Technology entrepreneurship has enabled the widespread commercial adoption of internet technologies. These internet technologies have reformed consumer commercial experiences towards an online environment. The pervasiveness of the online experience raises the importance of protecting the consumer in the online context. Online services are typically delivered under “Clik-Thru” terms of service developed by the service provider alone; and accepted by the consumer with a single click and little if any consideration. The successful adoption of new internet-based technologies and commercial practices has encouraged more technology entrepreneurship in a positive feedback cycle. Efforts at improved readability are insufficient to engage consumers with these “Clik-Thru” contracts. This paper argues that some efforts at increasing consumer engagement with the “Clik-Thru” terms of service may be a useful and tractable step towards improved consumer experiences. Blockchain smart contracts appear to provide promising capabilities to enable greater consumer engagement with “Clik-Thru” contracts.
Juho Lindman, Jamie Berryhill, Benjamin Welby, Mariane Piccinin-Barbieri
Blockchain remains a hot topic for digital transformation and innovation. In the private sector, blockchain has demonstrated disruptive potential through proven use cases. However, despite strong interest and greater awareness, blockchain has had minimal impact on the public sector, where few projects have moved beyond small pilots. At the same time, there is a growing scepticism and cynicism about public sector blockchain. This paper seeks to understand why this is, by analysing the latest research in the area and identifying and analysing government experiences with successful and unsuccessful projects. It provides early findings on beliefs, characteristics, and practices related to government blockchain projects and the organisations that seek to implement them, with a focus on factors contributing to success or non-success. Although blockchain has yet to affect government in the ways that early hype predicted, government decision makers will nonetheless need to understand and monitor this emerging technology.
S. J. Bennett, Ken Charbonneau, Ryan Leopold, Linda Mezon · 7 authors
ABSTRACT Blockchain and cryptoassets are transforming how business is conducted. Leaders from Canadian practice provide insights on how consultants, standard setters, auditors, and regulators have been getting involved to support business and work through the challenges to raise funds, report to investors, and protect the public interest in a blockchain‐enabled world. These leaders share the challenges and opportunities they see, and the role accountants can play, including how educators and researchers can help.
A blockchain is a distributed database or ledger that maintains an ever-growing list of data records in opposition to tampering and revision. It provides immutable data storage over a distributed network and supports a large number of encrypted and coded interactions, which improves the reliability of the entire network interaction system and reduces the need for trust. Even if some nodes in the blockchain are hacked and fail, the system can run as usual. (In such a scenario, users are enabled to form a distributed peer -to peer (P2P) network in which they could interact with each other in an efficient manner without a trusted intermediary). In addition to being famous for decentralization, blockchain has shown other significant characteristics during its development, such as reliability, anonymity, transparency, auditability and programming. According to the different degree of openness and coverage, the current blockchain can be classified into three categories: public blockchain, consortium blockchain and private blockchain. In this process, the evolution of blockchain has gone through three processes: blockchain 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Blockchain 1.0, known as digital currency stage, is strongly related with the decentralization and payment of cryptocurrencies. Blockchain 2.0, known as digital finance stage, introduces economic, financial and market applications by programming far from simple currency transactions. Among them, the most significant features of blockchain 2.0 are the introduction and application of smart contracts. Blockchain 3.0, known as digital society stage, provides decentralized solutions for a variety of industries beyond just financial scene.
Kim P. Huynh, Christopher S. Henry, Gradon Nicholls, Mitchell Nicholson
The Bank of Canada commissioned the Bitcoin Omnibus Survey in 2016 to monitor trends in the adoption and use of Bitcoin and other cryptoassets. This report presents findings from the latest iteration of the survey, which was conducted in 2018. We find that between 2016 and 2018 the share of Canadians who were aware of Bitcoin increased from 62 percent to 89 percent and those that owned Bitcoin increased from 3 percent to 5 percent. However, the share of past owners also increased, suggesting an influx of Bitcoin owners who subsequently divested after the steep rise of prices in 2017. The main reason for owning Bitcoin remains speculation, though this share decreased slightly since 2017. On the other hand, the share of Canadians who reported using Bitcoin for transactions a few times a month or more increased. Finally, we discuss how Bitcoin adopters differ from overall Canadians with respect to their financial literacy and cash holdings.
ABSTRACT This article provides a review of the accounting blockchain literature, with a focus on current trends and recommendations for future research opportunities. Our review identifies seven main areas: (i) future of blockchain technology, (ii) impact on the accounting function, (iii) auditing considerations, (iv) financial reporting for cryptoassets, (v) case studies, (vi) governance, and (vii) taxation. The article aims to bridge the gap between practitioners and academics by providing a review of both areas of literature and highlighting common ground between the two arenas. While academics have begun to explore how the accounting profession might change in response to blockchain, this research is limited primarily to the auditing field. Practitioners, for their part, have expanded their scope to also devote significant attention to the financial reporting and taxation of cryptoassets. Expanding the discussion of accounting and blockchains beyond their current concentrations in auditing and accounting information systems, we call for more research on the impact of blockchain technology in other areas such as corporate governance or the intersection of accounting and society.
Emmanuel Kingsford Owusu, Albert P.C. Chan, Gabriel Nani, Daniel Y. Agymang
Research into smart contracts (SC) over the past decade has increased substantially, with colossal efforts stemming from the computer science and engineering domains. As SC remains a relatively new research paradigm for many areas, efforts from the construction management (CM) field has not been noted yet. This study examines the SC research trend right from the publication on the subject matter until 2018. It focuses on the longitudinal examination of SC research in terms of subject area concentration, and countries, contributions towards SC research and the key sources of SC research. The study also attempts to investigate the efforts made by construction management researchers towards the exploration and application of SC in construction management processes. A comprehensive bibliometric search of SC documents generated a search result of 1,002 publications. A total of 182 publications were examined since only peer-reviewed journal papers were considered for this review study. 2018 recorded the highest number of publications (over 400% increase of the previous year, 2017). China, the U.S., and the U.K. have been the leading countries contributing immensely towards SC research. Despite the tremendous efforts over the past decade of SC research, the results show a significant lack of interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers. Moreover, a huge gap of SC research in construction/project management-related domains was identified, revealing the need for critical explorations on SC research and the applicability of SC during the planning, procuring, executing, and managing construction project-related processes. This study is, therefore, intended to incite a deeper engagement in SC research from construction management (CM) researchers, identifying the benefits and challenges of the application of SC systems in CM processes. Thus, contributing to a deepened understanding of SC in CM.
Purpose This paper aims to explore patterns of business financing and adoption of blockchain technology in the agricultural industry. The adoption of blockchain technology in terms of recording, storing, validating and securing data can solve a variety of agricultural problems such as agricultural business financing. If the banking and insurance industries are connected in real-time to activity data in the agricultural industry, they can create better credit ratings and profile models. So, finally, all parties in the agricultural industry have a greater chance to get business financing from banks. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a case study research approach with a framework of analysis of the theory of adoption of technology, organization and environment (TOE) and the theory of “mindfulness of adoption”. The case study method has advantages when verification is still questioned or the application of certain theories in practice as phenomena and contexts that occur in the field in accordance with the application of blockchain technology into a relatively new business, both technically and practically in the field. Findings The findings indicate that there are no barriers to the availability of blockchain technology for technology adoption. The characteristics of this technology are very suitable for solving financing and supply chain business problems in the agricultural industry. However, the adoption of blockchain technology in agriculture shows that there is complexity in the organizational context involving internal and external organizations. The number of organizations and small parties involved in the agricultural process challenges the adoption of blockchain technology as new technology. Then, the external environment of technology, especially government regulations in developing countries, is still an obstacle to the adoption of blockchain technology. Research limitations/implications This study faces several limitations, namely, the limited case of implementation of the blockchain technology due to the novelty of technology and government regulation. So that further research related to the adoption of blockchain technology needs to be done using field data such as surveys. Research related to the connectivity of the banking industry and other financial institutions also needs to be explored further, especially in creating a data-based credit risk model of the blockchain system. Originality/value On the practical side, case studies of technology adoption and its relationship with the financing of agricultural business are still little explored so this study contributes to exploring the application of blockchain technology in the agricultural industry. The adoption of blockchain technology has an impact not only on farmers but also on all parties involved in the supply chain including banks, insurance and other financial institutions. In addition, the distributed data exchange business model using blockchain technology is a new business model in the agriculture industry.
Ayman Esmat, Martijn de Vos, Yashar Ghiassi-Farrokhfal, Peter Pálenský · 5 authors
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading, which allows energy consumers/producers to directly trade with each other, is one of the new paradigms driven by the decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization of the energy supply chain. Additionally, the rise of blockchain technology suggests unprecedented socio-economic benefits for energy systems, especially when coupled with P2P energy trading. Despite such future prospects in energy systems, three key challenges might hinder the full integration of P2P energy trading and blockchain. First, it is quite complicated to design a decentralized P2P market that keeps a fair balance between economic efficiency and information privacy. Secondly, with the proliferation of storage devices, new P2P market designs are needed to account for their inter-temporal dependencies. Thirdly, a practical implementation of blockchain technology for P2P trading is required, which can facilitate efficient trading in a secured and fraud-resilient way, while eliminating any intermediaries’ costs. In this paper, we develop a new decentralized P2P energy trading platform to address all the aforementioned challenges. Our platform consists of two key layers: market and blockchain. The market layer features a parallel and short-term pool-structured auction and is cleared using a novel decentralized Ant-Colony Optimization method. This market arrangement guarantees a near-optimally efficient market solution, preserves players’ privacy, and allows inter-temporal market products trading. The blockchain layer offers a high level of automation, security, and fast real-time settlements through smart contract implementation. Finally, using real-world data, we simulate the functionality of the platform regarding energy trading, market clearing, smart contract operations, and blockchain-based settlements.
Abstract This research addresses the bottlenecks experienced in supply chain management (SCM) in an African hydrocarbon company, which slows down processes and makes the procedures tedious, this leads to operational inefficiencies. This paper discusses the security of the supply chain management data and the overall automation of procurement value chain, providing transparency to the stakeholders involved in the entire supply chain management process. It also provides a system that is not prone to malware or data alteration. The existing system lacks trust and greater transparency. A new technology will be developed using Blockchain Hyperledger which is a distributed ledger technology (DLT). The SCM application/portal serving the request and procurement process will utilize the Hyperledger Fabric SDK or REST web service to interface with the Hyperledger Fabric network. The organizations that participate in developing the Hyperledger Fabric network are known as the "members". Every member organization in the blockchain network is capable to set up their peers for taking part in the network. All these peers’ needs are configured with suitable cryptographic materials like Certificate Authority and other data. Chaincode will be actualized in peers to initiate transaction invocation request. This process will result in the chaincode providing an executable smart contract. The system executes the terms of the contract (agreement) by all necessary stakeholder's peer; for example: when goods or services are completely delivered, work Completion Certificate will be issued. This will be on the blockchain network and will be transparent to all stakeholders so once invoice is presented, the verification will be automatically ascertained and payment will be made. Procurement data like invitation to tender (ITT), request for proposal (RFP), request for quote (RFQ), contract award, work completion certificate (WCC), and invoice will be distributed among the nodes uniformly at the same time, making it impossible for cyber-invasion on all the nodes at the same time. Blockchain has been identified industry-wide as the next level in SCM operations because of its greater transparency, increased efficiency, enhanced data security, reduced costs, improved traceability, smart contract and unbroken chain of transaction history. It was observed that the blockchain implementation will further enable easy audit trail, automated and transparent Issuance of ITT/RFP/RFQ to Vendors, end-to-end SCM automation with secured data, and quality reporting system. In conclusion Blockchain Technology will enhance Supply chain manpower efficiency and hydrocarbon production. Blockchain Technology in Supply chain management will present a new knowledge in the area of integrated supply chain management for procurement process transparency and end- to-end data security
Practical Applications In Investigating the Investment Behaviors in Cryptocurrency from the Fall 2020 issue of The Journal of Alternative Investments, authors Dingli Xi, Timothy Ian O’Brie, and Elnaz Irannezhad (all of the University of Queensland in St. Lucia, Australia) investigate who is likely to invest in cryptocurrency initial coin offerings (ICOs). ICOs constitute an innovative way to raise capital for business startups and other projects—but are also very high-risk propositions for investors. Most ICOs are scams, with only 4% successfully raising money for projects. This massive fraud and the regulatory crackdowns in response to it have made ICO fundraising much more difficult. Those who wish to raise funds via ICOs therefore need better knowledge of their target investor market. The authors surveyed ICO investors to assess who invests in ICOs and what factors encourage or discourage ICO investing. They found ICO investors tend to be male, affluent, better educated, and working in banking or IT—while women, business owners, educators, and stock market investors are less likely to invest in ICOs. Financial professionals can use these and the authors’ other findings to help advise businesses and organizations about how to market their ICOs. TOPICS:Currency, emerging, in markets
What is an economic platform? I address this question by focusing on the case of cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The research draws on interviews with platform actors, fieldwork in one exchange, and computational text analysis of the terms of service of all cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. I argue that cryptocurrency exchange platforms go beyond market processes by fulfilling a variety of functions including banking, infrastructure development, gift-giving, barter, money making, payment system operation, software production, security providing, and centralized extra-blockchain accounting. I propose the concept of “stack” to describe such a process of socio-digital economization that takes place in these data money exchanges. Demonstrating that it is inadequate to describe platforms as mere digital infrastructures, devices, places or markets, I argue that cryptocurrency exchange platforms can best be understood as economization stacks that weave multiple layers and types of interaction, and facilitate an empirically observable range of variegated economic activities.
Abstract Scholars call for “adaptive governance” to balance concern about technology uncertainty with the need for innovation in the governance of emerging technologies. Yet, empirical assessment of such governance systems remains sparse. Do the actors interested in the potential regulation of an emerging technology focus on their own interests and opportunities, or do they think in terms of the collective interest? We focus on the actors who embed such systems from a novel landscape perspective that combines two dimensions of governance: the nature of the regulatory target, and the nature of the process they advocate for governing the target. We present data from over 70 actors in the area of cryptocurrencies for evaluating this new logic.
This chapter examines any research or references to cryptocurrencies that are stated as fact are in reference to Bitcoins. Cryptocurrencies pose a unique challenge to individual states by encroaching on a state’s right to a monopoly of its own currency, yet offer a taste of a truly global free market. Cryptocurrencies have little to no transactional costs, depending on the specific currency. Reliability is something that is questioned often in literature, but at the theoretical level, cryptocurrencies are built upon a system of verification. Cryptocurrencies offer anonymity where the sender does not have to meet the receiver face-to-face, thus the only identifying feature of either party is only their public keys. Cryptocurrencies can provide financial inclusion. There is a lack of oversight when it comes to cryptocurrencies. As stated before, cryptocurrencies are decentralized, meaning there is no overall ownership of the currency, which creates its own sets of problems for regulation.
Distributed Ledger Technology can be an effective tool for resource distribution. As individuals and organisations explore innovations which allow to redefine the rules of access, possession and sharing these developments also become important for the future of self-determination. Demonstrated through credit scoring and ‘social credit systems’, the identity of an individual is intertwined with resource access, possession and transferability. A key pre-requisite for participation is formal legal status, which translates to citizenship. However, many proponents of Distributed Ledger Technology focus predominantly on technological features and capabilities, which might enable the implementation of concepts such as decentralised governance, ‘self-sovereign identity’ management, and trust-less transactions based on ‘zero-knowledge proof’. Nevertheless, such narrow consideration overlooks existing legal and political realities. Considering the lessons learned from citizenship, it becomes questionable whether Blockchain as player in the area of identity management will ultimately increase human dignity, or further manifest traditional patterns of discrimination and inequality.
The current e-commerce operation model has network defects such as network chaos and uneven network distribution, which affect economic development and progress. In response to the above problems, this article introduces the artificial intelligence system, optimizes and analyzes the structure of e-commerce websites, and combines the Internet economy with online website theory through independent screening and analysis of the artificial intelligence system. The concept of blockchain technology is introduced, and the characteristics of blockchain are analyzed through theory and data using quantitative analysis methods, and the problem of cross-border electronic payment is solved based on blockchain. Based on the analysis of artificial intelligence, an optimized online website innovation plan was obtained. Finally, the online website resource allocation variables are simulated, and the simulation method is used to test the scheme. The simulation test simulates the process of resource allocation, optimizes the use of innovative models, and hires professional financial personnel to observe records. The test verifies the effectiveness of the structure optimization of the e-commerce platform realized in this paper.
With the rapid development of modern economy and Internet technology, the traditional financial industry has to better serve the needs of the times by developing Internet finance. As a new type of Internet technology, block chain, relying on the characteristics of decentralization, reliable data, collective maintenance and non-tampering, provides the possibility to accelerate the innovation of financial products and improve the efficiency of financial operation. The emergence of Internet finance is a very subversive new model, coupled with the upsurge of public participation, Internet finance has developed rapidly in a few short years. As a modern internet financial technology, blockchain technology, based on big data technology, can help Internet finance to solve credit problems, so as to effectively reduce financial risks. Blockchain technology provides better development opportunities for Internet finance. This paper mainly discusses the impact of blockchain on the Internet in the context of big data, and analyzes its future development.
Pablo G. Bringas, Iker Pastor-López, Giuseppe Psaila
Abstract Background BlockChain technology was invented to support bitcoin , currently the most popular virtual currency. Objectives The purpose of this paper is to investigate contemporary BlockChain platforms in financial services. Methods/Approach An unstructured literature review has been used. Results BlockChain in financial services is mostly associated with bitcoin exchange. However, this is a partial view of both BlockChain technology and its possible adoption for financial services: in fact, many BlockChain platforms are now available and many different financial services can be effectively supported by BlockChain platforms, even though they are not based on virtual-money exchange. Furthermore, people are attracted by the concept of smart contract , i.e., a contract that is automatically executed by computer technology, without human intervention. Conclusions The contribution of this paper is twofold: first of all, we introduce the four BlockChain platforms that are now most popular, discussing how they support the smart contract concept; second, we identify some typical categories of financial services, matching each of them with the platform that provides the best support for each category.
The block chain is an innovative technology which opened doors to new applications for solving numerous problems in distributed environments. In this work, we design a block chain based data storage and access framework Twitter application to remove its total dependence on a centralized repository. We use the public block chain and tools like Ganache, Metamask, Truffle and Ethereum IDE for deploying the contracts. In the proposed work, metadata of the files are stored on the block chain and we use the networks like Ropsten and Rinkebey for occurring the Transactions using a peer -to-peer networks. This will provide decentralized storage, distributed processing, and efficient lookup capabilities.
Although Blockchain is still an emerging technology it has the potential to serve as a general purpose information technology platform. Already, smart contract / chaincode platforms, such as Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric, provide support for the execution of arbitrary computations. However, the suitability of these platforms for specifying and enforcing data and service usage constraints (e.g., usage policies, regulatory obligations, societal norms) and providing guarantees with respect to conformance has yet to be determined. In order to address this gap, in this position paper we argue that symbolic artificial intelligence techniques in the form of semantic technology based policy languages and business process conformance tools and techniques, can together be used to provide guarantees with respect to the behaviour of autonomous smart contract / chaincode applications.
The technologies underlying money and payment systems are evolving rapidly. Both the emergence of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and rapid advances in traditional centralised systems are moving the technological horizon of money and payments. These trends are embodied in private "stablecoins": cryptocurrencies with values tied to fiat currencies or other assets. Stablecoins - in particular potential "global stablecoins" such as Facebook's Libra proposal - pose a range of challenges from the standpoint of financial authorities around the world. At the same time, regulatory responses to global stablecoins should take into account the potential of other stablecoin uses, such as embedding a robust monetary instrument into digital environments, especially in the context of decentralised systems. Looking forward, in such cases, one possible option from a regulatory standpoint is to embed supervisory requirements into stablecoin systems themselves, allowing for "embedded supervision". Yet it is an open question whether central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and other initiatives could in fact provide more effective solutions to fulfil the functions that stablecoins are meant to address.
Nov 1, 2020·2020 International Conferences on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData) and IEEE Congress on Cybermatics (Cybermatics)
Blockchain is a decentralized network ledger. Based on the core characteristics of blockchain such as decentralization, tamper-proof, and smart contract, it has been applied in many fields including finance, healthcare, food traceability and so on. However, blockchain technology still faces many challenges, such as scalability, interoperability, privacy leakage, and legal regulation, to be solved. This paper conducts a comprehensive survey of blockchain technology. Specifically, we firstly introduce the architecture of blockchain. Secondly, several typical application scenarios are described. Then, we list some technical and legal challenges of blockchain. Finally, the development of future trends of blockchain is analyzed.