Blockchain Papers

Alexandre Rigaud

No abstract is available for this record.

Jainish Bhagat

Supply chain finance (SCF) plays a pivotal role in maintaining liquidity and operational continuity across global value networks. However, systemic supply chain disruptions, macroeconomic volatility, and information asymmetry frequently expose SCF programs to severe friction and default risks. While digital transformation is widely touted as a catalyst for supply chain resilience, empirical evidence regarding the explicit mechanisms through which distinct digital transformation capabilities enhance Supply Chain Finance Resilience (SCFR) remains fragmented. Grounded in the Resource-Based View (RBV), Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), and Information Processing Theory (IPT), this study develops and tests an integrated framework evaluating the direct and indirect impacts of Artificial Intelligence Capability (AIC), Blockchain Capability (BC), and Data Analytics Capability (DAC) on SCFR, mediated by Digital Trust in SCF Platforms (DT).Using a computational research simulation methodology, a respondent-level dataset (N=500) representing supply chain, finance, operations, and IT decision-makers across international enterprises was algorithmically generated under a defensible latent-variable covariance structure. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples was executed to evaluate the measurement and structural models. The structural analysis reveals that AIC (β=0.241,p<.001), BC (β=0.312,p<.001), and DAC (β=0.284,p<.001) significantly and positively drive Digital Trust in SCF Platforms, explaining 54.2% of its variance (R^2=0.542). Digital Trust, in turn, exerts a substantial direct effect on SCFR (β=0.385,p<.001). Furthermore, direct effects on SCFR were confirmed for DAC (β=0.218,p<.001) and AIC (β=0.152,p=.002), whereas the direct link from BC to SCFR was non-significant (β=0.071,p=.158). Formal mediation testing using percentile bootstrapping confirmed that Digital Trust fully mediates the relationship between Blockchain Capability and SCFR, while partially mediating the relationships for AIC and DAC. The overall structural model accounts for 58.6% of the variance in Supply Chain Finance Resilience (R^2=0.586,Q_"predict" ^2=0.412).This methodological prototype advances theoretical understanding by unpacking the granular capability configurations necessary to foster digital trust and financial resilience in supply networks. For practitioners and policymakers, the findings highlight that investing in blockchain technology yields minimal resilience benefits unless coupled with platform-wide digital trust mechanisms, whereas AI and analytics offer dual-pathway benefits across operational and relational domains.

José Luis Alberto Delgado, Dilek Demirbaş

This study investigates whether cryptocurrency adoption has affected Argentina’s bilateral trade flows within a gravity-model framework. While blockchain-based technologies are often expected to reduce transaction costs and facilitate international trade, quantitative evidence on their actual impact remains limited. Using panel data on Argentina’s trade with its main partners, the analysis combines standard gravity variables with country-level measures of cryptocurrency activity and estimates fixed effects, random effects, and high-dimensional fixed effects models.The results confirm the continued relevance of traditional trade determinants. Distance shows a robust negative effect on bilateral trade, with an elasticity ranging from −0.54 to −1.65 (p<0.05) across specifications. Country contiguity is associated with a 3.5-fold increase in bilateral trade (coefficient: +1.25, p<0.01). The effect of cryptocurrency adoption, by contrast, varies across specifications: in the random effects model, it is negatively associated with formal trade (−0.049, p<0.01), while in the correctly specified PPML model with origin-destination-year fixed effects, the contemporaneous effect is statistically insignificant. However, when cryptocurrency adoption is lagged one period, it shows a positive and highly significant association with trade (+0.061, p<0.01), suggesting that the trade-facilitating effect of crypto infrastructure may operate with a delay. We also find marginal evidence (p≈0.10) that cryptocurrency adoption attenuates the trade-reducing effect of distance. This counterintuitive result may indicate that cryptocurrency adoption substitutes for formal trade channels or reflects periods of economic instability, including the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this relationship is not robust to more demanding specifications that control for unobserved heterogeneity.Overall, the findings suggest that blockchain-based technologies have not yet translated into measurable trade-facilitating effects, partly due to limited institutional support and legal uncertainty. The paper highlights the gap between the potential benefits of blockchain for international trade and its actual adoption, emphasising the role of coordinated institutional frameworks in enabling technological diffusion.

Andrea Caravaggio, Silvia Leoni

Abstract The management of infectious diseases increasingly relies on innovative but costly pharmaceutical treatments, raising complex trade-offs between epidemiological containment, fiscal sustainability, and institutional coordination. We develop a spatially structured agent-based model in which decentralized health authorities allocate treatment under local budget constraints while infection spreads across a two-dimensional lattice through neighborhood spillovers. Within each location, treatment intensity is chosen endogenously, interacting with local GDP dynamics and pricing conditions. Simulation results reveal that purely decentralized optimization mitigates but does not reverse infection growth within policy-relevant horizons, generating persistent spatial heterogeneity in both epidemiological and economic outcomes. We then introduce bounded spatial policy interaction, showing that partial coordination substantially improves containment but may increase the persistence of fiscal engagement. Extending the model to heterogeneous and time-varying pricing, we find that price discrimination amplifies medium-run infection and fiscal pressure under decentralization. However, when surplus revenues finance endogenous R&amp;D, treatment efficacy improves over time, generating a feedback mechanism in which innovation mitigates long-run epidemiological and economic losses. Our findings highlight the critical interplay between spatial structure, decentralized decision-making, pricing design, and innovation incentives in shaping epidemic outcomes. Effective management of high-cost treatments requires not only medical efficacy but also institutional coordination and carefully designed market mechanisms.

Remy Jonkam Oben, Aliya Zhakanova Isiksal

The amount of international capital invested in sustainability-focused investments and decentralized financial technologies has been growing fast. Thus, this research focuses on the transmission of volatility and optimal portfolio composition among decentralized finance (DeFi) assets, S&P renewable energy and technology market indices, and conventional energy commodities for the period from March 15, 2018, to August 30, 2024. The sample period was divided into three sub-periods to examine the impact of COVID-19, which increased in parallel with the adoption of DeFi and a focus on sustainability: pre-COVID, during-COVID, and post-COVID. This research utilizes the Diebold-Yilmaz and Baruník-Křehlík techniques for time-and frequency-domain analyses, and the Dynamic Conditional Correlation model for portfolio optimization. First, the findings reveal that DeFi tokens (sustainable markets) (brown investments) display moderate (high) (very low) internal connectedness. Second, DeFi tokens demonstrate very low volatility connectedness with both sustainable and brown markets, which suggests strong diversification effects. Third, volatility connectedness among sustainable markets and conventional energy commodities is equally low. Fourth, sustainable markets (conventional energy commodities) make the highest (lowest) contribution to total volatility connectedness, and they operate as net transmitters (receivers) of volatility. Moreover, the total volatility connectedness is 33.7%, which is relatively low, suggesting significant opportunities for diversification of investment portfolios. Furthermore, the outcomes for optimal portfolio weights present greater allocations to green markets compared to conventional energy commodities and DeFi assets, revealing an escalating global transition toward sustainability. Additionally, COVID-19 significantly influenced volatility transmissions and portfolio allocations.

Yaser Sadati-Keneti, Mohammad Vahid Sebt, Reza R. Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, Orod Ahmadi

The aim of this research is to employ improved machine learning techniques to determine the best Bitcoin trading positions in response to sudden price changes caused by global emergencies such as pandemics, conflicts, and economic disputes. Specifically, this study examines price fluctuations during the COVID pandemic as a case study to evaluate the performance of the algorithms investigated. We present a novel hybrid approach that merges Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) and Decision Tree (DT) classification to effectively eliminate noisy data and extract pertinent information for accurate position forecasting. The DBSCAN algorithm organizes the data to reveal important patterns, while the DT classifier sorts the trading signals. The performance of the proposed DBSCAN-DT model is rigorously compared with established alternatives, including the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Classifier (SVC), and traditional Decision Trees. Findings from the experiments show that the DBSCAN-DT hybrid consistently outperforms these benchmarks during the outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic phases of COVID, attaining greater accuracy in forecasting both trading positions and market trends. These findings emphasize the essential importance of incorporating pandemic-related disruptions into cryptocurrency price prediction models and showcase the flexibility of our method in addressing sudden market changes.

Ainur Rohma, Ris Yuwono Yudo Nugroho

This study explores the key determinants influencing cryptocurrency in Indonesia, focusing on macroeconomic variables including inflation, money supply, gold prices, and crude oil prices over the period from 2013 to 2023. It investigates the dynamic relationships between these variables and Bitcoin, the most widely recognized cryptocurrency globally. The research offers a novel contribution by integrating both domestic economic indicators and external commodity prices into a comprehensive framework for cryptocurrency pricing tailored specifically to the Indonesian market context. This innovative and comprehensive approach significantly enhances the understanding of how macroeconomic factors interact with cryptocurrency behavior, which is crucial for various stakeholders and policymakers alike. The findings aim to provide valuable insights to support the formulation of effective monetary policies in an evolving, increasingly complex financial landscape. Future studies are encouraged to build upon this framework by examining the connections between cryptocurrency and other components of the broader financial system.

Tuna Can Güleç, Elif Erer, Selim Duramaz

Abstract This study explores the higher-order moments of connectedness among cryptocurrency, commodity, bond, and stock markets from April 19, 2017, to December 29, 2023, on the basis of the GARCH-SK and TVP-VAR models. The findings reveal that Bitcoin and Ethereum act as significant net shock transmitters, especially during major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine conflict. After mid-2021, these cryptocurrencies transitioned from net receivers to net transmitters of volatility owing to rising economic and geopolitical risks. These insights assist in portfolio diversification strategies. By combining shock transmitters with shock-resilient cryptocurrencies, investors can enhance their risk profiles. Diversification opportunities shift during financial crises, making it crucial to focus on shock transmitters, which are less influenced by various risk factors. Additionally, the study highlights cryptocurrencies as potential safe havens compared with traditional assets such as gold, bonds, and stocks, which often maintain or appreciate value during market stress. TVP-VAR-informed dynamic portfolio reallocation can improve risk-adjusted returns and lower volatility, aiding in capital preservation during high TCI periods. Overall, our findings suggest that portfolios that include cryptocurrencies generally outperform those that do not, emphasizing their role as effective diversifiers in portfolio optimization and financial stability.

Patrick Kiefer, Michael Nowotny

We document significant reversal in cryptocurrency returns at 8-and 10-week horizons, concentrated in midsize, relatively volatile assets. Using a panel of 70 USDT-quoted tokens on Binance from January 2021 through March 2026, we show that a contrarian strategy of buying past losers and selling past winners, by forming Jegadeesh-Titman (1993) calendar-time overlapping portfolios, earns a 39.6% annualized return (Sharpe 0.96, Newey-West t = 2.10). Reversal is stronger among high-volatility assets, generating a Sharpe ratio of 1.37 (t = 3.19), and is strengthened outside of the largest assets, generating a Sharpe ratio of 1.69 (t = 3.80). The effect is robust across tercile, quintile, and decile sorts; skip period variants; inverse-volatility weighting; and temporal subsamples. A circular block bootstrap with 10,000 replications corroborates the high-volatility result nonparametrically with 95% of Sharpe ratios above 0.67, and the high-versus-low volatility gap positive in 94% of replications. Several economic mechanisms to rationalize these findings are discussed, including the tendency of treasury managers to sell into upswings, and Nagel's (2012) theory that reversal compensates liquidity providers.

Yizhou Wen, Kani Chen

In early November 2025 the yield-bearing stablecoin sector experienced its first systemic run: over roughly seventy-two hours, three synthetic dollar tokens lost between 94 and 99 percent of their value, set off by the disclosure of an external-manager loss at Stream Finance. Using hourly on-chain data we reconstruct the cascade and show that survival was not determined by on-chain exposure or scale-the largest instrument, sUSDe, held its peg while absorbing several hundred million dollars of redemptions-but by the quality of the backing and whether redemptions were honored under stress. We further show that the contagion did not travel through observable decentralized-finance composability: public lending exposure to the failed collateral was negligible. Transmission ran instead through off-chain reserve relationships and, in the single material public exposure, through a price oracle that remained frozen at the pre-crash value, implying a roughly 119-fold overvaluation weeks into the collapse, so that no liquidation fired and approximately $7.5 million of bad debt accrued without a single onchain bad-debt event. We read the episode as evidence that opacity in valuation, rather than composability, was the systemic channel, and draw implications for the disclosure, redemption, and oracle requirements that govern tokenized dollars. The paper is a descriptive and structural anatomy of one systemic episode; we make no causal-identification claim.

M. S. F. Nasrifa, R. P. D. M. Amarasinghe, W. M. P. K. Weerasinghe

The purpose of this research is to explore how investor attention, measured by GSVI, influences cryptocurrency market behavior under varying conditions. For this the study examines the impact of Google Search Volume Index (GSVI) on cryptocurrency returns, considering market uncertainty, news sentiment, and the COVID-19 pandemic. A regression analysis was conducted using datasets covering BNB, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Solana, and Tether from 2015 to 2022. Stata was used to estimate the relationships between cryptocurrency returns and key variables, ensuring accurate and reliable results to quantify the relationships. Our findings indicate that abnormal increases in GSVI positively affect cryptocurrency returns, particularly during high uncertainty periods and when news sentiment is favorable. Moreover, the effect of investor attention on returns was significantly amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that global crises has heightened the role of behavioral factors in cryptocurrency markets. This research contributes to the literature by integrating investor attention with uncertainty and sentiment measures, offering a comprehensive view of cryptocurrency price dynamics. Unlike previous studies that examine these factors in isolation, our study highlights their combined effect, providing valuable insights for investors, policymakers, and analysts in understanding market trends and decision-making strategies.

Amro Saleem Alamaren, Abdelhak Lefilef, Thair Kaddumi, Sami Bendjeddou · 5 authors

The study examined the connectedness among bitcoin, green bonds (represented by the US S&amp;amp;P Green Bond Index), renewable energy (represented by the OMX Biofuel Index), and gold, utilizing a novel quantile connectedness approach from 14 November 2017 to 30 May 2024. This approach contributes to understanding the transmission mechanisms, influence, and connectedness among the bitcoin, green bond, renewable energy, and gold markets. The result indicates that significant values appear at specific intervals. A significant spike was observed at specific intervals around 2019, mainly due to the trade war between the U.S. and China. A subsequent shock occurred between 2020 and 2021, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the US credit crisis exacerbated volatility spillovers and financial contagion across markets, worsening these effects in 2023 and intensifying volatility spillovers and financial contagion across markets, exacerbating their outcomes. Additionally, the results suggest that Bitcoin primarily serves as a receiver of shocks. At the same time, the green bond transmits the shocks, and renewable energy and gold have switched between transmission and receiving shock roles during the period. The findings offer valuable insights into sustainable portfolio construction, highlighting that green bonds serve as primary transmitters of shocks and suggest a role as diversification anchors during market stress. Additionally, recognizing Bitcoin as a shock absorber and the shifting roles of renewable energy and gold help investors optimize risk-hedging strategies and enhance portfolio resilience across varying market conditions. This indicates that understanding how these assets correlate across various market scenarios is crucial to maximizing portfolio performance while accounting for sustainability constraints.

SANJAY V S, R.V Suganya

Abstract The digital transformation of global supply chains presents unprecedented opportunities, yet it concurrently exacerbates the existing gap in financial inclusion for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). Traditional supply chain finance (SCF) models often fail to serve these small suppliers due to high information asymmetry, lack of verifiable collateral, and manual, paper-intensive processes, leading to significant liquidity constraints. This study proposes and empirically investigates blockchain technology as a foundational solution to mitigate these challenges. Specifically, it examines how blockchain-enabled traceability fosters greater trust and transparency, which in turn facilitates more accessible and inclusive supplier financing mechanisms. Employing a mixed-method approach (Quantitative N=150−180 survey and Qualitative interviews) with a cross-sectional design, the research analyzes relationships using descriptive statistics, regression, and factor analysis. Preliminary findings are expected to demonstrate a significant positive impact of blockchain adoption on financial inclusion metrics for MSMEs. The research contributes by providing a rigorous framework for practitioners and policymakers aiming to leverage decentralized technology to create a more equitable and sustainable global trade ecosystem. Keywords: financial inclusion, blockchain enabled supply, micro, small, and medium enterprises,

Yuexin Xiang, Qishuang Fu, Yuquan Li, Qin Wang · 6 authors

Memecoins, emerging from internet culture and community-driven narratives, have rapidly evolved into a unique class of crypto assets. Unlike technology-driven cryptocurrencies, their market dynamics are primarily shaped by viral social media diffusion, celebrity influence, and speculative capital inflows. To capture the distinctive vulnerabilities of these ecosystems, we present the first Memecoin Ecosystem Fragility Framework (ME2F). ME2F formalizes memecoin risks in three dimensions: i) Volatility Dynamics Score capturing persistent and extreme price swings together with spillover from base chains; ii) Whale Dominance Score quantifying ownership concentration among top holders; and iii) Sentiment Amplification Score measuring the impact of attention-driven shocks on market stability. We apply ME2F to representative tokens (over 65% market share) and show that fragility is not evenly distributed across the ecosystem. Politically themed tokens such as TRUMP, MELANIA, and LIBRA concentrate the highest risks, combining volatility, ownership concentration, and sensitivity to sentiment shocks. Established memecoins such as DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE fall into an intermediate range. Benchmark tokens ETH and SOL remain consistently resilient due to deeper liquidity and institutional participation. Our findings provide the first ecosystem-level evidence of memecoin fragility and highlight governance implications for enhancing market resilience in the Web3 era.

Rayane Farias dos Santos, César Augusto Tibúrcio Silva

Purpose: The study analyzed the relationship between investor sentiment and the return and trading volume of the main cryptocurrencies in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: Two metrics were used to capture investor sentiment: the Happiness Index (HFI) and the Fear Index (FEARS), collected through Twitter and Google tools. Data related to cryptocurrencies were collected from the Cryptocompare website. Quantile regressions were used to analyze variations in the impact of investor sentiment on different types of currencies. Results: The results indicated that happiness and fear affect cryptocurrencies heterogeneously, with HFI causing negative and positive impacts on the return of assets such as BTC, USDC, and USDT. FEARS had a predominantly negative impact on the return of cryptocurrencies such as BTC and BRZ but was positive on ETH. Regarding trading volume, IFH had an ambiguous influence on BRZ, while FEARS reduced the volume of BTC, USDT, and USDC. The distinct patterns of impact identified suggest that investor sentiment may be a key indicator for formulating strategies in a highly volatile and emotionally reactive market. Contributions of the Study: It contributes significantly to the literature by focusing on the Brazilian cryptocurrency market, which has been little explored in international research. It uses a quantile approach to examine how investor sentiment impacts multiple cryptocurrencies, offering a more detailed and non-linear analysis, something rare in the literature. Furthermore, investigating the behavior of cryptocurrencies in Brazil during COVID-19 provides critical insights into how collective emotions, such as fear and euphoria, affect market movements, especially in an environment dominated by individual investors, making the study relevant for emerging markets.

Pengjian Chen

This study examines the market impact of China's comprehensive cryptocurrency ban announced in May 2021, employing an event study methodology. The investigation is motivated by the need to understand how major regulatory interventions affect cryptocurrency markets, given their growing significance in the global financial ecosystem. Using daily price data for Bitcoin and Ethereum, we analyze abnormal returns (AR) and cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) around the announcement date. The analysis reveals significant negative market reactions, with Bitcoin experiencing a CAR of -70% and Ethereum -87% during the 30-day post-event window. Our findings suggest that this ban had a more severe and persistent impact compared to previous regulatory actions, reflecting the market's heightened sensitivity to comprehensive regulatory measures. The results demonstrate the substantial influence of major regulatory interventions on cryptocurrency market stability and provide important implications for policymakers considering cryptocurrency regulations. Furthermore, the study highlights how regulatory actions in one jurisdiction can generate significant spillover effects across global financial markets.

Maizaitulaidawati Binti MD HUSIN, Mansoor Ahmad Qazi

Takaful is an alternative Shariah compliant insurance product which is being offered by more than fifty takaful companies in Pakistan. Currently takaful market is facing low penetration due to many challenges including regulatory or compliance, payment efficiency, fraud prevention, transparency. Blockchain technology, a decentralized, transparent and trust-based system, which could address these issues efficiently and effectively by offering smart contracts.&amp;nbsp;This paper examines Blockchain's feasibility and its impact on Pakistan’s insurance market in general and takaful sector in particular, using a systematic literature review (SLR) and case studies from Malaysia, the UAE, and Indonesia. In Malaysia and the UAE, the success of using Blockchain in Islamic finance highlights potential efficiency and security benefits. However, in Pakistan's regulatory ambiguity, lack of Shariah-compliant frameworks, limited human expertise, and low industry readiness are few factors which needs to look at, by the Government of Pakistan, and this could lead to sustainable growth in Pakistan’s digital financial sector including takaful industry. The Policymakers, Ministry of science and technology and State of bank of Pakistan could benefits from this study by creating a regulatory sandbox and offer current takaful operators full IT and regulatory support to develop Shariah-compliant smart contracts. The results reveal that, Takaful operators should develop and test pilot digital projects focusing on cost reduction, fraud prevention, automation of standards claims where possible, streamline the insurance industry and takaful operations and this leads to not only increase takaful penetration but also help Pakistani takaful market to align with global digital trends.© The Author(s) 2025. Published by RITHA Publishing. This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited maintaining attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and URL DOI.

Ebenezer Essel Mensah, Richard Kwasi Ahiable, Jonah Nud-Worgbah, Kofi Sarpong Adu‐Manu

Blockchain technology benefits companies in handling various use cases, including real estate, voting, fitness tracking, intellectual rights, the Internet of Things (IoTs), and vaccine distribution. Several technologies proposed in the literature seek to support businesses, enterprises, and state institutions in improving their operations and services, primarily in the financial sector. Although the existing technologies provide the needed service, the “trust” issue remains challenging. This differs from salary management in some state institutions in developing countries, such as Ghana. This paper presents a novel approach by implementing a permissioned blockchain-based system using Hyperledger Fabric integrated with RSA encryption to address the transparency, trust, and fraud challenges in salary-grade structure management. Unlike existing blockchain payroll applications, this work explicitly targets the salary grade adjustment processes within state institutions, providing a real-world prototype validated with actual agency data. In this paper, we implemented the blockchain technology for salary management. We use the Hyperledger Fabric platform to build a trusted platform to aid State Institution X (siX) in sharing data, validating transactions, securing data, and auditing transactions among its stakeholders— a prototype design aimed at reducing the wage bill and ensuring transparency in the public service payroll. The results showed that blockchain operations increased transparency in the payroll system among stakeholders by 100%. The application developed was secure and could track all the changes made by the relevant stakeholders in salary management.

Rula Khaled Almadadha

This study investigates the impact of blockchain technology adoption on the financial performance of major Australian banks, specifically Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, and ANZ, from 2016 to 2023. Using a descriptive research design and secondary data from annual reports, financial performance was assessed through Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE). The findings indicate a positive relationship between blockchain adoption and improved financial performance, suggesting gains in efficiency, cost management, and profitability. The study focuses on the Australian banking sector within its unique regulatory and market context. The originality of this research lies in its localized empirical approach, providing context-specific evidence of blockchain’s strategic contribution to financial performance in banking.

Soukaina Abdallah-Ou-Moussa, Martín Wynn, Omar Kharbouch

Blockchain technology is being increasingly deployed to store and process transactions and information in the global financial sector. Blockchain underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and facilitates decentralized finance (DeFi), representing a paradigm shift in the global financial landscape, offering alternative solutions to traditional banking, and fostering financial inclusion. In developing economies such as Morocco, where a significant portion of the population remains unbanked, these digital financial innovations present both opportunities and challenges. This study examines the potential role of cryptocurrencies and DeFi in enhancing financial inclusion in Morocco, where cryptocurrencies have been banned since 2017. However, the public continues to use cryptocurrencies, circumventing restrictions, and the Moroccan Central Bank is now preparing to introduce new regulations to legalize their use within the country. In this context, this article analyses the potential of cryptocurrencies to mitigate barriers such as high transaction costs, restricted access to financial services in rural areas, and limited financial literacy in the country. The study pursues a mixed-methods approach, which combines a quantitative survey with qualitative expert interviews and adapts the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to the Moroccan context. The findings reveal that while cryptocurrencies offer cost-efficient financial transactions and improved accessibility, their adoption may be constrained by regulatory uncertainty, security risks, and technological limitations. The novelty of the article thus lies in its focus on the key mechanisms that influence the adoption of cryptocurrencies and their potential impact in a specific national context. In so doing, the study highlights the need for a structured regulatory framework, investment in digital infrastructure, and targeted financial literacy initiatives to optimize the potential role of cryptocurrencies in progressing financial inclusion in Morocco. This underscores the need for integrated models and guidelines for policymakers, financial institutions, and technology providers to ensure the responsible introduction of cryptocurrencies in developing world environments.

Lin Wang, Zeng Yu, Yongshun Xu, Ming Chi · 5 authors

In the era of globalization, enhancing construction supply chain resilience (CSCR) has become essential. Traditional supply chains face issues like information asymmetry, trust deficits, and inefficiencies, weakening their resilience. Blockchain offers a solution by improving transparency, trust, and coordination, but its impact on CSCR remains unclear. This study addresses the gap by developing a moderated mediation model to explore how blockchain influences CSCR through supply chain integration and the moderating role of environmental uncertainty. Data from 310 senior managers in Chinese construction firms were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that blockchain significantly improves CSCR, mediated by operational, informational, and relational integration, particularly under high uncertainty environments. The findings highlight blockchain’s potential to strengthen CSCR and provide theoretical insights into its mechanisms, offering practical guidance for construction companies to enhance supply chain processes through blockchain implementation.

Clarise Loke

No abstract is available for this record.

Eman Abdullah I Alghufaili

The cryptocurrency market has undergone unprecedented growth and transformation, driven by technological advancements, global crises, and shifts in financial paradigms. This thesis comprises three empirical studies that collectively enhance our understanding of diverse cryptocurrency types, namely Shariah-compliant cryptocurrencies, green cryptocurrencies, stablecoins (fiat-backed, gold-backed, crypto-backed), and traditional cryptocurrencies, during major global shocks (the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the FTX exchange collapse), with a focus on their resilience, safe-haven properties, market connectedness, portfolio performance and stability.The first empirical chapter investigates the resilience and safe-haven characteristics of Shariah-compliant cryptocurrencies relative to conventional ones. Using wavelet coherence and DCC-GARCH, quantile, and threshold regressions as robustness, it reveals that Shariah-compliant cryptocurrencies offer superior short- and medium-term safe-haven properties, particularly during geopolitical turmoil. Portfolio optimisation demonstrates that these assets deliver higher risk-adjusted returns during shocks, underscoring their potential in crisis-resilient portfolio construction.The second empirical chapter analyses the dynamic connectedness of green and non-green cryptocurrencies with traditional and environmental assets during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. Using a TVP-VAR framework and three portfolio strategies, namely minimum variance, correlation, and connectedness, the study shows that green cryptocurrencies, despite heightened volatility during crises, enhance hedging effectiveness when combined with strategic assets such as carbon futures, gold, and energy commodities.The third empirical chapter evaluates the impact of the FTX collapse on the return and volatility of stablecoins and traditional cryptocurrencies using Difference-in-Differences and event study methods. The findings reveal that while stablecoins were more resilient than traditional cryptocurrencies, they were not immune to systemic shocks. Notably, gold- and crypto-backed stablecoins did not outperform fiat-backed ones during crises, underscoring the importance of liquidity and transparency over collateral type.Overall, this thesis provides novel empirical insights into the evolving cryptocurrency landscape, offering actionable implications for investors, regulators, and policymakers navigating digital assets in times of systemic stress.

V.E. Blinov

The article is devoted to the study of cryptocurrency and its impact on the shadow economy. Transactions related to cryptocurrencies are anonymous, so it is very difficult to control them.It is cryptocurrencies that are used in the shadow economy, and this raises the problem of how to control transactions and what laws should be applied to regulate digital currency. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the cryptocurrency market, as well as the peculiarities of peer-to-peer payment systems such as Bitcoin, Namecoin, Litecoin, PPCoin, and Novacoin. The attitude to cryptocurrencies in the world is ambiguous; due to the pseudo-anonymity of cryptocurrencies, their use can be carried out through fraudulent schemes, in particular, financing the shadow sector - terrorism and drug trafficking. The author examines the possible interrelationships between cryptocurrencies and the shadow economy, highlights the main distinctive characteristics of cryptocurrencies and payment schemes using them, and analyzes the pros and cons of having competitive money in the country’s economic cycle.