency market.
Roberto Frota Décourt, Usman W. Chohan, Maria Letizia Perugini
Esta investigación verifica si el efecto lunes que se encuentra en los mercados de acciones y letras del Tesoro también se produce en el mercado de Bitcoin, que difiere profundamente de otros mercados porque nunca se cierra. Una posible explicación para el efecto lunes es que la negociación del lunes ocurre después de uno o más días sin ninguna transacción. Se usó la prueba t-Student para verificar si los retornos diarios promedio de cada día de la semana son significativamente diferentes de otros días y encontramos que los retornos del lunes son significativamente más altos que en otros días. Después de eso, estimamos un modelo de regresión para confirmar que el retorno promedio del lunes es positivo y superior al promedio de otros días y se confirmó.
Crptocurrency is a type of digital currency that using decentralized method for validating transaction. In the same time, the user of the Bitcoin is protected using hash algorithm. The value of Bitcoin is increased sharply in 2017 that creates much attention from investors. The objective of this study is to develop the mathematical model evaluate growth of Bitcoin exchange rate. The data selected in this study are starting from 1st January 2017 until 10th December 2017. This study validates the normality distribution of data using graphical and numerical method. Graphical method indicates the first difference of data distribution is a non-normal distribution. Then, Shapiro-Wilk statistical test confirmed that first difference of data distribution deviate from normal distribution. The non-normal distribution occurs because of the presence of outliers. Next, this study validates the mathematical modeling fordata trend using quadratic formula. Result indicates that the growth of Bitcoin exchange rate in moving towards non-equilibrium point. This concludes that the growth of the Bitcoin exchange rate is in unstable region. The contribution of this study is to help investors to understand the nature of Bitcoin exchange rate. This study performed analysis that helps investors to develop more efficient investment portfolio in gaining better profit and reducing loss
Off-chain transaction channels represent one of the leading techniques to scale the transaction throughput in cryptocurrencies. However, the economic effect of transaction channels on the system has not been explored much until now. We study the economics of Bitcoin transaction channels, and present a framework for an economic analysis of the lightning network and its effect on transaction fees on the blockchain. Our framework allows us to reason about different patterns of demand for transactions and different topologies of the lightning network, and to derive the resulting fees for transacting both on and off the blockchain. Our initial results indicate that while the lightning network does allow for a substantially higher number of transactions to pass through the system, it does not necessarily provide higher fees to miners, and as a result may in fact lead to lower participation in mining within the system.
El Bitcoin, cuya dimension como criptomoneda se esta multiplicando desde su creacion en 2009, debe ser objeto de una regulacion legal urgente, a fin de evitar los problemas juridicos que puedan derivar de su alegalidad, ya que esta realidad digital esta siendo objeto de transmision entre particulares sin una normativa especifica que la regule.
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.
Bitcoin is promoted as decentralized cryptocurrency by using pseudonym to achieve anonymity. Unfortunately, numerous seminal works have demonstrated that Bitcoin only offers weak anonymity in practice. Indeed, the practical technologies of clustering and flow analysis are much effective for tracing Bitcoin transaction and thereby revealing the owner involved. Otherwise said, user's privacy in Bitcoin has been sadly degenerated to be linkable. In this paper, we propose a completely decentralized scheme that can provide full anonymity in Bitcoin. The idea behind the output is to exploit a secure escrow address, which is consensual by all the involved users. The escrow address is generated from the trick of cryptographically secure distributed key generation and can then be used for mixing transactions in Bitcoin. Our protocol is secure against malicious adversaries. The users can jointly perform the protocol and successfully accomplish the transaction without the help of any (trusted) third party and no extra fees. Besides, our proposal is completely compatible with the current Bitcoin architecture.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Strategic interactions between competitive entities are generally considered from the perspective of complete revelation of benefits achieved from those interactions, in the form of public payoff functions and/or beliefs, in the announced games. However, there exist strategic interplays between competitors where the players have a choice to strategise under the availability of private payoffs, in similar competitive settings. In this contribution, we propose a formal framework for a competitive ecosystem where each player is permitted to defect from publicly optimal strategies under certain private payoffs greater than announced payoffs, given that these defections have certain acceptable bounds in the long run as agreed by all players. We call this game theoretic construction an Intention Game. We formally define an Intention Game, and notions of participational equilibria that exist in such interactions that permit public defections. We compare Intention Games with conventional strategic form games, and demonstrate a type-theoretic construction of Intention Games. In a partially honest setting, we give Intention Game instances of a Cournot competition, secure interactions between mobile applications, an Internet services' data sourcing competition between Internet service providers through content delivery networks, and a Bitcoin mining competition. We give a use of Intention Games to determine player participation in a cryptographic protocol. Finally, we demonstrate the possibility of a dual model of the Intention Games framework.
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.
The improvement of monetary systems is a topical and controversial issue in contemporary economic science. The article examines the main problems of bitcoin. The focus is on disclosing the economic essence, reasons and results of bitcoin, as well as problems of practical use in Russia. It presents the author's interpretation of the financial aspect of bitcoin and its effect on the financial situation of the individual layers of users. In conclusion, it proposes to implement cryptocurrencies in Russia as an important instrument of economic management and economic growth. Keywords: market society, bitcoin, users, results
Open access
2 source records
Economic and Technological Developments in Russia
Economic, Social, and Public Health Issues in Russia and Globally
Transparency is crucial in security-critical applications that rely on authoritative information, as it provides a robust mechanism for holding these authorities accountable for their actions. A number of solutions have emerged in recent years that provide transparency in the setting of certificate issuance, and Bitcoin provides an example of how to enforce transparency in a financial setting. In this work we shift to a new setting, the distribution of software package binaries, and present a system for so-called "binary transparency." Our solution, Contour, uses proactive methods for providing transparency, privacy, and availability, even in the face of persistent man-in-the-middle attacks. We also demonstrate, via benchmarks and a test deployment for the Debian software repository, that Contour is the only system for binary transparency that satisfies the efficiency and coordination requirements that would make it possible to deploy today.
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.
In the modern era, the digital currency or "crypto-currency" is developed rapidly. The most famous and large-scale digital payment system is bitcoin, the operation of which is based on modern blockchain technology. This crypto currency was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nowdays, this system operates in many countries in the world, and the number of such countries is growing every year.
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.
This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is ‘trust-free’ money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper's heart is the paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a ‘thing’ that must be abstracted from social life in order for it to be protected from manipulation by bank intermediaries and political authorities. The image is of a fully mechanized currency that operates over and above social life. In practice, however, the currency has generated a thriving community around its political ideals, relies on a high degree of social organization in order to be produced, has a discernible social structure, and is characterized by asymmetries of wealth and power that are not dissimilar from the mainstream financial system. Unwittingly, then, Bitcoin serves as a powerful demonstration of the relational character of money.
Purpose -Aiming to discover whether Bitcoin prices have an effect on investor decisions in stock market transactions sounds exciting. Therefore, among investment, money, payment system functionalities of the cryptocurrencies which are very popular on economic and financial agenda nowadays, only the investment function regarding to the market volume of Bitcoin (which is very popular) is taken into consideration in this study. Methodology -In the scope of the study, because similar analyses between cryptocurrencies and stock market indices do not exist in the literature, cointegration relation between them are examined. Thus, the cointegration between Bitcoin (since there are many cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin is very popular and has the highest proportion in all terms in general) and selected stock indices can be investigated by the ARDL boundary test method. Since the analysis method gives meaningful information in terms of different time periods, the price and index data of these variables have been analysed. Findings-Cointegration relationship between Bitcoin prices and leading US and Chinese stock market indices is observed. Within this context, it can be told that investors in these stock markets could be influenced by Bitcoin prices in their long-term investment decision process. Any relationship was not found with BIST100, FTSE100 and NIKKEI225 indices. Conclusion -Necessity to examine the relation among Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and other investment instruments with payment systems, money, e-commerce figures and macroeconomic indicators in the light of the arguments and the results found in our analysis would add more value to the literature. In addition, other dimensions of this topic should be regulated and be analysed by new studies within the scope of other technological developments in the 4 th Industrial Revolution. It is also decided to analyse relationship among related Istanbul Stock Exchange sub-indices, the Turkish Lira, gold, money supply and other cryptocurrencies in the following/future studies.
SteemIt is a Reddit-like social news site that pays members for posting and curating content. It uses micropayments backed by a tradeable currency, exploiting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency generation model to finance content provision in conjunction with advertising. If successful, this paradigm might change the way in which volunteer-based sites operate. This article investigates 925,092 new members’ first posts for insights into what drives financial success in the site. Initial blog posts on average received US$0.01, although the maximum accrued was US$20,680.83. Longer, more sentiment-rich or more positive comments with personal information received the greatest financial reward in contrast to more informational or topical content. Thus, there is a clear financial value in starting with a friendly introduction rather than immediately attempting to provide useful content, despite the latter being the ultimate site goal. Follow-up posts also tended to be more successful when more personal, suggesting that interpersonal communication rather than quality content provision has driven the site so far. It remains to be seen whether the model of small typical rewards and the possibility that a post might generate substantially more are enough to incentivise long-term participation or a greater focus on informational posts in the long term.
The emergence of Bitcoin in 2009 has received considerable attention surrounding the validity of cryptocurrencies as a viable and, in some jurisdictions, a legal currency alternative. Despite widespread concern that these cryptocurrencies are fostering the environment within which a substantial bubble can occur, it is important to analyze whether these new assets are behaving similarly to major international currencies. This paper investigates the effects of international monetary policy changes on bitcoin returns using a GARCH (1.1) estimation model. The results indicate that monetary policy decisions based on interest rates taken by the Federal Open Market Committee in the United States significantly impact upon bitcoin returns. After controlling for international effects, we find significant evidence of volatility effects driven by United States, European Union, United Kingdom and Japanese quantitative easing announcements. These results show that, despite its nature and ideals, bitcoin seems to be subject to the same economic factors as traditional fiat currencies, and is not entirely unaffected by government policies. This result has implications for investors using bitcoin as a hedging or diversification tool. In addition, we contribute to the existing debate regarding the classification of bitcoin as an asset class, by illustrating that bitcoin volatility exhibits various reactions that bear resemblance to both currency pairs and store-of-value assets.