The presentation is dedicated to problems and approaches in the legal regulation of the use of one of the cryptocurrencies -Bitcoin. Currently Bitcoin causes bigger interest among the world society, which is connected, in particular, with the highly increased exchange rate of this cryptocurrency. A number of countries have already formed a well-defined position and created a legal basis for development or for a complete or partial restriction of this cryptocurrency. But at the moment the most part of the world countries do not have a legal and regulatory framework of Bitcoin. In this presentation there is an analysis identifying pros and cons of this cryptocurrency and also the consequences of its further integration into the biggest world countries. Besides, our group has considered the experience of the number of countries in which the legal regulation of this cryptocurrency is established. The research offers a way for the further legal regulation of Bitcoin in Russia.
In December 2013 the People's Bank of China announced the restriction of Bitcoin from being involved in any services offered by financial institutions in China, fearing that the speculative risks inherent in Bitcoin is too new for Chinese investors and may endanger the national financial system. This article reviews the Bitcoin's evolvement both as currency and as investment asset around the world. Also, the regulatory treatment for Bitcoin in America is discussed. Then I used detrended ratios to compare the volatility of Bitcoin market and China's stock market, concluding that the risks inherent in Bitcoin are not unacceptable for Chinese investors. Moreover, I searched into the relationship between Bitcoin return and some fundamental economic variables, finding that Bitcoin doesn't have enough correlation with the national economic system to depress investors further during an economic downturn and that Bitcoin actually has excellent diversification benefit as portfolio component.
Blockchain implementation in Health Informatics is a significant challenge in a rapidly evolving era of privacy and security concerns. Dealing with such concerns, healthcare institutions are presented with a serious problem in how to manage new technology and allocate finite resources to maximize value. It is important to understand how organizations address these concerns by exploring blockchain implementation management in the context of cybersecurity. The problem question is twofold: First, how can objectives that are important based on the strategic values of an organization with regard to the implementation of blockchain technology be used to ensure privacy and security of vulnerable patient data? Second, how can these objectives then be used to evaluate proposed solutions for blockchain implementation in electronic medical record systems? In this paper we utilize Keeneyâs (1992) value focused thinking to demonstrate how the process can occur to maximize value-add within healthcare organizations.
Protein crystallography has made the largest contribution to our knowledge of protein structure. However, it is well known that many biologically important proteins do not readily form large enough crystals for traditional crystallography. Successful serial microcrystallography (SMX) studies have been performed at X-ray Free-Electron Lasers, but they are limited in experimental availability. We look to more accessible light sources, such as storage ring sources, for the development of SMX. However, improvements to the conventional experiment are required to make SMX viable at storage rings. Here, we explore several devices and techniques designed given this consideration. To isolate crystal diffraction, the sample environment should contribute zero background scatter outside the crystal, since excess scatter obscures the weak microcrystal signal. We will show the feasibility of using atomically-thin, gas-tight graphene to reduce background scatter as a crystal mount and suggest using it as a window material for SMX. We will also explore two microcrystal delivery devices, a microfluidic chip and a viscous jet injector, for use in SMX. While both of these devices show promise for optimizing various aspects of the crystal delivery system, both contribute more background scatter than is acceptable for an ideal SMX experiment at a storage ring source. Merging diffraction from multiple microcrystals is necessary when a complete data set cannot be determined from a single microcrystal. When microcrystal diffraction is weak enough that Bragg peaks are no longer visible, merging through conventional techniques fails since crystal orientation cannot be obtained through Bragg peak indexing. We will explore proof-of-principle experiments which show that indexing data frames on a per-frame basis is unnecessary for a structure solution, when reciprocal space intensities can be reconstructed using the EMC algorithm. In principle, serial microcrystallography is feasible at storage ring sources if improvements in beamline setups, sample chamber construction and microcrystal diffraction analysis evolve to optimize the diffraction of microcrystals.
This paper explores the “Bill of Rights†in the Justice Verma Committee Report as an analytical framework for gender budgeting in justice. Gender budgeting in justice, as a public good, needs effective planning and financing strategies more than just a Budget Head on “Nirbhaya Fund†in national budgets. As gender budgeting in justice is more effective at the decentralized levels, a gender-conscious fiscal devolution, rather than “one size fits all†gender budgeting policies, should be designed as the plausible entry point to integrate gender justice in fiscal federalism. If “climate change†is already integrated in the TOR of Finance Commission in India, can “TOR on gender†in the Commission be far behind?
The main focus of this article is the analysis of the global cryptocurrency market as an integrated system of cryptocurrencies and infrastructures that ensure their functioning. In particular, the general state of the cryptocurrency market and its current trends have been considered. The main part of the analysis was conducted on the structure of the global cryptocurrency market and its main components. Based on the indicator of cryptocurrency market capitalization, leading cryptocurrencies have been defined. They currently represent 80% of the world cryptocurrency market. These include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Litecoin and NEM. Key players in the cryptocurrency market infrastructure have been also determined, they support and contribute to the development of the market of almost every cryptocurrency. These include miners, full nodes, exchanges, wallets and payment companies. The main market indicators for each leading cryptocurrencies such as: the market share and its change over the year, the degree of influence of the cryptocurrency on the state of the global market, the dynamics of prices and their volatility have been analyzed. The infrastructure of the market of each cryptocurrency has been estimated on the basis of indicators of the reliability of the infrastructure and its trade opportunities. The study showed a high growth rate of Bitcoin and along with it a number of significant altcoins over the past year, which had a favorable effect on the state of the common cryptocurrency market. Almost every cryptocurrency showed positive trends. Ripple is the absolute record holder of price growth over the past year, followed by NEM. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the least financially risky ones in terms of volatility. In addition, Ethereum has the most reliable infrastructure, and Bitcoin has the most secured by exchanges and wallets. Cardano showed the highest growth rates in a short period of time. In general, these phenomena are positive forerunners for the cryptocurrency industry.
All human interaction can be depicted as exchanges. We exchange trivial information, feelings, assets and more. Valuable exchanges have one thing in common; they all require some degree of trust. In today’s society we rely on institutionalized trust when commencing an exchange of value. Typically, this role is filled by a vast ecosystem consisting of commercial banks, clearinghouses and other third parties. The recent rise of Bitcoin, Ethereum and consequent attention on the underlying technology, blockchain, questions the future of current ecosystem. This report aims at uncovering what blockchain is, what different implementations are currently available and how it would affect today’s ecosystem. It does so through semistructured interviews with actors within the current ecosystem as well as weighing in the views of blockchain evangelists. It highlights five key aspects that are crucial when implementing blockchain technology within the existing banking paradigm. Today’s organized societies require law and order which, to a large extent, is limited within the realm of public blockchain technology. With the insight of society’s infrastructural limitations, this paper argue that the current transaction system of our society favors a permissioned implementation with trusted nodes. Such a system would result in more efficient financial markets and lower costs of transacting. However, this paper acknowledge the virtues and reasons behind the rise of public blockchains. Given recent developments within the field and interesting concepts, the report does not dare to exclude a future of banking relying on public blockchain technology as the underlying database.
One of the first paradoxes of Bitcoin was how the community would uphold Satoshi’s original vision and founding principles after its creation. Despite much recent scholarly discussion on the idea of Bitcoin, intellectual history of money, and optimistic, progressive historiography, little has been written to answer the question of whether Bitcoin has succeeded in its original vision. The article argues that Bitcoin has failed to remain civil libertarian, radically democratic, and equal and open due to community politics and an ensuing civil war over the block size debate and the future of the blockchain. In addition to drawing from two historicizations, Yap stone money and the Enlightenment, the article sources online social archives to support the thesis that various actions by the Bitcoin community during the civil war overturned and failed the original vision.
Hélder Sebastião, António Portugal Duarte, Gabriel Guerreiro
This paper analyses the price discovery process in the USD/Bitcoin market since the Mt.Gox bankruptcy until the aftermath of the hack attack on Bitfinex (01-Mar-2014 until 30-Nov-2016).The Geweke feedback measures, estimated pairwise using hourly returns, show that there is a positive relationship between the total feedback and market share, measured by trading volume, that most of the information is transmitted between exchanges within an hour, at least for the main four exchanges (Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTC-e and ItBit), while lagged feedback runs mainly from the major exchange.Other minor exchanges seem to react to price information with some delay and are thus considered as merely satellite exchanges.Bitfinex stands out as the most important exchange in transmitting information to the market: the relative importance of the lagged feedback from Bitfinex to the market is 18.29% while the lagged feedback from the market to Bitfinex accounts only for 0.60% of the total feedback.The volatility in the major exchange in each pair is the main factor explaining the feedback measures, sustaining the claim that the information-based component of volatility increases with the relative dimension of the exchange.
The aim of this thesis is to describe the basic functional principles of digital cryptocurrencies and its economical and legal aspects. Digital cryptocurrencies are young and dynamic phenomenon in financial transactions, which represents an alternative to the traditional national currencies. This thesis is divided into three main parts. In the first part the digital currencies and its function is discussed, the economical aspects of digital currencies and its impact on the theory of money are the main theme of the second part. The final, third part is discussing the legal aspects of digital currencies within the Czech legal system. The first part of this thesis introduces digital currencies, the operation of the whole system and also the basic terminology related to the digital currencies, which is necessary for understanding the subject. These essential aspects and features are being mostly illustrated on the case of the oldest and most famous digital currency - bitcoin - in favour of clarity. The second part of this thesis is discussing the economical aspects of digital currencies. The opening of this part is dedicated to the terminology, particularly terms "money" and "currency". Clear definition of these terms and setting out the differences between them in the sense of economic theory is...
Du fait de l’utilisation croissante d’objets connectes (IoT) et de l’interconnexion de systemes heterogenes generant des myriades de donnees personnelles, notre societe numerique se trouve confrontee a des defis nouveaux, qu’elle se doit de relever : administration decentralisee et composite de ces objets, resilience, respect de la vie privee dans l’acces aux donnees, tracabilite des usages...La blockchain offre des reponses a ces defis :un fonctionnement decentralise,des mecanismes de consensus permettant de concilier des interets divergents,une confiance repartie par la suppression du tiers de confiance unique.De nouvelles opportunites emergeront au sein d’une nouvelle economie du partage basee sur des reseaux sociaux 2.0, dans lesquels humains et objets connectes interagiront de facon indifferenciee. La blockchain nous permet de creer des « ancres » entre le monde physique et le monde virtuel. C’est ainsi qu’une operation ou une transaction dans le monde reel pourra avoir son homologue dans le monde numerique.Meme si la blockchain ne repond pas a toutes les problematiques, ce type de solution est tout a fait pertinent dans des domaines ou confiance, transparence et tracabilite sont indispensables. Neanmoins, il ne faut pas passer sous silence ce que la blockchain ne permet pas, notamment la verification de l’authenticite des donnees enregistrees ou la verification de la legitimite d’une operation « non electronique ».
Long Finance identifies an appetite for ‘Smart Contracts’ in wholesale insurance. Sponsored by the London Market Group and conducted by Z/Yen, this research shows there are exciting prospects for the use of smart contracts in wholesale insurance*. The research included interviews with brokers, insurers, reinsurers, regulators and trade bodies from across the sector, together with discussions with technical experts.
Smart contracts translate legal contract terms directly into executable computer code within a business process. This creates a rigorous link between the legal contract and its operational implementation. By enabling closer integration between back office, business areas, and negotiation of external contractual agreements, smart contracts can improve efficiency, reduce errors, and improve maintainability as business, regulatory, and contractual environments change.
The report identifies five broad areas where smart contracts could be applied in wholesale insurance: Process, Product, Portal, Performance, and Privacy. Processes in wholesale insurance are particularly complex, with complicated contracts managed through a network of clients, brokers, insurers, reinsurers, external providers such as loss adjusters, and central market organisations, often crossing and recrossing national boundaries. Smart contracts offer the possibility of making processes more transparent and maintainable, reducing the need for manual intervention and reducing costs and error rates. Smart contracts could also support new product features or allow new classes of products where the risk is defined using complex analysis of ‘big data’. They could support new automated distributed channels for insurers through the use of internet portals, making it economic to transact more standardised products with smaller clients. By guaranteeing confidentiality of granular data, they could facilitate sharing of aggregate data to provide aggregated industry data and indices. They could reduce barriers to sharing They could also be used in the analysis and management of risk and claims, improving overall performance of insurers. Privacy legislation is an important area where smart contracts could help provide ‘smart compliance’ – linking back office processes to the explicit wording of statute and regulation.
The report highlights examples of where individual firms, ‘coalitions of the willing’, or cross market initiatives, could drive specific smart contract applications to provide business benefits.
The following table summarises the potential benefits of each of these five areas, both to Market firms and to clients. The benefits of cost, accuracy, and speed accrue directly to the Market, although the net effects should include at least some reduction of premium costs to the client. Oversight of the market should also be simpler and more effective with better information. ‘Risk management’ refers particularly to preventing losses or mitigating the impact of losses which do occur; it should be a direct benefit both to the firms and to the client. ‘Client facility’ means that the client has the ability to purchase a policy with capabilities or at a price that was not previously available.
The large number of use cases in different areas which we found for STP and smart contracts indicates that these are technologies which could have a strong impact on the London Market over the next few years, and they should be part of the strategic debate within firms and at Market level, such as:
Commercial vehicle fleet insurance with access to client data;
Cybersecurity policy with access to client systems;
Hull insurance with access to telemetry;
Geolocation of shipping containers;
‘Follower syndicate’;
Parametric insurance;
ILWs;
Insuring intangibles with loss defined from Big Data;
War risk on demand;
Generator cover on demand;
Individualised insurance for car hire;
Cyber index and ILS.
There is no simple way to progress smart contracts, given the multi-party nature of the Market, and this report recognises that a core recommendation is that smart contracts remain on the strategic agenda for the Market as a whole and for individual firms for the foreseeable future. Smart contracts will be important for wholesale insurance and need to be part of future discussions and gain the attention needed to be built appropriately into future Market processing architecture. We suggest further development of the ideas surrounding:
‘follower syndicate’ proposal for applying smart contracts;
opportunity for smart contracts in implementing STP for settling payments;
smart contracts for contract wordings;
governance structure for sharing data that feeds smart contracts;
geolocation information feeding smart contracts.
This thesis is a descriptive statistical analysis of cryptocurrency market and its relation within cryptocurrencies and across asset classes, using correlation functions, orthogonalized impulse response functions and OLS regressions. Consistent with Wang (2014), bitcoin does not suffer from a liquidity trap, even though bitcoin is a decentralized system. This thesis concludes that bitcoin has a lead effect on only 2 out of 8 of the top cryptocurrencies, endowing diversification benefits within cryptocurrency market. This paper provides evidence on cryptocurrency market’s and US equity market’s impulse response dynamics which are insignificant, consistent with Gangwal’s (2016) results that adding cryptocurrencies to a diversified portfolio will yield to a higher Sharpe ratio. Lastly, the study reports bitcoin momentum factor having an impact on banking and financial industries’ excess returns.
Jean-Marc Seigneur, Hélie D'hautefort, G. Ballocchi
The number of crypto-currencies is increasing fast. On one hand, following the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, more than 1000 different crypto-currencies are listed in the crypto-currency markets. On the other hand, solutions like eCurrency exist to effectively create digital fiat currencies. There are solid economic reasons to introduce an optimized basket of fiat currencies as well, along the lines of the International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights, particularly for entities with global assets and liabilities or for individuals wishing to protect their purchasing power in a more and more global and multipolar world. Up to now this kind of solution was only accessible to a few large institutions due to the structure of the foreign exchange market. The main original contribution of this paper is to present the first use case of linking a managed basket of fiat currencies to a new crypto-token. The tokenisation and the use of blockchain will enable us to make it accessible to any individual gaining diversification while benefiting from good liquidity and low cost. After reviewing recent digital fiat currencies initiatives, we explain the economic rationale of our optimized currency basket and its effective implementation by means of an existing blockchain-based distributed computing platform, i.e., Ethereum. Our technological approach enables a wide range of uses of our currency basket, which would not be possible without crypto-tokens.
Mūsdienu globalizācijas apstākļos arvien vairāk naudas tiek pārskaitīta starptautiskos pārskaitījumos. Šādu pārskaitījumu veikšana izmaksā aptuveni 5% no kopējās pārskaitījuma summas, kā arī tie parasti aizņem vismaz pāris dienas, kas apgrūtina darījumu veikšanu starptautiskā līmenī. Bitcoin ir decentralizēta kriptovalūta, ar kuras palīdzību ir iespējams veikt pārskaitījumus bez distances ierobežojumiem caur internetu. Bitcoin pārskaitījumi parasti izmaksā zem 1% no darījuma summas, un pārskaitījums parasti aizņem 5 – 30 minūtes. Šajā darbā tiek apskatītas iespējas izmantot bitcoin pārskaitījumu sistēmu telekomunikāciju uzņēmuma SIA Telia Latvija interneta pakalpojumu norēķinam. Tiek analizēti potenciālie ieguvumi un norēķinu sistēmas ieviešanas izmaksas. Analīzes rezultāti liecina, ka bitcoin norēķinu sistēmas ieviešana veicinātu starptautisko klientu piesaisti un sekmētu uzņēmuma attīstību. Ieviešanas aptuveno izmaksu aprēķins ļauj secināt, ka sistēmas ieviešana atmaksātos mazāk kā piecu gadu laikā. Darbs sastāv no 60 lapām, tajā ir izmantoti 11 attēli, 4 tabulas un 55 literatūras avoti.
The research focuses on the assessment of the criminal turnover of crypto currency as the most sought-after product of the distributed ledger technology (blockchain). The subject of the research is crimes in which the virtual currency is either a means or an object of criminal assault. The research objectives were the search for criminological regularities in the commission of crypto crimes and the assessment of advantages and risks of the virtual currency turnover. The methods of comparative, criminological and statistical analysis made it possible to analyze the above risks through the prism of economic and constructive features of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and identify the most common ways of committing crimes, while the classification of methods of criminal use of the blockchain supported by examples of judicial practices defined prospective areas of the preventive activity. Based on the research findings it was concluded that the cooperation between countries in monitoring crypto crimes and development of a legislative basis for their prevention needs to be expanded. Основное внимание в работе сосредоточено на оценке криминального оборота криптовалюты как наиболее востребованного продукта технологии распределенного реестра (блокчейна). Предмет исследования составили преступления, в которых виртуальная валюта является либо средством, либо предметом преступного посягательства. В качестве целей исследования были обозначены поиск криминологических закономерностей совершения криптопреступлений и оценка преимуществ и рисков оборота виртуальной валюты. Использование методов компаративного, криминологического и статистического анализа позволило рассмотреть эти риски сквозь призму экономических и конструктивных особенностей технологии распределенного реестра и выявить наиболее распространенные способы совершения преступлений, а приведенная в работе классификация способов криминального использования блокчейна, подкрепленная примерами судебной практики, - обозначить перспективные направления профилактической деятельности. На основе проведенного исследования сделан вывод о необходимости расширения сотрудничества государств в направлении изучения криптопреступлений и выработке законодательной основы их предупреждения.
Hilda Victoria Monroy-Olmos, Diana Marcela Bernal-Monroy
This article presents the result of an analysis on the measurement of compliance with the medium-term fiscal framework (MFMP) in the department of Boyaca, and has as its starting point, a review of the literature on the history and evolution of the concept of decentralization established by some authors from the seventeenth century until the epoch of neo - institutionalism and the approach both political, economic and political - administrative approach.Next, a brief review of the fiscal decentralization process in Colombia will be made, with reference to fiscal federalism - understood as the degree to which local tax decisions are decentralized; and finally, the effects of the structural reforms implemented in Colombia concerning fiscal decentralization and implications for fiscal responsibility and transparency in territorial entities; Finally, the methodology to be applied is presented, by means of which a descriptive analytical study is made to arrive at an explanatory study, in order to know how this form of organization has evolved in Colombia and its incidence in the department of Boyaca , focusing the study on compliance with the MFMP as the main tool of public finance planning.
Hubert Ritzdorf, Karl Wüst, Arthur Gervais, Guillaume Felley · 5 authors
An internet user wanting to share observed content is typically restricted to primitive techniques such as screenshots, web caches or share button-like solutions. These acclaimed proofs, however, are either trivial to falsify or require trust in centralized entities (e.g., search engine caches). This motivates the need for a seamless and standardized internet-wide non-repudiation mechanism, allowing users to share data from news sources, social websites or financial data feeds in a provably secure manner. Additionally, blockchain oracles that enable data-rich smart contracts typically rely on a trusted third party (e.g., TLSNotary or Intel SGX). A decentralized method to transfer web-based content into a permissionless blockchain without additional trusted third party would allow for smart contract applications to flourish. In this work, we present TLS-N, the first TLS extension that provides secure non-repudiation and solves both of the mentioned challenges. TLS-N generates non-interactive proofs about the content of a TLS session that can be efficiently verified by third parties and blockchain based smart contracts. As such, TLS-N increases the accountability for content provided on the web and enables a practical and decentralized blockchain oracle for web content. TLS-N is compatible with TLS 1.3 and adds a minor overhead to a typical TLS session. When a proof is generated, parts of the TLS session (e.g., passwords, cookies) can be hidden for privacy reasons, while the remaining content can be verified.