Russian House of International Scientific and Technical Cooperation, Moscow, Russian Federation, Natal'ya V. MALANICHEVA, Olga A. Kharina, Svetlana M. Sycheva · 5 authors
Modern international cooperation in the field of financial technologies requires special attention to functionality and security, particularly with the implementation of new technologies such as blockchain, SWIFT gpi, and artificial intelligence. This article provides a detailed examination of examples of these technologies’ application, their impact on cross-border financial transactions, and their role in combating fraud and cyber threats. Emphasis is placed on international initiatives, including standardization through ISO 20022 and the harmonization of regulatory requirements, which help simplify and standardize processes within the global financial system. The aim of the research is to analyze how international cooperation facilitates the implementation of new technologies in various financial instruments, such as smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and other digital assets. A key aspect also includes the role of international standards and regulations in accelerating these processes. The methodology of the study is based on theoretical generalization, structural analysis, and statistical approaches, using materials from academic conferences and analytical data from international consulting firms. The results of the study show that the development of new technologies’ functional capabilities in the financial sector not only leads to increased user numbers but also to the creation of new business models with minimal management costs. These technologies significantly reduce payment costs and simplify processes that previously required substantial intermediary involvement. In conclusion, it is emphasized that various innovative technologies have the potential to drastically transform the global financial services market. However, for their successful implementation, several critical issues must be addressed. These include reducing the energy consumption of technologies, developing an effective legal framework, improving the scalability of blockchain networks, and training specialists who can effectively integrate these technologies into the financial sector. An important aspect remains the development of international cooperation to harmonize standards and create a unified regulatory framework, which will help solve many of these problems on a global level. These tasks remain relevant and require joint efforts from countries and international organizations.
This article focuses on investigating investment strategies within information technology, specifically, analyzing the risks linked to investing in this sector and researching its development outlook. The study examines current approaches to IT investment, pinpoints the primary obstacles investors encounter, and indicates potential investment areas considering worldwide technological trends. Emphasis is given to the analysis of the IT sector as a very dynamic portion of the global economy, calling for flexible, adaptable, and knowledgeable investment choices. The article seeks not only to identify the success elements in investing in IT, but also to furnish practical suggestions for effective investment risk management. The author unveils the theoretical bases of investing in the IT sector, specifically, the categorization of strategies and the specifics of the IT industry as an investment object. The concept and essence of investment in the IT sphere are defined; characteristics of the IT industry as an investment object are determined. The core risks faced by investors in the IT sector are outlined and the methods of their assessment and reduction are characterized. Worldwide trends in IT investment are identified. Contemporary methodologies for investment and risk examination, and methods to address them, are assessed. Suggestions on selecting investment strategies that enable effective risk management and realize consistent profits within the IT sphere are provided. To improve the risks of investing in the IT sector, the author suggests techniques that aid in lessening the effects of negative influences and boosting the prospect of a reliable profit. Additional research ought to concentrate on quantitative analysis of the efficiency of different investment approaches within the IT industry, specifically, considering geographical, technological, and regulatory elements. It is also beneficial to investigate the effect of global technological trends, like artificial intelligence, blockchain, Web3, and quantum computing, on creating new investment models. Specific focus should be given to evaluating the role of ESG factors (environmental, social, and governance) when making investment choices in the IT sector, which is growing more crucial in terms of sustainable development.
Emerging market governments increasingly prioritize the defense of monetary sovereignty over the liberalization of financial innovation, particularly under conditions of macroeconomic fragility, high inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty. This study analyzes Türkiye's post-COVID financial landscape as a critical case through which to examine state strategies aimed at resisting the systemic adoption of cryptocurrencies. Despite escalating grassroots demand for digital assets-driven by Lira depreciation, inflationary pressures, and declining institutional trust-the Turkish government has leveraged a combination of regulatory, monetary, and legal instruments to preserve the Lira's role as the exclusive legal tender. Utilizing theories of monetary sovereignty and financial statecraft, alongside recent literature on crypto regulation in emerging markets and empirical insights from IMF and BIS analyses on FX interventions, this paper formulates a structured set of research questions and hypotheses to interrogate the relationship between cryptocurrency adoption, FX volatility, and institutional resistance. Methodologically, the study employs ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions with Newey-West corrections, lagged models, and event studies centered on Türkiye’s key regulatory milestones (2021–2024) to capture causal dynamics and policy feedback loops. Findings demonstrate a robust correlation between increased BTC/TRY volumes and TRY/USD volatility, underscoring the self-reinforcing nature of speculative feedback loops in fragile monetary environments. The evidence shows that heightened crypto adoption amplifies FX volatility through TRY Volatility Feedback Effects (TFF), particularly during geopolitical crises such as the June 2025 Middle East conflict, where BTC’s decline and USD’s appreciation reaffirmed the persistence of traditional safe-haven behaviors. Türkiye’s institutional response intensified proportionally through bans on crypto payments, licensing regimes, enhanced FX market interventions, and rhetorical strategies aimed at reaffirming sovereign monetary control. Although cryptocurrencies function as informal hedging mechanisms for households, this study confirms they cannot sustainably displace fiat currencies where sovereign defenses remain actively enforced. Instead, they exacerbate volatility, prompting reactive state interventions. This research contributes to broader debates on financial sovereignty in emerging markets by offering Türkiye as a paradigmatic example of how states leverage legal, monetary, and infrastructural tools to constrain decentralized finance amid persistent macroeconomic vulnerabilities. Moreover, the study introduces ValueMesh™, a novel sovereign-aligned alternative developed within Türkiye’s emerging financial ecosystem through the DevPay Türkiye platform. ValueMesh bridges the gap between public demand for high-yield, participatory finance and state imperatives of monetary sovereignty by offering regulated, project-specific micro-equity participation without reliance on blockchain-based assets. This innovation demonstrates that the psychological appeal of crypto speculation can be redirected into legally sanctioned, productive, and sovereign-controlled fintech architectures. Ultimately, Türkiye’s experience illustrates that the future of financial innovation in fragile economies lies not in decentralized disruption but in carefully engineered, state-backed digital ecosystems that integrate speculative incentives within sovereign frameworks. This positions Türkiye’s post-COVID monetary strategy as a critical reference point for policymakers, scholars, and industry leaders examining the evolving interplay between financial sovereignty, decentralized finance, and geopolitical risk.
India is a country where large scale inter-states imbalances exist. This is either due to non- availability of infrastructural facilities and differential factor endowments, inherent concentration of development in some regions or due to increasing centralization of revenue and increasing decentralization of responsibilities which is rooted in the structure of its federation. To offset fiscal disadvantages resulting from regional imbalances, a federal democracy requires institutional arrangement to channelize flow of funds from the Centre to the states in an orderly and even handed manner. In line with this, the current paper examines the recommendations of last two Finance Commissions from the perspective of horizontal equity over the span of a decade. The chapter is divided into six sections besides the introduction. Section II deals with the distribution criteria adopted by two Finance Commissions and their impact on transfers. Section III examines the recommendations of Fifteenth Finance Commission and its impact on inter-state equity. Section IV evaluates the impact of transfers made over the span of last two Finance commission and the progressivity analysis. Section V presents the conclusion of the chapter.
The decentralized exchange (DEX) leverages smart contracts to trade digital assets for users on the blockchain. Developers usually develop several smart contracts into one project, implementing complex logic functions and multiple transaction operations. However, the interaction among these contracts poses challenges for developers analyzing the state logic. Due to the complex state logic in DEX projects, many critical state derailment defects have emerged in recent years. In this article, we conduct the first systematic study of state derailment defects in DEX. We define five categories of state derailment defects and provide detailed analyses of them. Furthermore, we propose a novel deep learning-based framework StateGuardfor detecting state derailment defects in DEX smart contracts. It leverages a smart contract deconstructor to deconstruct the contract into an abstract syntax tree (AST), from which five categories of dependency features are extracted. Next, it implements a graph optimizer to process the structured data. At last, the optimized data is analyzed by graph convolutional networks to identify potential state derailment defects. We evaluated StateGuardthrough a dataset of 46 DEX projects containing 5671 smart contracts, and it achieved 94.25% F1-score. In addition, in a comparison experiment with state-of-the-art, StateGuardleads the F1-score by 6.29%. To further verify its practicality, we used StateGuardto audit real-world contracts and successfully authenticated multiple novel common vulnerabilities and exposures.
Lorenzo Ceragioli, Pierpaolo Degano, Letterio Galletta, Luca Viganò
People increasingly use digital platforms to exchange resources in accordance with some policies stating what resources users offer and what they require in return. In this paper, we propose a formal model of these environments, focussing on how users' policies are defined and enforced, so ensuring that malicious users cannot take advantage of honest ones. To that end, we introduce the declarative policy language MuAC and equip it with a formal semantics. To determine if a resource exchange is fair, i.e., if it respects the MuAC policies in force, we introduce the non-standard logic MuACL that combines non-linear, linear and contractual aspects, and prove it decidable. Notably, the operator for contractual implication of MuACL is not expressible in linear logic. We define a semantics preserving compilation of MuAC policies into MuACL, thus establishing that exchange fairness is reduced to finding a proof in MuACL. Finally, we show how this approach can be put to work on a blockchain to exchange non-fungible tokens.
This paper explores the Indian government’s stance and evolving regulatory landscape regarding various financial instruments, such as centralized finance (CeFi), decentralized finance (DeFi), cryptocurrencies, share market, mutual funds, gold, and fixed deposits. It examines the current frameworks and regulations, and how government policies are shaping each financial avenue. By analyzing the different approaches toward traditional and modern financial systems, this paper highlights the challenges and opportunities faced by the Indian financial ecosystem, particularly in the context of cryptocurrencies and DeFi.
Noor Fatini Izzati Fadzil, Saheed Abdullahi Busari
Non-fungible tokens (NFT) are considered unique digital assets recorded on the blockchain whose ownership and authenticity cannot be duplicated, exchanged, or divided but can be transferred by the owner, allowing the selling and trading of NFT through the blockchain. This study addresses the issues relating to the extent of NFT compliance with Islamic law. It sheds light on the concept of symbols that are not replaceable and presents the opinions of contemporary jurists in dealings with NFT based on a juristic adaptation of these transactions.The study is qualitatively based and using an inductive approach to collect library information and analytical approach to clarify the issue and present the opinions of the jurists. The study found that investing in non-fungible tokens is legally permissible, but the principles of Shariah must be adhered to when dealing with them because they are among the things that were not prevented except by legal evidence. NFTs should be items of legal value that benefit people, and are free from illegal activities such as usury, fraud, and gambling. The study recommends an urgent need for Shariah scholars and technology experts to create an NFT platform that is compatible with Islamic Shariah, and allowing Muslims to participate in it.
The paper offers a generalized author’s view on the new phenomenon of the digital world, backed tokenized assets, as a tool for asset accounting in digital accounting systems. This view is new and currently unpopular in the literature since the main aspect of tokenized asset presentation is related to speculation on financial markets, widespread creation of unbacked assets around objects of human life, graphics, etc. The aim of the paper is to determine the essence, generic features and technological basis of the use of tokenized assets for their implementation in the digital and platform-based economy. In accordance with this aim, the author logically presents the material from the general to the specific, analyzing the essential features of 7 main related concepts: distributed ledger, distributed ledger technologies, blockchain technology, tokens and consensus algorithm, tokenized asset, decentralized information platform and blockchain-based ecosystem of services. The author persists in the opinion that a tokenized asset is a type of virtual asset. It is a tool for certifying sufficient and confirmed legal rights: rights of access to products and services, rights to a certain product or service, rights to receive a fixed income or percentage of profits, management rights, rights to purchase a certain asset at a certain price in the future, etc. The paper offers the original definition of a tokenized asset: tokenized asset is a type of virtual asset that exists in a digital data accounting system based on the distributed ledger technology in the form of a record with an identifier of information derived from the original asset. A tokenized asset can be used as a tool for implementing a method of recording, accounting and managing property rights to assets. Moreover, a tokenized asset can be used as a tool for certifying any rights; providing services; recording events; generating, processing and submitting statistical and analytical information; ensuring logistics, etc. Depending on the purpose of creating a specific tokenized asset and, as a result, certain inherent properties envisaged by the creator, this tokenized asset can be classified as a separate type.
The decentralized anonymous cryptocurrency is a new kind of technology that can be used for many purposes such as transferring money and investing. However, they do not have a legal entity that is in charge monitoring its uses. Its extraordinary rise raises critical questions such as, should we regulate it or ban it? Since its purposes have been converted from an anonymous payment system to a tool that is used in illegal actions and undermining financial standards. This paper seeks CC regulation options. Plus, it attempts to lay out the various risks they pose and benefits they bring with the technology they use (blockchain). The objective is to investigate which approach will be more reasonable for the country’s conditions. The regulators will try to convince CC service providers to obey rules and operate under official standards, while banners restrict the new instrument’s integration with the financial system. The study relied on the descriptive approach to achieve its objectives. The recent literature and publications of the most important related bodies around the world were reviewed. Findings reveal that it is too early for CCs to be considered legal tender. Moreover, both approaches could be adopted according to the country’s conditions. Plus, alternatives may have their say. Some suggestions are made for local agencies and investors.
Distributed ledger technology (DLT), epitomized by blockchain, has emerged as a revolutionary force that is transforming the financial industry and the broader economy. DLT is a decentralized and transparent system that allows for secure and immutable recording of transactions across a network of nodes, without the need for intermediaries. This study adopted the structural equation model to examine the adoption of distributed ledger, and blockchain has a significant impact on banking and financial services. This study provides an overview of how DLT is unleashing its potential to reshape the financial industry and the wider economy and also highlights the various ways in which DLT has transformed the banking and financial services landscape. The study concluded that DLT has the potential to disrupt traditional financial systems by offering enhanced efficiency, transparency, security, and accessibility. The study also found that DLT enables faster, cheaper, and borderless transactions, eliminating the need for intermediaries such as banks, reducing transaction fees, and increasing financial inclusion, particularly in developing countries.
In this paper, we use quantile-based analysis and nonlinear conditional autoregressive value-at-risk (CAViaR) model to investigate how cryptocurrency price and policy uncertainty indexes affect exchange traded funds (ETFs) investing in equity securities of companies operating in various disruptive innovation sectors and related to digital assets and blockchain technology. Results of the quantile-on-quantile (QQ) estimates and quantile regression reveal that cryptocurrency price and policy uncertainty generally have a negative impact on the globally traded ETFs suggesting that the changes in cryptocurrency uncertainty lead to destabilizing effects in the ETF market. Moreover, we find that the impact of cryptocurrency uncertainty is asymmetric depending on each quantile of ETF returns even though each ETF is influenced in the same way by each uncertainty index, indicating that cryptocurrency price uncertainty and cryptocurrency policy uncertainty have common effects on the ETF market. A linear quantile causality analysis indicated that there is evidence of a significant causality running from the considered uncertainty indexes to the ETF returns, revealing that cryptocurrency price and policy uncertainty have a significant information value in explaining expected ETF returns. On the other hand, we find that linear quantile models outperform nonlinear CAViaR models in quantiles that are only moderate.
This article discusses the entrepreneurial imaginary and the role of Web3 in the narratives of industry actors at the 2022 Lisbon Web Summit. This imaginary does not address the qualitative aspects of current crises but rather their potential for regenerating capital flows in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste. The article argues that the wealth‐tech nexus is symptomatic of the broader process of financialization of the economy and, in particular, of the growing role of private investment in the form of Venture Capital (VC), particularly illustrated by ‘unicorns’. While capital allocation in the digital economy, both from private and public sources, currently exceeds its realization, this entrepreneurial imaginary builds expectations towards Web3 and effectively drives the valuation process and investors’ returns, regardless of its future implementation.
As an important part of the reform process of state-owned enterprises in recent years, government decentralization has a profound impact on the business activities of state-owned enterprises. The cash holding level of state-owned enterprises is not only related to the liquidity of state-owned enterprises, but also affects the effective value of state-owned enterprises in the product market competition. Taking the A-share state-owned listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2001 to 2019 as samples, the OLS model is used to empirically test the impact of the government's willingness to delegate power on the cash holding level of state-owned enterprises. The research finds that the government decentralization has a significant negative relationship with the cash holding level of state-owned enterprises. Secondly, with the help of the intermediary effect model, the study finds that the government decentralization is to relieve the financing constraints of enterprises, reduce the policy burden of state-owned enterprises, and then reduce the cash holdings of enterprises. The research conclusion not only expands the relevant literature research on the impact of government decentralization on the cash holding level of state-owned enterprises, but also provides some reference for state-owned enterprises on how to improve their governance structure and capital management system.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has once again highlighted the need for diversification across asset classes to avoid the fallout of black swan events. This study aims to identify the optimal portfolio weights for long-only investors in emerging Ghana stocks and two major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and Ethereum. BEKK-GARCH (1, 1) has been deployed to investigate the volatility spillover between the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) and two major cryptos by market share: Bitcoin and Ethereum between January 2019 and December 2021. The influence of the COVID-19 crisis has been examined by dividing the full sample period into three sub-periods: pre-COVID-19, during-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 pandemic. This study has several important implications. First, the investors can take advantage of higher returns in cryptos by allocating low-single digits exposure and enhancing portfolio risk-adjusted returns. Second, policymakers can formulate policies to encourage more investors to adopt cryptos as an asset class in Ghana.