This study investigates the relationship between cryptocurrency, internet, mobile phones, financial inclusion, and financial sector development in China, India, Nigeria, and South Africa for the period 2009–2017 using fully modified ordinary least square (FM-OLS) and causality analysis. The empirical results show that cryptocurrency, internet usage, and mobile subscriptions have a significant positive relationship with financial inclusion and financial sector development, suggesting that countries with higher levels of cryptocurrency, internet usage, and mobile subscriptions have higher levels of financial inclusion and financial sector development. This finding is further buttressed by the causality analysis which shows that cryptocurrency, internet usage, and mobile subscriptions cause financial inclusion and financial sector development in the four countries.
Blockchain technology was envisaged to bring a universal solution to strengthen digital democracy: ensure digital trust, distribute power between members, minimise e-monopoly, and it all through the innovative way of digitising and transacting 'value'. The latter however was deemed to represent financial assets only, neglecting the value created by the intangibles - the non-financial value. Nevertheless, intangibles are established to play a significant role in impacting financial value and therefore need to be incorporated into the existing value chain system. This paper explores how blockchain technology can capture and transact not just financial value, but non-financial one, conveying this way total value.
Blockchains provide decentralised, tamper-free registries of transactions among partners that may not trust each other. For the scientific community, blockchain smart contracts have been proposed to decentralise and make more transparent multiple aspects of scholarly communications. We show how an Ethereum-based suite of smart contracts running on top of a Web-enabled governance framework can facilitate decentralised computation of citations that is trustworthy. We implement and evaluate Smart Papers, and extend it with a model for decentralised citation counts. We show how our approach complements current models for decentralised publishing and informetrics calculation, and analyse cost and performance implications.
The traditional lending system has problems such as the need to establish a trust foundation, the third-party trust media to participate in transactions, and the inevitable breach of contract behavior. The combination of smart contracts and blockchain technology has become a breakthrough point in solving the problem of lending systems. Taking the application of smart contract in the loan system as an example, this paper uses the blockchain as the storage characteristic of the distributed database, decentralizes and stably stores the smart contract on the blockchain for the purpose of directly controlling the transaction assets and their transfer. Through the rational design and application of intelligent contracts, the coded enforcement of the transaction process in the lending system is promoted, and the problems of insufficient supervision ability and low loan efficiency in the transaction process are improved. It also shows that there is a great space for innovation and practical prospects for the reasonable combination of smart contracts and blockchains.
Omar Abdulkader, Alwi M. Bamhdi, Vijey Thayananthan, Fathy Elbouraey
Recently, Digital Currencies (DC) have taken a lot of momentum in the academic and financial community intelligently. Massive contributions have been introduced in this context. With the continual development in the emergent technologies such as; Blockchain (BC), Cloud Computing (CC), Internet of Things (IoT), distributed networks and the existence of cryptographic as a security mechanism, the potential for DC to gain rapid acceptance is increasing significantly. Although the distributed nature of DC deems as core essential for various financial disputes. Government's rules and regulations represented by National Central Bank (NCB) play an important role in plugging the loopholes in monetary policies. This paper analyzes the potential security issues and economic benefits of a NCB to issue the Digital Fiat Currency (DFC) as a replacement for paper money. Adopting IBMSDC as a methodology for designing a management system that manages, control, and protect digital currencies and transactions. As an overall conclusion, studying its functionality, implementation, implications, challenges, and risks will improve not only economic stability but also cybersecurity solutions.
Muhammad Shahid, Sheraz Mahmood, Sana Hafeez, Bilal Zahid · 6 authors
Blockchain is attracting attention from academia and Industry as well due to its amalgamation of various characteristics; cryptography, public key infrastructure, and economic modeling, that is applied to peer-to-peer networking and decentralized consensus to achieve distributed database synchronization. Among other applications of Blockchain, secure and decentralized way of sharing economy is one of the most emergent ones. In this paper, we have proposed a Blockchain based share economy model. Blockchain Share Economy Trust point (SE-TP) mechanism is at the core of the idea for the lender and renter communication. Using SE_TP, the sharing economy communication environment provide effective data management along with data security and reliability. Also, the detail of every shared item can be accessed ubiquitously. A case study to validate the proposed idea is also presented.
Tax compliance requires businesses to implement compliant processes but also documenting and reporting mechanisms to proof a compliant process execution. Non-compliance has far-reaching consequences ranging from financial penalties to criminal investigations, thus threatening the competitive position of a business. Therefore, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) investigates means, among others the blockchain technology, to ease the tax compliance efforts of businesses. However, ensuring tax compliance in business processes is a complex and challenging task, which is why tax compliance management is often implemented as an independent area of responsibility within a business. Nevertheless, an integration of tax compliance into the business processes is necessary to enable compliance by design, resulting in efficient processes. In this paper, we investigate whether blockchain technology can contribute to tax compliance by design in business processes. To meet this end, we provide a conceptual design and a prototype for compliant process execution in the context of value-added taxes.
Discusses how blockchain is transforming international business practices and relatioships. Blockchain and smart contracts are transforming international trade activities. Proof-ofconcepts (PoCs), prototypes, pilot projects, and actual deployments indicate that smart contracts can bring benefits to those involved in trading.
Alen Hrga, Federico-Matteo Bencic, Ivana Podnar Žarko
Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a process similar to crowdfunding, in which companies raise funds from investors, who in return receive tokens or digital assets. With conventional methods of crowdfunding, the level of transparency depends on a centralized platform used in campaigns. With the emergence of peer-to-peer digital currency systems, also known as cryptocurrencies, it became possible to implement crowdfunding campaigns in a fully transparent way for investors. Public sales of blockchain digital assets are known as crowdsales which are implemented using blockchain smart contracts. The paper presents a solution for automating ICO processes implemented using the Ethereum blockchain and explain the basics of crowdsale token sale flow. Next, we analyze features vital for transparent ICO execution as well as the benefits and costs of running an ICO on cryptocurrency application platforms.
Traditional small-scale business framework takes a centralized approach, with the necessary financing being done by local, independent institutions or individuals. The scenario can be improved with a decentralized platform that aids in finding investors for startups, agriculture, small scale industries and businesses. A decentralized platform that supports non-banking financial institutions to collaborate with entrepreneurs is also practically scarce. The proposed model aims at solving this problem by providing a secure, decentralized platform that brings together entrepreneurs, small scale businessmen, farmers and investors. It would create an extensive market that would satisfy the financial needs of small business and would encourage them and entrepreneurs alike. In this paper, we describe a Financial Mapping(FinMap) model, a revolutionary financial mechanism that uses blockchain technology to map investors, entrepreneurs, and the beneficiaries together in a secure manner. This model expects to devise a globally available, self-sustaining business environment where people with different needs work together.
Leonando Ismanto, H Suwito Ar, Ahmad Nurul Fajar, Sfenrianto Sfenrianto · 5 authors
Abstract The progress of technology and information system force digitalization process such as e-commerce to emerge. In Indonesia, the utilization of e-commerce has flourished because it has many benefits and advantages to broaden the market and stay competitive. However, it is faced with many challenges such as fraud, commission fees, limited contact between buyer and seller and misuse of personal data. Blockchain implementation has the potential to solve this problem with increased security and transparency through the implementation of cryptocurrency in payment and smart contracts. This paper explores the usage of the blockchain, cryptocurrency and smart contract to e-commerce for a secure and efficient transaction in Indonesia. The result will be used to propose blockchain technology as e-commerce platform architecture and systems in Indonesia.
As data marketplaces are becoming common place, it is also becoming clear that data streams generated from Internet of Things (IoT) devices hold value for potential third party consumers. We envision a marketplace for IoT data streams that can unlock such potential value in a scalable way, by enabling any pairs of data providers and consumers to engage in data exchange transactions without any prior assumption of mutual trust. We present a marketplace model and architecture to support trading of streaming data, from the advertising of data assets to the stipulation of legally binding trading agreements, to their fulfilment and payment settlement. Crucially, we show that by using blockchain technology and Smart Contracts in particular, we can offer participants a trade-off between the cost of transactional data exchange, and the risk of data loss when trading with untrusted third parties. We experimentally assess such trade-offs on a testbed using Ethereum Smart Contracts.
Recently blockchain technology has attracted increasing attention. It provides a distributed peer-to-peer network. It also allows to enlarge the contracting space using smart contracts. Smart contract is a numeric protocol which define a promises between parties. In a blockchain platform, we can find millions of smart contracts which are created by different users (developers). The smarts contracts created by users and saved in a blockchain can be similar in functionality, even if different users use different wording. This paper presents a new search engine in the blockchain. The novelty of our search engine is to help users to checks their smart contracts by referencing some similar existing smart contracts created and saved in a blockchain platform. Our search engine allows to give each user an adaptive set of similar smart-contracts based on the user's similarity needs. Our search engine is developed in the Ethereum blockchain platform. Experiments demonstrate the potential of our search engine system under different scenarios.
Blockchain technology platform Ethereum (open-source platform) has rapidly evolved and provides interfaces that allow users to develop variety of Blockchain applications using its "Solidity" programming language. Due to its security and privacy, and smart contract execution capabilities, Ethereum became a favorite option for banking and other application domains. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of Ethereum capabilities for online Supply Chain systems in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business model. This work aims to research Ethereum platform capabilities and language, including smart contracts and their advantages over regular contracts. We develop illustrative application to demonstrate smart contracts in the B2C Supply Chain system. The application demonstrates the role of a smart contracts in executing order transactions, from placing an order to receiving the shipment. Furthermore, we add to the application a third component to track and update shipping information between suppliers and consumers.
Chelsea M. Anderson, Vivian W. Fang, James Moon, Jonathan E. Shipman
ABSTRACT This paper explores U.S. public firms’ cryptocurrency holdings and accounting practices from 2013 to 2022 against the backdrop of the recently enacted crypto accounting rule, ASU 2023‐08. Descriptive analyses suggest exponential growth in corporate crypto holdings and significant variation in crypto accounting practices, underscoring the rule's necessity. Hypothesis tests using the pre‐rule data reveal three insights with direct relevance to the rule. First, firms appear to view crypto assets more akin to investments than intangible assets, consistent with the rule's mandate of the fair value model. Second, Big 4 auditors steer firms toward the impairment model and less detailed presentation choices. This conservative approach is unlikely to meet the new rule's goal of providing the most decision‐useful information. Third, increased liquidity of crypto markets prompts the use of the fair value model and a more detailed presentation, consistent with the rule's focus on more actively traded tokens. However, within our sample, we find some evidence consistent with fair value reporting increasing stock return volatility and no evidence that it enhances earnings informativeness.
Amjad Aldweesh, Maher Alharby, Maryam Mehrnezhad, Aad van Moorsel
Ethereum and other blockchains rely on miners contributing computational power to execute tasks such as the proof of work consensus mechanism and the execution and validation of smart contracts. Miners receive a fee, and for the correct operation of the blockchain, rewards should be proportional to the required investment (equipment, energy use, etc.). In Ethereum, the reward obtained for executing smart contracts is set statically, associating a fee with each operation code (opcode) in the smart contract. To determine whether fees are aligned with investments made, we propose OpBench, a platform-independent benchmarking approach. OpBench measures the CPU time required to execute opcodes in the Ethereum Virtual Machine. We implemented OpBench for the PyEthApp and Go-Ethereum clients, and present results for both platforms on three different machines and operating systems. The results show that the static fees set by Ethereum are not always proportional to the invested CPU time, with up to an order of magnitude difference across opcodes. The results also show a markable difference in performance between clients, with the Go client outperforming the Python client across machines.
4차 산업혁명으로 전통적 금융제도인 증권제도가 전자증권제도로의 변화를 가져왔다. 본 연구는 선진국의 증권 결제제도를 살펴보고 문제점을 도출한 후 대응방안 제시하고 있다. 첫째, 자본시장과 금융 투자업에 관한 법률에서는 블록체인 기술을 이용한 증권 발행에 대한 규정이 없기 때문에 블록체인 증권의 발행, 그리고 예탁결제 업무와 관련해서 한국 거래소와 예탁 결제원이 담당할 수 있는 규정이 필요하다. 둘째, 전자거래기본법에서 블록체인 기술 또는 분산원장 관련 기록이 전자문서로서 수용할 수 있는가의 문제가 존재하기 때문에 기술적 측면에서 내용을 파악할 수 있는 법률 조항을 제시할 필요가 있다. 셋째, 무허가 전자등록 행위를 금지하고 있어 전자 등록업 허가를 받지 않는 경우 전자증권 발행시 증권의 결제와 청산에 문제가 발생할 수 있어 충분한 이해상충 방지 체계가 필요하다. 넷째, 개인정보와 분산 원장의 관리에 대한 문제점으로 현재 금융기관이 보유한 개인정보와 블록체인 증권의 정보가 비교적 용이하게 결합될 수 있기 때문에 제3의 기관을 통해 예탁 결제제도를 운영할 수 있도록 시스템 구축이 필요하다.The 4th Industrial Revolution has brought changes in the securities system which is a traditional financial system. This study looks into the securities settlement systems in developed countries, draws up problems and suggests countermeasures for efficient growth. As a result of the study, the problems related to the securities settlement system were drawn out and the countermeasures were suggested as follows; First, there are no provisions on the issuance of securities using block chain technology in Act on Capital Market and the Financial Investment Businesses. There will be no operational problems if the Act prescribes that Korea Exchange and Korea Securities Depository shall take charge of the issuance of block-chain securities and the deposit & settlement businesses. Second, questions arise as to whether block chain technology or distributed ledger records can be accepted as electronic documents in the Framework Act on Electronic Commerce. Articles need to be presented in the Act so that it is easy to grasp the contents from technological aspect. Third, since unauthorized electronic registration is prohibited, there can be problems in issuing electronic securities for those who are not authorized to run electronic registration business. Thus, as there can be problems in the settlement and liquidation of securities issued based on the block chain technology, and sufficient system is required which can prevent conflict of interests. Fourth, there are problems regarding the management of personal information and distributed ledger. Therefore, it is necessary to construct the system so that a third independent institution can operate deposit and settlement system.
Maryam Jameelah Hashim, Mohd Faizal Kamarudin, Nur Afizah Muhamad Arifin, Mohd Rahim Khamis
Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is powered by blockchain technology. One of it is bitcoin, a system that is digitally created and traded tokens to which value is assigned. The level of adoption of bitcoin has accelerated due to several fiscal crises that leads to financial crashes that have affected the lives of millions of people. This has created a demand for new kinds of niche money. Issues need to be closely discussed before it is fully accepted by customers as a medium of exchange. Even though bitcoin is used as a medium of exchange, there is still no specific guidance and benefits to the users. The issues concernedare whether the customers will get the benefits of privacy, lower transaction costs and freedom in payment. Therefore, the aims of this paper are to identify the relationship between transaction cost, privacy and digital payment as a benefit of bitcoin as a medium of exchange. This research will be conducted in Klang Valley area and the questionnaires will be disseminated directly to respondents. These respondents will be identified using probability simple random sampling. A regression analysis will be conducted comprising 200 observations in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Partial least square-structural equation (PLS-SEM) will be used. In the measurement model, reliability will be assessed by examining the Composite Reliability (CR), while validity will be assessed by convergent validity and discriminant validity. Subsequently, structural model testing with 500 re-samples was applied to test the hypothesized relationships between exogenous variables and endogenous variable. Digital payment and privacy are statistically significant towards the benefit of using bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It was found that the digital payment contributes the highest benefit to the customers followed by privacy. The results provide interesting insight into the determinants for the customers benefit using bitcoin. Although the findings show significant results customers should always decide the good and bad thoroughly before finalizing their decisions on the usage of bitcoin. Therefore, it is hoped that this study will enrich the growing literature on the subject and future research needs to explore on the benefits of using bitcoin among the real users. This study is expected to give guidelines to the policymakers on the implementation of bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It is also expected that the results may provide interesting insight into the determinants of customer benefits using bitcoin. Simultaneously, it will contribute to the elements of industry, innovation and infrastructure.
Purpose Blockchain possesses the potential to disrupt and reshape a plethora of industries in the next decade. However, blockchain adoption rates in technology developed countries, such as Ireland, are relatively low. Motivated by blockchain’s potential to transform sociotechnical systems, the lack of systematic inquiry pertaining to blockchain studies from an information system perspective, the authors propose the following research question: “How do organizational factors influence blockchain adoption in organizations based in a developed country?” Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the impact of organizational factors on the adoption of blockchain and the adoption of blockchain in companies based in Ireland. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive literature review was conducted, and the methods of qualitative content analysis were used to identify the most important technology–organization–environment (TOE) blockchain adoption factors. Organizational factors are often viewed as the most significant determinants of IT innovation adoption in organizations. Consequently, using a multiple-case study of 20 companies based in Ireland, the authors investigate how the top three organizational factors identified from the blockchain literature affected these companies decision to adopt or not adopt blockchain. Findings The literature review on blockchain adoption identified specific technological, organizational and environmental factors. Furthermore, the case study findings identified three patterns: top management support and organizational readiness are enablers for blockchain adoption, and large companies are more likely to adopt blockchain than small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors explain these patterns by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a developed country. Practical and scientific contributions are also presented. Research limitations/implications This study makes several important scientific contributions. First, the findings revealed that top management support and organizational readiness are significant enablers of blockchain adoption. Ireland is recognized as a technology developed country; however, the findings in relation to top management support contradict existing IT adoption literature pertaining to developed countries. Second, previous IT innovation adoption literature suggests that organizations size has a positive influence on a company’s IT innovation adoption process. This study demonstrates that large organizations are more likely to not only adopt blockchain but are also more likely to conduct increased levels of blockchain research and development activities. Finally, and most significantly, the authors identified several patterns, which relate specifically to Ireland as a developed country that influenced the findings. These findings could hold particular relevance to governments and organizations of other developed countries in terms of accelerating blockchain adoption. Practical implications The findings about the low level of blockchain awareness and the lack of information pertaining to viable business use cases indicate that the Irish government could play a more significant role in promoting the benefits of blockchain technologies. Further, the findings could also encourage IT providers to formulate enhanced strategies aimed at disseminating information pertaining to blockchain technologies. Second, the positive influence of top management support and organizational readiness, particularly about core competencies, on blockchain adoption suggests that equipping managers with the requisite knowledge and skills will be crucial in adopting these IT innovations. Finally, organizations who adopted blockchain used cloud-based blockchain platforms and tools to overcome the constraints of their initial low levels of organizational readiness. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to identify specific TOE blockchain adoption factors. Further, the authors examine how the three most identified organizational adoption factors impact organizations decisions to adopt blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss how the resulting three patterns identified by examining the nature of blockchain and the characteristics of Ireland as a technology developed country.
Unfulfilled expectations from macro-economic initiatives during the Great Recession and the massive shift into globalization echo today with political upheaval, anti-establishment propaganda, and looming trade/currency wars that threaten domestic and international value chains. Once stable entities like the EU now look fragile and political instability in the US presents unprecedented challenges to an International Monetary System (IMS) that predominantly relies on the USD and EUR as reserve currencies. In this environment, it is critical for an international organization mandated to ensure stability to plan and act ahead. This paper argues that Decentralized Ledger-based technology (DLT) is key for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to mitigate some of those risks, promote stability and safeguard world prosperity. Over the last two years, DLT has made headline news globally and created a worldwide excitement not seen since the internet entered the mainstream. The rapid adoption and open-to-all philosophy of DLT has already redefined global socioeconomics, promises to shake up the world of commerce/finance and challenges the workings of central governments/regulators. This paper examines DLT core premises and proposes a two-step approach for the IMF to expand Special Drawing Rights (SDR) into that sphere so as to become the originally envisioned numeraire and reserve currency for cross-border transactions in this new decentralized century.