Artificial intelligence (AI) is the core technology of technological revolution and industrial transformation. As one of the new intelligent needs in the AI 2.0 era, financial intelligence has elicited much attention from the academia and industry. In our current dynamic capital market, financial intelligence demonstrates a fast and accurate machine learning capability to handle complex data and has gradually acquired the potential to become a "financial brain". In this work, we survey existing studies on financial intelligence. First, we describe the concept of financial intelligence and elaborate on its position in the financial technology field. Second, we introduce the development of financial intelligence and review state-of-the-art techniques in wealth management, risk management, financial security, financial consulting, and blockchain. Finally, we propose a research framework called FinBrain and summarize four open issues, namely, explainable financial agents and causality, perception and prediction under uncertainty, risk-sensitive and robust decision making, and multi-agent game and mechanism design. We believe that these research directions can lay the foundation for the development of AI 2.0 in the finance field.
This article looks at the application of present Indian payment system policies and regulatory model on virtual-currency in India. In fact, simply banning cryptocurrency in India would not serve the purpose of legislature and Reserve Bank of India (RBI); rather it will boost cryptocurrency frauds in India due to absence of any law. The present article analysis shows that there is an ample scope within the present models and policies with necessary amendments to facilitate the regulation of virtual-currency in India. The analysis also suggests new model regulation on cryptocurrency which shall constitute the basic model regulations in India to govern cryptocurrency technology and products. Author uses the Banking Regulation Act as a model, regulating all types of new fintech products such as cryptocurrency, Bitcoin & business activity, its intermediaries, exchanges, customer protection in robust and transparent fashion in India.
The rise of blockchain technology could radically disrupt the global economy. As an emergent technology, blockchain is of broad and current interest in the tourism industry. Small island economies are at the forefront of adopting this digital asset and technology. For instance, the Caribbean economies are launching their first digital legal tender, and Aruba is developing a blockchain platform to boost tourism revenue. Given the velocity of adoption, blockchain technology holds significant implications for tourism development. This research letter provides a discourse on the adoption of blockchain technology among small island economies concerning the opportunities and potential challenges faced and offers practical implications for tourism stakeholders.
Lucas Kuhring, Zsolt István, Alessandro Sorniotti, Marko Vukolić
Permissioned blockchains promise secure decentralized data management in business-to-business use-cases. In contrast to Bitcoin and similar public blockchains which rely on Proof-of-Work for consensus and are deployed on thousands of geo-distributed nodes, business-to-business use-cases (such as supply chain management and banking) require significantly fewer nodes, cheaper consensus, and are often deployed in datacenter-like environments with fast networking. However, permissioned blockchains often follow the architectural thinkining behind their WAN-oriented public relatives, which results in end-to-end latencies several orders of magnitude higher than necessary. In this work, we propose StreamChain, a permissioned blockchain design that eliminates blocks in favor of processing transactions in a streaming fashion. This results in a drastically lower latency without reducing throughput or forfeiting reliability and security guarantees. To demonstrate the wide applicability of our design, we prototype StreamChain based on the Hyperledger Fabric, and show that it delivers latency two orders of magnitude lower than Fabric, while sustaining similar throughput. This performance makes StreamChain a potential alternative to traditional databases and, thanks to its streaming paradigm, enables further research around reducing latency through relying on modern hardware in datacenters.
This paper proposes Consensus-Before-Talk (CBT), a spectrum etiquette architecture leveraged by distributed ledger technology (DLT). In CBT, secondary users' spectrum access requests reach a consensus in a distributed way, thereby enabling collision-free distributed dynamic spectrum access. To achieve this consensus, the secondary users need to pay for the extra request exchanging delays. Incorporating the consensus delay, the end-to-end latency under CBT is investigated. Both the latency analysis and numerical evaluation validate that the proposed CBT achieves the lower end-to-end latency particularly under severe secondary user traffic, compared to the Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) benchmark scheme.
Mukhadin Eskindarov, М. А. Абрамова, В. В. Масленников, Nataliya A. Amosova · 14 authors
The active digitalization of the life of modern society observed over the past 20 years has led to real changes in the economy. The financial sector is at the heart of a digital transformation that has been spearheaded by FinTech, which is now shaping a new segment of modern financial markets. At the same time, the most wellknown objects of FinTech are cryptocurrency and token. Cryptocurrencies, regardless of the attitude of regulatory authorities to them, have become a virtual reality of the financial sector and are actively used to pay for goods and services. The peculiarity of cryptocurrencies is its anonymity and unaccountability of the state that defines a range of risks to society and the state. However, cryptocurrencies, along with risks, create opportunities — from the development of innovative technologies to the creation of new jobs and replenishment of the national budget. The penetration of FinTech into the financial market segments traditionally occupied by banks gave rise to a discussion about their future. However, it will probably not be the displacement of the banks but their FinTech transformation. An example of this is the payment industry, which has become one of the main consumers of the latest financial technologies and provides a wide range of opportunities for FinTech companies to develop. An important element of FinTech is RegTech (Regulatory Technology), which allows companies to bypass trade barriers and helps build a constructive dialogue with regulators. In turn, SupTech (Supervision Technology) is used for analysis and forecasting purposes. At the end of the article, based on the analysis of foreign experience, we formulated the main approaches, the implementation of which allows states to stimulate the introduction and development of new financial technologies, as well as we analysed the experience of interstate coordination of cooperation in the field of financial technologies in the EU and the EAEU countries.
Open access
FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance
Digitalization and Economic Development in Agriculture
Luís Pacheco, Bruno César Araújo, Fernando Oliveira Tavares
O presente artigo tem dois objetivos principais, o primeiro passa por examinar a Bitcoin nomeadamente as suas características e o segundo objetivo assenta na pesquisa da sua relevância em Portugal. A análise destes pontos é fundamental para clarificar este tema de elevado interesse à escala global e contribuir com dados atuais sobre a sua situação em Portugal. Esta pesquisa exploratória permitiu concluir que a Bitcoin apesar da inegável inovação e vantagens apresenta um número elevado de desvantagens e consequências económicas que merecem atenção. De acordo com os resultados obtidos no estudo empírico verificou-se que existe um conhecimento geral da Bitcoin e uma forte tendência para a sua utilização futura. Outro aspeto que merece ser salientado é o facto dos inquiridos acreditarem no potencial alternativo da Bitcoin quando comparada com moedas como o dólar, o euro ou o iene.
BACKGROUND: A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, distributed public ledger that acts as a shared and synchronized database that records cryptocurrency transactions. Despite the shift toward digital platforms enabled by electronic medical records, demonstrating a will to reform the health care sector, health systems face issues including security, interoperability, data fragmentation, timely access to patient data, and silos. The application of health care blockchains could enable data interoperability, enhancement of precision medicine, and reduction in prescription frauds through implementing novel methods in access and patient consent. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the evidence on the strategies and frameworks utilized to implement blockchains for patient data in health care to ensure privacy and improve interoperability and scalability. It is anticipated this review will assist in the development of recommendations that will assist key stakeholders in health care blockchain implementation, and we predict that the evidence generated will challenge the health care status quo, moving away from more traditional approaches and facilitating decision making of patients, health care providers, and researchers. METHODS: A systematic search of MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Scopus, ProQuest Technology Collection and Engineering Index will be conducted. Two experienced independent reviewers will conduct titles and abstract screening followed by full-text reading to determine study eligibility. Data will then be extracted onto data extraction forms before using the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Tool to appraise the quality of included randomized studies and the Risk of Bias in nonrandomized studies of Interventions to assess the quality of nonrandomized studies. Data will then be analyzed and synthesized. RESULTS: Database searches will be initiated in September 2018. We expect to complete the review in January 2019. CONCLUSIONS: This review will summarize the strategies and frameworks used to implement blockchains in health care to increase data privacy, interoperability, and scalability. This review will also help clarify if the strategies and frameworks required for the operationalization of blockchains in health care ensure the privacy of patient data while enabling efficiency, interoperability, and scalability. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/10994.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
With the fast development and expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of smart devices are being continuously connected, and smart homes, as a typical IoT application, are providing people with various convenient applications, but face security and privacy issues. The idea of Blockchain (BC) theory has brought about a potential solution to the IoT security problem. The emergence of blockchain technology has brought about a change of decentralized management, providing an effective solution for the protection of network security and privacy. On the other hand, the smart devices in IoT are always lightweight and have less energy and memory. This makes the application of blockchain difficult. Against this background, this paper proposes a blockchain model based on hypergraphs. The aims of this model are to reduce the storage consumption and to solve the additional security issues. In the model, we use the hyperedge as the organization of storage nodes and convert the entire networked data storage into part network storage. We discuss the design of the model and security strategy in detail, introducing some use cases in a smart home network and evaluating the storage performance of the model through simulation experiments and an evaluation of the network.
As exemplified by Viking and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, we model the political dynamics of raiding, trading, and slaving as a maritime mode of production. It includes political strategies to control trade by owning boats and financing excursions, thus permitting chiefs to channel wealth flows and establish decentralized, expansive political networks. Such political institutions often form at the edges of world systems, where chieftains support mobile warriors who were instrumental in seizing and protecting wealth. Particular properties of the maritime mode of production as relevant to Scandinavia are the fusion of agropastoral and maritime modes of production. To exemplify these two sectors, we use the Thy and Tanum cases in which we have been involved in long-term archaeological research. The historic Viking society provides specificity to model the ancestral political society of Bronze Age Scandinavia. Our model helps understand an alternative path to institutional formation in decentralized chiefdoms with low population densities, mobile warriors, and long-distance trading and raiding in valuables, weapons, and slaves.
Since the increasing popularization of the emerging blockchain technology, blockchain mining has attracted more and more attention. Due to the difficulty of solo mining, typically miners choose to join a mining pool. As there are many mining pools and different mining pools may adopt different reward mechanisms, how to choose the appropriate mining pool has become one of the most important issues faced by miners, since miners can get different rewards in different pools. In practice, there are three commonly used reward mechanisms for the mining pools to distribute the reward among their miners, namely, the proportional mechanism, the pay-per-share mechanism, and the pay-per-last-N-share mechanism. In this paper, we study the pool selection problem faced by the miners, and model it as a risk decision problem since different reward mechanisms have different risks. We establish a pool selection model based on the maximum-likelihood criterion and also study the effect of N on the miners' optimal pool selection decisions. By utilizing the computational experiments approach, we validate our proposed pool selection strategies. Our results can provide important managerial insights for miners when making their pool selection decisions.
Key points Digital Science's paper is one of the first looking at the application of blockchain technology in scholarly publishing. Wholesale use of blockchain technologies is suggested as a possible replacement for scholarly publishers. There remain questions around the adoption of blockchain technologies, including privacy, researcher support, and fraudulent use. Blockchain technologies may provide a new means of understanding problems and customers' evolving expectations, but careful consideration is required of whether blockchain is the best solution.
Krzysztof Janowicz, Blake Regalia, Pascal Hitzler, Gengchen Mai · 8 authors
Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchains and smart contracts have the potential to transform many sectors ranging from the handling of health records to real estate. Here we discuss the value proposition of these technologies and cryptocurrencies for science in general and academic publishing in specific. We outline concrete use cases, provide an informal model of how the Semantic Web journal's peer-review workflow could benefit from distributed ledger technologies, and also point out challenges in implementing such a setup.
In order to prevent sensitive data tampering in the application of security monitoring, intelligent traffic, and other sensitive Internet of Things, the research on WMSN (wireless multimedia sensor networks) application system based on blockchain and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is of great significance. However, WMSN data are characterized by high dimensionality, large scale, and multiple types, so it is challenging to search WMSN data efficiently over blockchain system. This paper proposed a novel One Permutation with Rotation and cross-polytope locality-sensitive hashing (OPRCP) method of approximate nearest neighbor binary query for querying binary hybrid data in the form of WMSN multimedia data (containing two hybrid types of data, such as image-text and image-audio). Firstly, a binary hybrid data index was built with the method of locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) to retain content similarity among original data objects for performing accurate queries. Secondly, the approximate nearest neighbor search strategy was used in place of the nearest neighbor strategy, to reduce querying time. Finally, a binary hybrid data model was employed to cope with multiple types of data in WMSN and carry out collaborative search of binary hybrid data. The experimental results show that compared with other mainstream methods, the proposed OPRCP method is widely adaptive to massive high-dimensional data in multiple types and can improve the accuracy of query results. The OPRCP method exhibits good performance, effectively saves resources, and reduces query time for a variety of datasets. It is an effective solution to the binary hybrid search of approximate neighbors, and it is applicable to the WMSN data search based on smart contracts in WMSN blockchain systems.
Yusuf Sani Abubakar, Ahmad Faosiy Ogunbado, Mpawenimana Abdallah Saidi
Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency and the most successful in blockchain management. It has become famous in recent years. The critical aspects of cryptocurrency are its legitimacy, source of money laundering, tax evasion, lack of regulation etc. The aim of this study is to explore the view of Muslim scholars on the legality of bitcoin with respect to Shariah. The study adopts doctrinal approach which utilizes descriptive approach of qualitative research methodology which relies on secondary data in form of text books, journals, newspapers, related websites etc. The study found that Muslim scholars are divided on the issue. A part of them completely rejected bitcoin and considered it against Shariah principles. On the other hand, some Muslim scholars believe bitcoin does not contradict Islamic principles and therefore may be used, however with certain conditions. The researchers tend to support the proponents’ view as most of the opponents’ grounds for the rejection are temporary in nature which may be covered through policy regulations.
Blockchain is a public open ledger that provides data integrity in a distributed manner. It is the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies and an increasing number of related applications, such as smart contracts. The open nature of blockchain together with strong integrity guarantees on the stored data makes it a compelling platform for covert communication. In this paper, we suggest a method of securely embedding covert messages into a blockchain. We formulate a simplified ideal blockchain model based on existing implementations and devise a protocol that enables two parties to covertly communicate through the blockchain following that model. We also formulate a rigorous definition for the security and covertness of such a protocol based on computational indistinguishability. Finally, we show that our method satisfies this definition in the random oracle model for the underlying cryptographic hash function.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Cryptography and Data Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques