The long-term dependence of Bitcoin (BTC), manifesting itself through a Hurst exponent $H>0.5$, is exploited in order to predict future BTC/USD price. A Monte Carlo simulation with $10^4$ geometric fractional Brownian motion realisations is performed as extensions of historical data. The accuracy of statistical inferences is 10\%. The most probable Bitcoin price at the beginning of 2018 is 6358 USD.
Joshua Lind, Christian Priebe, Divya Muthukumaran, Dan O’Keeffe · 12 authors
Trusted execution support in modern CPUs, as offered by Intel SGX enclaves , can protect applications in untrusted environments. While prior work has shown that legacy applications can run in their entirety inside enclaves, this results in a large trusted computing base (TCB). Instead, we explore an approach in which we partition an applica- tion and use an enclave to protect only security-sensitive data and functions, thus obtaining a smaller TCB. We describe Glamdring , the first source-level parti- tioning framework that secures applications written in C using Intel SGX. A developer first annotates security- sensitive application data. Glamdring then automatically partitions the application into untrusted and enclave parts: (i) to preserve data confidentiality, Glamdring uses dataflow analysis to identify functions that may be ex- posed to sensitive data; (ii) for data integrity, it uses back- ward slicing to identify functions that may affect sensitive data. Glamdring then places security-sensitive functions inside the enclave, and adds runtime checks and crypto- graphic operations at the enclave boundary to protect it from attack. Our evaluation of Glamdring with the Mem- cached store, the LibreSSL library, and the Digital Bitbox bitcoin wallet shows that it achieves small TCB sizes and has acceptable performance overheads.
The long-term dependence of Bitcoin (BTC), manifesting itself through a Hurst\nexponent $H>0.5$, is exploited in order to predict future BTC/USD price. A\nMonte Carlo simulation with $10^4$ geometric fractional Brownian motion\nrealisations is performed as extensions of historical data. The accuracy of\nstatistical inferences is 10\\%. The most probable Bitcoin price at the\nbeginning of 2018 is 6358 USD.\n
Carla J. Chibwesha, Leeya F. Pinder, Agnes Musonda, Kombatende Sikombe · 11 authors
Introduction: By 2030 cancer will kill one million Africans each year. Women will bear the heaviest burden, as cancers of the breast and cervix are the most common malignancies and causes of cancer-related death in the African region. National-level data that map the status of women's cancer control services are needed to inform strategies for implementing platforms for the early detection and treatment of these “priority” cancers. Methods: Using mixed-methods, we assessed available services for breast and cervical cancer detection and treatment at all provincial hospitals, the national referral hospital, and the national cancer treatment center in Zambia. Results: A system for cervical cancer prevention using visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) and ablation/excision of precancerous lesions has been established at the provincial level. The potential for mammography, clinical breast examination, diagnostic ultrasound and biopsy exist at the provincial level, albeit on a much smaller scale. Breast wedge resections and mastectomy can be performed in provinces where general surgeons are located; however, breast conserving and reconstructive surgery are not available. Invasive cancers are generally referred to University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, where services for radiation, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy are available but overburdened. Pathology services nationwide are woefully inadequate. Discussion: The assessment revealed a critical need for centrally coordinated, but decentralized, public service platforms for women's cancer control. Efforts are underway, through multiple stakeholders, to implement recommendations related to training healthcare workers who can provide advanced diagnostic and therapeutic services, improving pathology services, and innovative financing for these initiatives.
General Insurance occupies a strong position in today's market. It has a centralized way of operation, which makes it inefficient, less transparent, with trust problems and creates conflicts of interest between insurance companies and policyholders. Furthermore, it's an industry with relative difficulty in innovation, which contrasts with today's services powered by new technologies. New disruptive technologies have the capacity to compromise the value chain of traditional insurance, creating a big problem in its stability and future. Associated to this new kind of technologies, comes a new way of thinking perpetuated by the new generations based on the new trend of sharing economy. They give priority to new technology based services, which are decentralized, more convenient, more price competitive, transparent, and efficient and they prefer services which put the user more in control instead of the current less personalized options. New business models such as Social Insurance, are being developed and powered by new technologies and this new way of thinking. Social Insurance enables people in need of insurance to connect and pool their money and risks. It offers coverage that is cheaper, more transparent, and more relevant to the customer. Members of this type of insurance are both policyholders and underwriters. All these factors compromise the future of traditional insurance companies and their business model. The main goal is to create a new business model in order to adapt insurance companies to the new trend of shared economy. This new business model is going to be focused on health insurance, based in peer to peer communication and is going to be backed up by a business case and a prototype powered by a blockchain database. Blockchain is a decentralized transaction ledger shared amongst all nodes participating in the system. Every node has an updated copy of the database and cannot update it without the consensus of the network, removing the need for having a central authority or trusted third party to monitor the system. Each Blockchain implementation may have its own consensus mechanism (e.g. Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake) to ensure that one node on its own cannot change the database without being validated by the network. Bitcoin is the world's most well-known Blockchain implementation, a public ledger for all transactions made in with a digital currency. However, Blockchain technology can be applied to multiple use cases and industries using Smart Contracts (a collection of code that runs on the network) to define the rules of the business. It fits the purpose for this business model, because it has peer to peer communication by default and has no central authority, making the service more efficient and transparent.
Bitcoin is an overall cryptographic money and computerized installment framework called the primary decentralized advanced cash, as the framework works without a focal store or single director. It was imagined by an obscure individual or gathering of individuals under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and discharged as open-source programming in 2009. The framework is distributed, and exchanges occur between clients straightforwardly, without a mediator. These exchanges are confirmed by organize hubs and recorded in an open dispersed record called a square chain. Bitcoins are made as a reward for a procedure known as mining. They can be traded for different monetary standards, items, and administrations. As of February 2015, more than 100,000 dealers and sellers acknowledged bitcoin as installment, utilizing the administrations of bitcoin installment specialist co-ops, for example, Bi tPay or Coin base, which change over bitcoin to the neighborhood money, which is paid to the vendor's financial balance, less a charge. Bitcoin can likewise be held as a speculation. As per explore created by Cambridge University in 2017, there are 2.9 to 5.8 million one of a kind clients utilizing a digital currency wallet, a large portion of them utilizing bitcoin. The utilization of bitcoin by culprits has pulled in the consideration of money related controllers, authoritative bodies, law requirement, and the media. The examination paper communicates the utilization and effect of bitcoin in the money related divisions.
Ovim radom opisuje se i analizira nastanak, okruženje te trendovi vezani za kriptovalute, najznačajniju valutu Bitcoin. Analiziraju se povijesne značajke i korištenje te valute danas.
France undergoes a decentralization process since the early 1980s. French local administrations experienced significant transformations during this process, embracing three action periods. The decentralization acts enacted in 1982 mark disengagement with administrative uniformity. The second period of decentralization starting the first years of 2000s witnessed important constitutional modifications. Regional administrations gained Constitutional recognition, local referendum has been established, the amendments concerning right to petition, experimentation, local finance and local autonomy has been passed. The third phase of decentralization started since 2010s. The reorganization of metropolitan governance, the transfer of competence to inter-communal cooperation structures concerning urban planification, roles assigned to regions in economic development and employment (economical issues, apprenticeship, European aides and aides destined to private sector), territorial solidarity and reinforcement of democracy were the main themes of this phase. The present article tries to analyze the foremost futures of French decentralization and to underline the main discussions emerged during the ongoing third phase of decentralization process concerning future of departments, regional administration and newly created metropolitan cities. In the last part of the article, the probable influences of French reforms on Turkey are discussed taking into account that Turkey has taken this country as a model in its administrative organization.
Transactions between individuals have always been a part and parcel of human society for the division of labour made people interdependent. The medium of transaction has also been evolving along with the evolution of society and human consciousness from barter system to commodity money to fiat currency and now to digital currency or cryptocurrency. But since evolution is a form of error correction, the problem of double spending in digital currency was solved by a distributed ledger system called Blockchain. Since 2008 onwards the blockchain technology has been separated from bitcoins to be injected to many other problems related especially to banking transactions. Blockchain technology enables the creation of decentralized currencies, smart contracts and intelligent assets that can be controlled over the Internet
Cryptocurrencies have left the dark side of the finance universe and become an object of study for asset and portfolio management. Since they have a low liquidity compared to traditional assets, one needs to take into account liquidity issues when one puts them into the same portfolio. We propose use a LIquidity Bounded Risk-return Optimization (LIBRO) approach, which is a combination of the Markowitz framework under the liquidity constraints. The results show that cryptocurrencies add value to a portfolio and the optimization approach is even able to increase the return of a portfolio and lower the volatility risk. The codes used to obtain the results in this paper are available via www.quantlet.de
The development of decentralized renewable energy systems is of crucial importance for the decarbonization of energy generation worldwide. Purchase decisions regarding innovative energy systems depend to some extent on consumers' perception of the systems' degree of autarky. We assumed that, in addition to the energetic perspective, consumers associate other non-energetic facets such as independence, autonomy, self-sufficiency or control with the concept of autarky. These psychological facets of autarky were expected to contribute to purchase decisions. In Study 1, participants (\textit{N}=168) evaluated three future energy supply scenarios. The scenarios varied regarding their range of autarky (household/ neighborhood/ small town), but the individually realized degree of energetic autarky did not vary. Participants reported a higher willingness to pay in connection with a higher perceived psychological autarky for the Household Scenario. Study 1's findings were confirmed by Study 2, in which qualitative interviews (\textit{N}=13) also revealed that participants favored the Household Scenario on several points. These evaluations were driven by the anticipated psychological facets of autarky, that is the subjective perception of being independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, energy secure and of control. To promote an adoption of renewable energy systems, these psychological autarky facets need to be addressed. Enabling the people to self-determine, control and secure their energy provision even in complex organizational settings in such a manner is likely to increase their acceptance and therefore foster the required social transition as a whole.
On May 26, 2010, Canada’s Minister of Finance tabled in the House of Commons a draft Securities Act. The purpose of the Act is to establish Federal government jurisdiction over securities legislation and create a Federal Securities Regulatory Authority. With this initiative, the Federal government proposes to centralize the regulatory apparatus to ensure uniformity of policies and regulations across Canada and meet international standards of quality and comprehensiveness. But this initiative also raises significant constitutional and economic policy issues. In a comprehensive paper examining the main arguments supporting a centralized securities apparatus, Pierre Lortie, Senior Business Advisor at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP, argues that sound public policy should move ahead only if there is a strong body of empirical evidence demonstrating that the performance of the current regime is significantly inferior to that of other countries — particularly the United States — and that a centralization of the regulatory apparatus is necessary to correct the situation. The paper demonstrates that Canada’s decentralized securities regulatory regime has in fact shown flexibility, a great capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and an unrelenting ability to respond to particular industry or regional needs. It has also provided strong assurances against the hasty adoption of disruptive and costly regulations because it is less susceptible to the imposition of politically expedient or faddish requirements or the influence of a dominant industry or interest groups. In contrast, a centralized system runs the risk of turning into a disruptive, costly and regrettable initiative that will not give Canadians what they expect, while erasing many of the benefits achieved so far.
Abstract Blockchains are distributed data structures that are used to achieve consensus in systems for cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin) or smart contracts (like Ethereum). Although blockchains gained a lot of popularity recently, there are only few logic-based models for blockchains available. We introduce $\mathsf{BCL}$, a dynamic logic to reason about blockchain updates, and show that $\mathsf{BCL}$ is sound and complete with respect to a simple blockchain model.
Today, we need to explore deeper societal issues surrounding the rapid deployment of computerized electronic platforms, cryptocurrencies and algorithms now disrupting legacy financial firms and their models. Such electronic platforms and technologies have been disrupting many sectors of industrial societies since the 1960s’ automation of manufacturing and more recently of publishing, retail, travel, legal and medical services. One of the first financial disruptors was WitCapital, founded by Andrew Klein, described in his book WallStreet.com (1998), which participated in 127 offerings, raised $9 billion and at its peak in 1999 was worth $2 billion. WitCapital was bought by Sound View Technology Group in 2000, and Klein now helps non-profits in his Amsterdam home. Recent applications now disrupting traditional finance are systemic and global, see for example the FINTECH 100 and the rush to use Blockchainbased ledgers both to protect incumbents’ markets and to disrupt them. All this is described in depth, as well as with broad global analyses in Blockchain Revolution by Don and Alex Tapscott (2016), the most comprehensive overview so far of blockchain’s promise, future and policy implications. The core issue in finance is trust, on which all markets rely, and these distributed ledgers offer many new ways of verifying transactions, ownership, legal rights, identity and reputations so as to restore trust in many systems. The new topologies and networks reshaping earlier human trust relationships with protocols, principles, standards and gated sites are described by Joshua Cooper Ramo in The Seventh Sense (2016). Research by Venture Scanner tracked 1,379 fintech companies in March 2016 with combined funding of $33 billion. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, founded by Perianne Boring is leading in convening fintech companies and how standards and applications to regulations and government functions are evolving (www.digitalchamber.org).
With1 the rapid growth of the internet of things (IoT) market and requirement, low power wide area (LPWA) technologies have become popular. In various LPWA technologies, Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) and long range (LoRa) are two main leading competitive technologies. Comparing to NB-IoT network that mainly built and managed by mobile network operators, LoRa wide-area network (LoRaWAN) is mainly operated by private companies or organizations, which will bring the trust issues between application customers and network operations. In this paper, we proposed a blockchain technology based solution to build an open, trusted, decentralized and tamper-proof system for LoRaWAN. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that integrating blockchain technology and LoRaWAN IoT technology.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger for recording transactions, maintained by many nodes without central authority through a distributed cryptographic protocol. All nodes validate the information to be appended to the blockchain, and a consensus protocol ensures that the nodes agree on a unique order in which entries are appended. Consensus protocols for tolerating Byzantine faults have received renewed attention because they also address blockchain systems. This work discusses the process of assessing and gaining confidence in the resilience of a consensus protocols exposed to faults and adversarial nodes. We advocate to follow the established practice in cryptography and computer security, relying on public reviews, detailed models, and formal proofs; the designers of several practical systems appear to be unaware of this. Moreover, we review the consensus protocols in some prominent permissioned blockchain platforms with respect to their fault models and resilience against attacks. The protocol comparison covers Hyperledger Fabric, Tendermint, Symbiont, R3~Corda, Iroha, Kadena, Chain, Quorum, MultiChain, Sawtooth Lake, Ripple, Stellar, and IOTA.
The government of Nepal (GoN) has developed and implemented climate policies, plans and frameworks such as NAPA, National Climate Change Policy, LAPA and currently in the process of developing National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). These policies and plans are in different states of its implementation with diverse opinions and perceptions of the stakeholders. The paper has explored these opinions and experiences of climate experts in Nepal on state of climate policies, inter-linkages, roles and responsibilities of ministries/departments, important factors and subjective indicators for effective implementation of the policies. Altogether 30 experts responded the questionnaire sent via the email, LinkedIn and Skype Interview in the 1st phase of Delphi research technique. The experiences of these experts range from 2-30 years representing government, non-government sectors, media and independent experts. As per most of the experts interviewed, the policies and plans are progressing in strategic direction with national and local priorities. The LAPA is the pioneer framework to address the local climatic issues, originated in Nepal. However, lack of clarity on roles/responsibilities and coordination among the ministries/departments; clear mechanisms for implementation of these policies; lack of sensitization, decentralization and delegation of finance and technologies; capacity of the stakeholders are the major challenges identified.
Bitcoin extreme deflationary price instability has hampered its usability, making it impractical for spot transactions and unserviceable for deferred payments. Ametrano (2014) has proposed as Hayek Money a cryptocurrency price stability paradigm of elastic non-discretionary monetary policy. An implementation using a dual asset ledger for stable coins and seigniorage shares is presented here. A DeCentralized Reserve Bank (as Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is introduced as active market agent using bitcoin as reserve asset to preserve price parity. The socially inefficient over-investment of seigniorage revenues in transaction verification can be avoided using proof-of-payment.This schema frees coins from any speculative value, thus favoring money velocity and increasing the number of transactions. Seigniorage shares are effectively to be considered as a participation in a distributed central bank: as such the owners are entitled to seigniorage revenues in exchange for being subjected to the losses associated to coin price stability defense, obliged to validation task duties, and in charge of price index observation.
Poland has created a kind of quasi-market focusing on environmental protection and clean-up. New institutions for sustainable development, including the self-financing framework and strong environmental law enforcement mechanisms, have helped draft market forces to serve environmental protection. Poland&s;s self-financing system for the environment is based on a basic precept of environmental economics: the &s;polluter pays principle&s;. This chapter shows that Poland has developed a unique solution to the difficulties facing environmental protection by institutionalizing self-financing and decentralizing the funds. In addition to national, voivodship and local environmental funds, two others — the Forestry Fund and the Farmland Protection Fund — are also regarded as ecological funds. Another institutional innovation providing environmental funds to potential investors in Poland is the Bank for Environmental Protection. One of the most innovative ventures in Poland is the debt-for-environment swap. Poland entered into a separate debt-for-environment swap with Finland, which is managed by a special Polish-Finnish Task Force.
Sustainable Development and Environmental Management
David Bartolini, Agnese Sacchi, Simone Salotti, Raffaella Santolini
The virtues of fiscal decentralization are usually assessed against the provision of local public goods; little is said about its impact on public finances. There is a growing concern that public finances may be negatively affected when spending and taxing powers are delegated to subnational tiers of government, especially under adverse financial conditions. Our work proves that these concerns are unfounded. The empirical investigation on 19 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 1980–2010 shows that the budget balances of central and local governments do not get worse with fiscal decentralization. Moreover, during banking crises expenditure decentralization seems to be beneficial, as the central government can easily shift resources from intergovernmental grants to financing public policies necessary to tackle the crisis. In turn, more subnational tax autonomy would improve the budget of all tiers of government, suggesting that more ‘effective’ tax decentralization increases fiscal discipline also in times of financial distress. (JEL codes: H60, H70 and G01).