Blockchain Papers

Aviva Rutkin

No abstract is available for this record.

전영수

The disparity between urban and rural areas, which could be considered another form of discrimination, has emerged as a serious problem. The depopulation of rural villages is as serious as the urban problem, because depopulated areas are degraded and are inferior in terms of population, industry, and finance. These areas are not sustainable. The solution is regional revitalization. Following a change in viewpoint, Japan started a program of regional revitalization in 2015. This involves the distribution of limited resources from central to local authorities. These processes have attracted praise for revitalization based on the Maniwa model, which has destroyed people’s stereotypical views. Humans (human capital + relation capital) and content (regional capital + business capital) are the key to success for regional revitalization and management capital and finance capital and hold a major promise of balanced national development. This article has attempted to describe Korea’s implementation of the Maniwa model. This constitutes local empowerment as a consequence of decentralized power, an education system managed by regional human resources, and an impassioned discovery of regional resources.

Agustika Tiana, M.Si Dra. Mujiayati

The purpose of this study was to analyze the Influence of Characteristics Purpose Decentralized Budget and Structural Performance Against Local Government Officials at the Department of Revenue, Finance and Asset Sukoharjo district. This study uses the entire population DPPKAD apparatus Sukoharjo totaling 47 people with sampling Convenience sampling technique. Number of questionnaires distributed by 47 and returning as many as 40. The sample in this study as many as 40 samples and processed using SPSS for hypothesis testing. The study found that participation Budget, Budget Targets Clarity, Feedback Budget, Evaluation of the Budget, Budget Difficulties Purpose, Structure and Decentralization simultaneously affect the performance of Local Government Officers seen from the distribution of F> Ftable is 33.049> 2.390. The independent variables in this study consists of Participation Budget, Budget Targets Clarity, Feedback Budget, Evaluation of the Budget, Budget Difficulties Purpose, Structure and Decentralization able to explain the variability of the dependent variable Performance of Local Government Officers of 83.1%, and the remaining 16.9% explained by other variables outside the study.

Louise Parsons

Bitcoin has been identified as capable of providing a feasible solution to transfer money 'home' safely in a cost-effective manner for many, including for migrant workers. Notwithstanding the potential perks (efficiency, low cost, absence of foreign exchange problems), there are many pitfalls for potential users of bitcoin for this purpose, given the general absence of regulatory protections. Providing protection for users of bitcoin for this purpose is complicated by broader regulatory concerns such as money-laundering and terrorism-financing. This paper will point to the perks and pitfalls of the use of Bitcoin in remittance and concludes that it has rich potential in that arena, and that the regulatory framework for the use of Bitcoin in the remittance sector provides moderate protection for Australian users.

Yunpeng Xiao, Xifan Wang, Xiuli Wang, Zechen Wu · 5 authors

This paper proposes a novel risky bilateral contract for trading distributed wind energy with flexible load in smart microgrid. Due to the randomness of wind energy production, wind energy can barely be traded at a pre-determined quantity. While in smart grid, load demand of electricity consumer can be easily adjusted (reduced or shifted) without decreasing its satisfaction, which can be utilized for integration of distributed wind energy. As a result, the wind power producer benefits from fewer penalties caused by less deviation between real-time traded quantity and pre-offered one. The electricity consumer, on the other hand, benefits from a decreased electricity bills without reducing its satisfaction. We take into account distributed wind energy, three categories of household appliances, and batteries. The Nash bargaining theory is used to determine the price of risky bilateral contract. Case studies are then conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the risky bilateral contract.

Joel Evan Kolker, Sophie Cecile Marie Tremolet

Following decentralization in Colombia during the 1980s, many municipalities faced challenges accessing finance for development projects, having had little or no previous experience borrowing long-term debt. Likewise, commercial lenders were not used to lend to municipal governments. FINDETER, a partly government-owned second-tier lender, was established in 1989 in Colombia. It provides discounted loans to domestic commercial banks that lend to local entities to finance infrastructure projects. FINDETER was initially set up with equity provided by the government of Colombia and loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Thanks to its good credit rating, it can borrow at better rates than commercial banks and provide them with lending capital, while commercial banks retain 100 percent of the credit risk of municipal borrowers. A voluntary intercept provision plays a critical role in credit enhancement, increasing security and investor confidence for both FINDETER and the first-tier lender. Second-tier lenders can play an important role in municipal credit market development. FINDETER has embraced a number of roles to respond to market requirements, including by rediscounting loans, but also by providing technical assistance on project design to local governments. This has been critical for small- and medium-size municipalities that do not have sufficient support or prior experience with borrowing. The fact that the credit risk is fully borne by the first-tier lenders allows for greater flexibility and expanded investment potential for FINDETER. The intercept provides an extra level of confidence for investors (both first-tier lenders and FINDETER) by reducing the risk of non-repayment. The provision is a powerful form of security, and has helped promote access to commercial finance.

Oleksandr Melnychenko, Roman Hartinger

<p>The invention of the blockchain technology can be equated with the invention of the writing or Internet network, considering their major role in the communication between individuals as well as legal persons, regarding information transfer, money transfer etc. The authors analyse the technology, the implemented and projected examples of its use, its relationship with accounting and auditing as well as its influence on the development of these economic sciences.</p><p>The development of accounting and auditing is linked to the development of modern technologies. Nowadays, according to the technological progress the role of blockhain technology is constantly increasing. Blockhain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously-growing list of data records secured from tampering and revision. Blockchain can be used in financial and banking sectors first of all, but also in e-government and administrative sectors.</p>The implementation of blockchain technologies in accounting and auditing doesn’t change their fundamental principles but increases the auditing capacities. In some countries blockchain is adopted for auditing as a practical matter, including the national level.

Authors unavailable

January 1, 2015BeijingDear Professor Miller,As a well-known American literary theorist and critic, your theoretical and critical writings have a wide influence in China. Your great work Fiction and Repetition carries out a penetrating analysis of seven classical English novels, which forms a very important contribution to critical thoughts and provides us with an excellent model of contemporary literary theory and criticism. This book was translated and published in China several years ago. Since then its popularity has been lasting for years, and now the book is still highly praised by China's literary scholars. In recent years, I have repeatedly read this book, feeling deeply impressed and rewarded, but at the same time, I also have many questions and uncertain thoughts. Accumulating them for years, I would here venture to put them into words and send them to you in the hope of seeking your insightful advices.The question haunting me for long is whether a definite text has a relatively definite theme that could be generally identified by most people. From the information supplied in various textbooks on your ideas in China, we have learned that your theory started from new criticism, went through phenomenological criticism, and finally converted into deconstructive criticism with the influence of Jacques Derrida in the late 1960s, and you became a very important representative figure of this critical school. In the mentality of Chinese scholars, deconstruction is a powerful trend of thoughts that rejects reason, doubting about truth and trying to subvert order. Its manifestation in literary criticism is denying all the previous critical theories, advocating a sort of decentralization and anti-essentialism, and deconstructing the fixed meaning, structure and language of a given text, or to use your own words, “The word ‘deconstruction’ suggests that such criticism is an activity turning something unified back to detached fragments or parts. 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Xinping Min, Qingzhong Li, Lei Liu, Lizhen Cui

The lack of credibility of transactions has become major issue restricting the rapid development and popularization of E-commerce. Existing solutions adopt blockchain protocols to improve the credibility of transactions. Most of them still have significant scalability barrier, such as instant transaction and throughput. By analyzing how fundamental and circumstantial bottlenecks in Bitcoin-derived blockchain limit the ability of its current peer-to-peer overlay network, this paper presents Permissioned Blockchain Framework (PBF). PBF aims at achieving trusted trading and supporting instant transaction in E-commerce. To guarantee a higher credibility of transactions, this paper presents a global consensus algorithm - Permissioned Trusted Trading Network Consensus Algorithm. In order to fulfill the demand of instant transactions without sacrificing credibility, this paper presents a Peer Inner Blockchain Protocol. The comparison between PBF and Bitcoin-derived blockchain in E-commerce, suggests better performance on throughput, latency, capacity.

Susi Susanti, Heru Fahlevi

The purpose of this study was to test the influence of local revenue (PAD), general allocation fund (DAU), sharing-revenue fund (DBH), and degree of decentralization againts capital expenditure in regencies / cities in Aceh region. The population in this study were all local governments in Aceh Region during 2011-2014. In Aceh, there are 23 districts / cities which consists of 18 counties and 5 cities.The method used in this research is census. The data used is secondary data obtained Budget Realization Report of the Provincial Finance Department. The analysis used is multiple linear regression analysis.The results showed that, together local revenue, general allocation fund (DAU), and sharing-revenue fund (DBH) againts capital expenditure in regencies / cities in Aceh region. Local revenue positive effect on capital expenditure in regencies / cities in Aceh Region. The general allocation fund has no effect on capital expenditure in regencies / cities in Aceh Region. Revenue-sharing is no effect on capital expenditure in regencies / cities in Aceh Region. Keywords: capital expenditure, fund local own revenue (PAD), general allocation fund (DAU), sharing-revenue fund (DBH)

Mehmet Balcılar, Elie Bouri, Rangan Gupta, David Roubaud

The objective of this paper is to employ the recently proposed nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test to analyse the predictability of returns and volatility of Bitcoin over the daily period of 19th December, 2011 to 25th April, 2016, based on information provided by traded volume. The causality-in-quantile approach allows us to test for not only causality-in-mean, but also causality that may exist in the tails of the joint distribution of the variables. In addition, we are also able to investigate causality-in-variance (volatility spillovers) when causality in the conditional-mean may not exist, yet higher order interdependencies might emerge. We motivate our analysis by employing tests for nonlinearity. These tests detect nonlinearity, as well as the existence of structural breaks in the Bitcoin returns, and in its relationship with volume, implying that the Granger causality tests based on a linear framework is likely to suffer from misspecification. Unlike the result of no predictability obtained under the misspecified linear set-up, our nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test indicated that volume predicts returns over the quantile range of 0.25 to 0.75, i.e., barring in the bear and bull regimes of the Bitcoin market. However, we could not detect any evidence of predictability emanating from volume for the volatility of Bitcoin returns at any point of the conditional distribution. Our results highlight the importance of our detecting and modeling nonlinearity when analyzing causal relationships between volume and return in the Bitcoin market.

I Ivashchenko Alla

No abstract is available for this record.

Elmar Steurer, David Manatsgruber, Esther Prudence Jouégo

Projects in the energy sector in Africa suffer from a number of barriers. Especially the combination of political instability and an unclear regulatory framework hampers the private sector to realize the investment possibilities in the field of decentralized rural electrification. For debt based projects these barriers result in prohibitively high interest rates – roughly 15% while the return on investment does not exceed the low 10% area. This situation leads to strong reluctance from private investors to provide equity. A possibility to encourage private investors to step in could be a separation of the different risks, especially separating the typical high sovereign risk of a country from the commercial risk of the energy project. As a result, the separated risks can be clearly allocated to different investor groups looking for investment opportunities going along with distinct risks. A structured approach is proposed through which private international investors are exposed only to the general political risk while international development banks cover mainly the regulatory risk. Finally, the newly invented financial instrument convertible grant by the electriFI initiative of the EU provides an equity substitute to take over the commercial risk. With this additional financial support, decentralized electrification projects in Africa have the possibility to be implemented and the potential to be scaled up.

Juan José García Chávez, Carlo Kleber da Silva Rodrigues

Herein it is proposed a simple algorithm for automatic hopping among mining pools in the Bitcoin network. The hopping ceases to occur when the best pool to be mined is found. The choice of the best pool is based on statistical data generated and collected during the operation of the Bitcoin network. Experiments for validation and performance analysis are based on mining networks built specifically for this purpose. The major results show for instance that the bitcoin generation increases at 46.0% comparing to when the mining is carried out in only one isolated pool. Additionally, it is evaluated the possibility of implementing a distributed application making use of the proposed algorithm. Lastly, general conclusions and possible avenues for future works are highlighted at the end of this article.

Cristian Vlădescu, Silvia Gabriela Scîntee, Victor Olsavszky, Cristina Hernández‐Quevedo · 5 authors

This analysis of the Romanian health system reviews recent developments in organization and governance, health financing, health care provision, health reforms and health system performance. The Romanian health care system is a social health insurance system that has remained highly centralized despite recent efforts to decentralize some regulatory functions. It provides a comprehensive benefits package to the 85% of the population that is covered, with the remaining population having access to a minimum package of benefits. While every insured person has access to the same health care benefits regardless of their socioeconomic situation, there are inequities in access to health care across many dimensions, such as rural versus urban, and health outcomes also differ across these dimensions. The Romanian population has seen increasing life expectancy and declining mortality rates but both remain among the worst in the European Union. Some unfavourable trends have been observed, including increasing numbers of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses and falling immunization rates. Public sources account for over 80% of total health financing. However, that leaves considerable out-of-pocket payments covering almost a fifth of total expenditure. The share of informal payments also seems to be substantial, but precise figures are unknown. In 2014, Romania had the lowest health expenditure as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) among the EU Member States. In line with the government's objective of strengthening the role of primary care, the total number of hospital beds has been decreasing. However, health care provision remains characterized by underprovision of primary and community care and inappropriate use of inpatient and specialized outpatient care, including care in hospital emergency departments. The numbers of physicians and nurses are relatively low in Romania compared to EU averages. This has mainly been attributed to the high rates of workers emigrating abroad over the past decade, exacerbated by Romania's EU accession and the reduction of public sector salaries due to the economic crisis. Reform in the Romanian health system has been both constant and yet frequently ineffective, due in part to the high degree of political instability. Recent reforms have focused mainly on introducing cost-saving measures, for example, by attempting to shift some of the health care costs to drug manufacturers by claw-back and to the population through co-payments, and on improving the monitoring of health care expenditure.

Mori Taketoshi

Financial technology (FinTech) is becoming more popular in Japan (as well as globally), and financial institutions are increasingly seeking to collaborate with the firms providing such technology. Among FinTech, blockchain (distributed ledger) technology is attracting particular attention because of the possibilities it offers, most notably as a powerful new tool for facilitating transactions. This paper provides an overview of this new technology, including its potential contribution to the infrastructure of the securities market, and provides an introduction to the role of blockchain in financial transactions. This technology is innovative and improving very rapidly. Nevertheless, any enterprise looking to adopt blockchain technology will need to update their business processes and maintain ongoing discussion with stakeholders. The author suggests that only 20 per cent of the barriers to adoption are technology based, the other 80 per cent being attributable to current business processes and business models. It is necessary to take the time to utilise and apply blockchain technology in financial markets. It will take more than a couple of years for blockchain technology to be fully deployed within the financial infrastructure, but it should take less than a decade.

Xiuwen Zhou, Qianhong Wu, Bo Qin, Xinyi Huang · 5 authors

Bitcoin is a kind of novel distributed electronic cash free of any governmental influence and supervision. Its irreversibility, pseudonymity and unforgeability have made great developmental leaps in means of payment and investment management. However, when the application of the means of payment is applied in small and medium-sized enterprises or companies, bitcoin lacks the mechanism to be jointly managed. We propose a Distributed Bitcoin Account Management (DBAM) framework that realizes joint management of bitcoin accounts applied especially to enterprises and companies. The framework incorporates secret sharing and attribute based encryption schemes compatible with the existing bitcoin protocols. Each bitcoin account achieves fine-grained management of participants and prevents the private key from being unexpectedly recovered. Thorough analyses show that our framework is secure, practical and effective.

Willy Sudiarto Raharjo, Dessy Sutanti

Cryptography is known for it's ability to protect confidential information, but it can also be used for other purposes. One of them is for identity verification or authentication. One of the biggest disadvantages of traditional authencation method is at the end of the session, the verifier knows about secrets which is supposed to be known only by prover. In this paper, we implemented a ZeroKnowledge Proof-based secret ticket verification system using Feige Fiat Shamir protocol. The goal of this system is to help prover identified themselves to the verifier, but also prevent the verifier to understand anything about the prover's secret information. The system is also able to prevent ticket duplication or double-use of tickets by using an interactive proof verification method. By combining it with cryptography, not only we can achieve completeness and soundness property of Zero-Knowledge Proof, but we can also achieve information security property. Index Terms - Feige Flat Shamir, Verification, Zero Knowledge Proof.

Authors unavailable

Crypto-currencies are an application of technology that severely divides opinion. For some, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin and their ilk are enablers for criminals, terrorists, paedophiles and other undesirables, allowing them to profit from their dark deeds undetected. For others, the ability to buy and sell anonymously and beyond the reach of regulation, taxation and control is a form of freedom.

Muntadher Fadhil, Gareth Owenson, Mo Adda

Bitcoin is a digital currency based on peer-to-peer network to propagate and verify transactions. Bitcoin differs from traditional currencies in that, it does not rely on a centralised authority. In this paper, we present a simulation model of Bitcoin peer-to-peer network which is an event based simulation. Large scale measurements of the real Bitcoin network are performed in order to enable a precise parameterisation of the presented simulation model. In addition, we perform validation results revealing that the presented simulation model behaves as close as the real Bitcoin network. Based on the developed simulation model, evaluation of our proposed Bitcoin Clustering Based Super Node (BCBSN) protocol as a mechanism to speed up information propagation in Bitcoin network is presented. Evaluation results show that the presented clustering protocol is able to reduce the transaction propagation delay with a reasonable proportion.

Patrick M. Monamo, Vukosi Marivate, Bhekisipho Twala

The rampant absorption of Bitcoin as a cryptographic currency, along with rising cybercrime activities, warrants utilization of anomaly detection to identify potential fraud. Anomaly detection plays a pivotal role in data mining since most outlying points contain crucial information for further investigation. In the financial world which the Bitcoin network is part of by default, anomaly detection amounts to fraud detection. This paper investigates the use of trimmed k-means, that is capable of simultaneous clustering of objects and fraud detection in a multivariate setup, to detect fraudulent activity in Bitcoin transactions. The proposed approach detects more fraudulent transactions than similar studies or reports on the same dataset.

Sue McLean, Simon Deane-Johns

No abstract is available for this record.

Asaph Azaria, Ariel Ekblaw, Thiago Augusto Vieira, Andrew Lippman

Years of heavy regulation and bureaucratic inefficiency have slowed innovation for electronic medical records (EMRs). We now face a critical need for such innovation, as personalization and data science prompt patients to engage in the details of their healthcare and restore agency over their medical data. In this paper, we propose MedRec: a novel, decentralized record management system to handle EMRs, using blockchain technology. Our system gives patients a comprehensive, immutable log and easy access to their medical information across providers and treatment sites. Leveraging unique blockchain properties, MedRec manages authentication, confidentiality, accountability and data sharing- crucial considerations when handling sensitive information. A modular design integrates with providers' existing, local data storage solutions, facilitating interoperability and making our system convenient and adaptable. We incentivize medical stakeholders (researchers, public health authorities, etc.) to participate in the network as blockchain “miners”. This provides them with access to aggregate, anonymized data as mining rewards, in return for sustaining and securing the network via Proof of Work. MedRec thus enables the emergence of data economics, supplying big data to empower researchers while engaging patients and providers in the choice to release metadata. The purpose of this short paper is to expose, prior to field tests, a working prototype through which we analyze and discuss our approach.

Martina Halásková, Renata Halásková

Local financing in advanced countries enables local governments to assess real local priorities as well as limitations. The present paper deals with financial capabilities of local governments for the development of public services, local government expenditure and fiscal expenditure decentralization in the EU28. By use of cluster analysis, local public expenditures are assessed by selected COFOG functions, as % of total local government expenditures in years 2010-2013. The results proved the largest differences in the set of countries in local government expenditures on social protection and the smallest differences in local expenditures on recreation and cultures, housing and community amenities.