Blockchain Papers

Adrian Cheung, Eduardo Roca, Jen‐Je Su

The creation of bitcoin heralded the arrival of digital or crypto-currency and has been regarded as a phenomenon. Since its introduction, it has experienced a meteoric rise in price and rapid growth accompanied by huge volatility swings, and also attracted plenty of controversies which even involved law enforcement agencies. Hence, claims abound that bitcoin has been characterized by bubbles ready to burst any time (e.g. the recent collapse of bitcoin’s biggest exchange, Mt Gox). This has earned plenty of coverage in the media but surprisingly not in the academic literature. We therefore fill this knowledge gap. We conduct an econometric investigation of the existence of bubbles in the bitcoin market based on a recently developed technique that is robust in detecting bubbles – that of Phillips et al. (2013a). Over the period 2010–2014, we detected a number of short-lived bubbles; most importantly, we found three huge bubbles in the latter part of the period 2011–2013 lasting from 66 to 106 days, with the last and biggest one being the one that ‘broke the camel’s back’ – the demise of the Mt Gox exchange.

Yvonne Wangũi Machira

Communities and Human Settlements-Housing & Human Habitats Governance-Governance Indicators Governance-Local Government Governance-National Governance Governance-Politics and Government Health, Nutrition and Population-Health Economics & Finance Health, Nutrition and Population-Health Monitoring & Evaluation Health, Nutrition and Population-Health Systems Development & Reform Public Sector Development-Decentralization Social Development-Social Accountability

정승영

No abstract is available for this record.

Mary Hallab

If, as many critics assert, vampires embody our “worst fears,” they also stand for our deepest wish—not to have to die. In their folklore origins, vampires were part of a folk science of disease and death. They have not lost this association. With the advent of modern medical science, vampires did not simply disappear but instead proliferated and evolved to fill varied and complex roles in popular literature, almost always related to their ability to defeat death. At the same time, popular belief in the inevitability of suffering and the necessity of death, based in a firm Christian, (usually) conservative fatalism, gradually faded to be replaced by an even firmer conviction in the power of medical science to prevent disease and prolong life expectancy. Doctors play a role in the escalating battle in much vampire literature between science and the occult—and not always on the side of science. Because vampires are human, and their longevity is a medical anomaly, they are, even in fiction, a natural object of medical curiosity and speculation. In vampire literature, doctors frequently accompany vampires as commentators, antagonists, or observers, representing science and its transformations and accomplishments for good or evil, enacted in the vampire. Paradoxically, the doctor figures both assert the positive and curative value of science, while at the same time casting doubt on the power of science in a world controlled by mysterious occult forces. Where there was no medicine or no doctors to explain death, or prevent it, rural people relied on their own traditional medicine, which included both natural and supernatural elements—warding off vampires with garlic or crosses, for example. Hungarian folklorist Tekla Domotor (1981) says that for rural people, “taking a keen interest in the supernatural was in reality also a means of conducting scientific inquiry” (14–15).1 It is not entirely unreasonable, as Paul Barber points out, that this inquiry included blaming death on the dead, especially in the case of contagious diseases (3). In Eastern Europe or Greece, when a vampire was said to be killing people or causing other calamities, a self-appointed vampire expert could, often for a fee, prevent or stop these depredations according to traditional methods. But one vampire event in the 1700s reveals—indeed, plays a role in—how a whole worldview was changing, as superstitious or religious explanations were replaced by rational scientific investigation. In a Serbian village, villagers accused deceased soldier Arnold Paul (who had claimed to have been bitten by a vampire in earlier years) of coming out of his own grave, attacking villagers, and spreading a vampire epidemic. He did so in a manner wholly in accord with traditional expectations and was eventually dispatched with the prescribed methods. Two waves of vampire scares devolved from this circumstance. In both cases (3 weeks later and 40 days later), the body was disinterred and surgeons present attested, according to the obvious symptoms, that Paul was indeed a vampire. In the second case, one of the surgeons, an Austrian Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger, issued an official report in 1732 that created a media sensation all over Western Europe (Melton 518–19). In his study Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origin of an Enduring Legend (2010), Mark Collins Jenkins speculates that, whereas tales from the East about revenants were fairly common, this one report of “scientific observations” attracted Enlightenment scholars because a conclusion by a reputable doctor seemed to acknowledge that vampires might actually exist: It kindled “a fierce debate throughout the German academic and medical establishment” as to the reality of such fantastic beings who could defeat death (Calmet 237–40; Jenkins 111). These accounts of vampires, that sent shockwaves in the West, were not myths or tales of yore like the Greek stories of lamiae or Goethe's “The Bride of Corinth” (1797), but were accounts of real people, known in their communities, with families, and names—who might really have come out of their graves. Ironically, Arnold Paul's case among others brought these “real” vampires into modern medical science—and killed them. Even the Church-appointed vampire investigators Dom Augustine Calmet and Giuseppe Davanzati, looking at this and similar cases, were inclined to regard vampires as a generally harmless superstition. (Otherwise, they would present a serious theological conundrum.) In 1749, Pope Benedict rejected vampires as “fantasy.” And, in a triumph for natural science, after a survey by her personal physician Gerhard Van Sweiten in 1755 and 1756, the Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa condemned vampire belief as “superstition and fraud.” She removed the consideration of phenomena “not readily explainable in natural terms” from the authority of the clergy to that of government officers and decreed punishments for those who desecrated corpses (Frayling, 29–30; Jenkins 116–17). Debunked by medical science, vampires were demoted to mere superstition, but they did not go away. Instead they became literature. These fabled walking corpses inspired the literary vampires of Western Europe that became part of the fascination with decay, death, and the occult that we associate with the Romantic Movement. Although elevated in social status and appearance, the vampire retained from the past the ghastly and dangerous character of the grave. At the same time, the vampire's medical examiner or hunter or slayer slowly morphed into a more assured and competent expert, perhaps like the sorcerer in Raupach's “Wake Not the Dead” (1823),2 and soon, into an educated scientific physician like the sympathetic Dr. Heselius whose papers retell the story of Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872) and convince us to accept her account. Literary vampires are talkative and often quite intelligent, fully aware of the hardships of their problematical existence in the complexities of the real and ever-changing world in which they often find themselves waking. For vampires do have their problems: outcasts from society, caught between the actual and the supernatural, clinging to a human consciousness and sense of self, they yet feel themselves pulled toward the darkness of evil and death. Vampires are set off against, destroyed, or sometimes saved, by the solid, sensible, reliable presence of the doctor, whose job is to know about them and to tell us what we can expect from them. For our vampires now are part of our folklore that, with the help of their varying casts of victims, slayers, and doctors, change and develop into what we, their audience, need or want them to be—sexy, powerful, clever—and physiologically possible. So, although actual belief in vampires has never run high in Western Europe, these fanciful literary figures have “arisen” with science and scientific speculation—that, ironically, requires belief. Vampires provide a focus of speculation for the dreams that modern medicine has created for us. Much vampire literature is a kind of science fiction; hence, the doctor—with the vampire as his double or opposite—or even his victim—demonstrates, to some (admittedly rather vague) degree, our own evolving understanding of medical research and practice, our faith in it (or lack thereof), and our expectations for the future. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when news of vampires traveled to Western Europe, expectations of medical technology were already high. In her introduction to the third edition of Frankenstein (1831), Mary Shelley tells us about the inception of Doctor John Polidori's influential story “The Vampyre” (1819), along with her own novel about Doctor Frankenstein's monster, in the ideas that Byron and Shelley discussed on that famous stormy night in Geneva in 1816. These concerned the restoration of life through scientific endeavor, not through religion or magic, but by means of electricity, suspected by many to be the “Life Force” that pervaded the universe–a belief promoted by the pseudo-scientific electrical cures practiced by Anton Mesmer and his followers as well as more scientific experiments, for example, those of Luigi Galvani, recently popularized in a series of lectures by Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Society. But although both Shelley's Frankenstein and Polidori's Lord Ruthven suggest that making life from dead body parts, or bodies, may not be such a good idea, the fantasy has persisted and has had to be repeatedly crushed as impracticable or even immoral, as it is in so many works, from Raupach's “Wake Not the Dead,” to Stoker's Dracula (1897), to the rampaging dead in the movie Re-Animator (1985). Doctors, in and out of the literature, have been the inventers and popularizers of vampires. Dr. John Polidori, at the time the youngest doctor to graduate from Edinburgh Medical School, accompanied Byron to Geneva in 1816 as his personal physician. As David MacDonald depicts him, he was immature and vain and thought himself as great a poet as Byron, but his efforts to chummy up to Byron were rebuffed. His “Vampyre,” based on a fragment of a story begun by Byron, is clearly an attack on Byron in the character of the vampire Lord Ruthven. The popularity of Polidori's story established the Byronic Hero/Villain (Byron's own creation) as the archetype for thousands of vampires to come, from any number of nineteenth-century melodramatic villains or heroes to Lugosi to the present—Edward Cullen, for example, in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. So, ironically, two living doctors were responsible for the character of our vampire mythology: Dr. Fluckinger brought the vampire into Western Europe in the report of Arnold Paul, which was sensationalized in the press and discussed in such reputable studies as the work of Dom Augustin Calmet, Yet, we might also say that Doctor John Polidori, through his influential story, was the actual creator of the vampire as we know him—handsome, suave, sophisticated, and malign. Vampires often do bad things—kill people, for example. But the most shocking evil of these “monsters” is that they are supernatural humans resurrecting themselves, climbing out of the grave—defying the laws of God and Nature. In addition to their dangerous behavior and disconcerting presence, vampires (folkloric and fictional) seem evil to many because they obscure the forbidden boundary between soul and body, spirit and matter, and thus undermine “a sound predictable reality.” This, of course, is what the Romantics so admired. But according to Linda Bayer-Berenbaum, even in our day, Gothic beings like Brunhilda in “Wake Not the Dead” or Dracula, in cahoots with sorcery or science, blot out our neat Christian dualism between good and evil (35). Grisly, Gothic, unnatural medical investigations or treatments that seem to cross heretofore physically impassable boundaries, like stem cell research, cloning, or organ transplants, are repugnant to many as a prideful playing at God that will come to no good. According to W. Scott Poole, modern vampires (like Blade, for example, who needs constant medical attention) embody these anxieties that modern medical technology will make us into something unnatural, inhuman cyber-beings, robots, heartless and evil (Poole 221, 223). One kind of “unnatural” crossing of boundaries in the real world began in the seventeenth and continued through the nineteenth centuries (until even now)—in the mysterious cures of Anton Mesmer. Mesmer convinced many people that treatments with invisible forces like magnetism, that is, electricity (considered by many to be the “Life Force”) and with hypnotic trances would ultimately put an end to all illnesses and prolong life. Think of Poe's story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845), in which a corpse is hypnotized to remain sentient and whole (more or less) until the spell is broken. Eventually, Mesmeric healers used only their own “natural magnetism” conveyed to the patient by touch and suggestion to diagnose illnesses, to anesthetize even severe pain, and even to effect cures. According to Alison Winter in her book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (1998), in the nineteenth century a rather unpleasant medical controversy arose: a number of researchers attempted to demonstrate through mesmerism that the mind, will, soul, and spirit were all just physical things—and others, with similar mesmeric carryings-on, demonstrated the opposite, that is, that the spirit determined the body's well being. In this kind of well-publicized medical context rose Rymer's hypnotic Varney the Vampire (1847), Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872), and Stoker's Dracula (1897).3 Dracula often behaves like a mesmerist controlling his victims with the power of his will—as does Dr. Van Helsing. Indeed, the battle of wills between Dracula and Van Helsing seems to reenact the kinds of roaring conflicts described by Winter, between the mesmerists who saw the practice as a kind of electrical projection or even mystical imposition of power from the stronger to the weaker and the more scientific view that the victim (or patient) willingly gave up her or his will to the dominance of another. This medical contest of wills plays out in any number of Dracula spin-offs, as the vampire mesmerizes the weaker characters—but not the strong-minded doctor, who will not relinquish his self-control. Thus, a medical phenomenon highly publicized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides the “lore” of hypnotic or mind control powers—even mental telepathy—for modern vampires.4 Another medical mystery of mind (or soul) and body drawn on in vampire literature was, and still is, determining what death is—that is, when one might know for sure when a body is actually dead. Traditional vampire belief and modern vampire fiction depend on the survival of a more or less intact dead body moved by some sort of conscious animating force that is a fair representation of the living personality—and on someone's ability to detect if it is a vampire. According to Philippe Aries, by the eighteenth century, diagnoses of death (Is he really dead?) and discussions of its nature and its meaning for body and soul—the very essence of vampire literature—were increasingly the concern of doctors rather than clergy. And there was much debate among doctors about the point at which death actually occurs—that is, when does the soul leave the body? (Aries 353–60) This problem became even trickier in the nineteenth century when, because of the many epidemics and plagues suffered in Europe, fear of contagion from the dead led to stringent regulations about the prompt and secure burial of bodies. This in turn led to the fear of being buried alive that obsessed so many in the nineteenth century. Some scholars have speculated that the few “real” vampires reported in these years were simply the result of over-hasty burials like that of Poe's Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) (Jenkins 85–92). By the eighteenth century, dead bodies themselves became the object of serious scientific study. The medical profession regarded dissection as essential to valid medical research and paid highly for fresh corpses, discretely obtained. Grave robbing, or “body snatching,” or even murder for bodies became a lucrative business for some “resurrection men” like the infamous William Burke and William Hare (1827–1828; Jenkins, 76–78). This environment of sensational disappearing corpses provides a believable Gothic context for vampire fiction and its need for doctors. Doctors can stand as reliable witnesses to the vampire phenomenon because they are assumed to have useful factual knowledge about human bodies and their capabilities. In Varney the Vampire, Doctor Chillingworth is there to tell us that, no matter what he claims, Varney is not a vampire. Chillingworth knows this because he paid the hangman for Varney's supposed corpse for medical study, that he then galvanized into life. And besides, as a rational scientist, he knows that there are no such as vampires. In Le Fanu's “Carmilla” (1872) is by being by a Doctor Stoker's Dracula most of the Dracula out of this Victorian when Europe was still by illnesses and epidemics whose nature and were yet One such an for much of his His stories about the and the in that The effect of these tales in his own story “The in which a is the of off as it her only by being very and good. Stoker's fear of death is the this and other such as The of the for most of our But it that there is not much from Even as Van Helsing to he is it by the vampire's many living is Dracula as an battle between science and the and but who which of these is sometimes to Varney and Dracula are about scientific as it to what we can know and what we can not is their two of scientific by their In Doctor Chillingworth is a rational of science he on of Varney's supposed supernatural existence and scientific means of for the Stoker's Doctor Van in the essence of science to be to any about the physical His his and his high expectations and that science had in to its to Van science had out because it had to what could be and instead of us in that to an mind and not a of the of a Medical science could explain such as the and bodies and were not so Van Dracula can be at a of and a natural being whose ability to death as reported will be as natural In his to Dr. Van Helsing the vampire's existence by to such as an or to a that more to a popular scientific idea, or which he might have a role in the of some or of or that might have help As he it, even with at the was a matter of to do not to on some supernatural essence that only God could that to In the Stoker's Dracula is not by a or by some as in or even by a doctor a but is killed with a by the as a result of the knowledge and of this sometimes but well For all his and like Van Helsing on science, on physical and in Christian and even Stoker's Gothic Dracula and his doctors have continued to and to any number of and many of them to and the complex and of medical science and nature and the Even the well known of Dracula, the presence of a doctor in a vampire movie or book our and us of the by his in of their vampires are human and to which may not always be rational and Chillingworth might but which is often and and in for natural and the of vampires in and literature, and the defeat of vampires a defeat of these natural can be if only we know are good a of science and medicine and is along even into our and their In the movie a to the of in the the vampire is the which not with and but with the of the vampire by the and the of in Dracula as well as the the vampire something like a that is contagious and that can be by of the to the Thus, Van in Stoker's novel the of vampires as natural beings that do not or but remain by and and are to human understanding and in the of the medical as by for example, in the The even vampire and doctor more varied and complex as their mysterious ability to and their and for in vampire literature, the of good and evil, occult and even life and death, to and Some vampire literature of science and about doctors. For one the and of the two may have convinced that death and not in supernatural but in scientific that killed more than they course, even earlier doctors are not all Chillingworth in Varney a rather toward the victims and the vampire he has that of faith in authority and and human of any kind of scientific or religious and doctors to in vampire literature. In the German not to Dracula, a doctor his profession and the of his to provide victims for the who is like of in doctors and medical science is The of the Vampire The and and doctor is a But doctor Dr. who is in reality Dr. a as the result of an for has himself into a vampire much for the value of In the does not on medical science to this vampire a German but the that has in the of his to come to The vampire's evil, like that of is that is, of natural which can also be and and of no to in a doctor useful to provide a to this vampire's traditional and the vampire well as to any that this has into the Dracula in the of his for the doctor to scientific into the for in the century, the vampire may have been not by but by a or a by or as in novel Legend and its movie or by the of an doctor as in novel The epidemics like in the or fear of or related to the result in the of or movie vampires into and even modern medical research is course, most people go to vampire not for a science (or but for the the even the that the fear of the vampire to the of the Gothic supernatural with something like medical science The series of vampire provides an of the value of medical science and with The of Dracula Although Gothic, with and Dracula, this movie seems to the scientific with as a Van who is not by and and who the to and garlic to be But in the the between science and mystical in of the Vampire in which a Dr. up of to the evil vampire Dr. and his In Dracula from the Grave Christian that the to the on a In at the end of the in The of Dracula Dracula medical research to a with the of over the on the of the to be by Dr. Van Helsing with a would the to the medical in the and at the same time that science fiction was so In the their are or of Stoker's and their science is a of to electricity, and science of the nineteenth century as Van Helsing might have known It is the same we so often in the media to us as science, like in or it also our own about what to natural the object of scientific and what It the kind of occult that many have come to the and of the and the of the to much about says of literature in that it of a of the scientific understanding on we view the Indeed, he much literature of the past stories of with the supernatural that science, doubt on the of human and out that science was and that there were of of or It was, he rather of traditional because of the mysterious and mystical so many seemed to of and to The popularity of literature of fantasy and the occult that the is not to with his for or it may As the faded in the they were being replaced by even and more mysterious Gothic vampires of whose presence is only with a and is like to the of a and Vampire But science has no in these from with the Vampire to the no rational or is even by and with his Stoker's Dracula in which a Van and crosses, is almost more Gothic and than Dracula, who as a But Dracula into a and By this time, perhaps the of of a of vampire literature

Md. Arafat Hossain, Israt Ferdous

No abstract is available for this record.

Tania Scarabel

This paper aims to analyze the principle of differentiation which, under the processes of federalism, identifies a relation of “adaequatio rei et iuris” chosen to allow policies linked on specific local situations. It is worth examining this perspective because the method used to differentiate autonomy, which dates back to the times when Italian Constitution was born, already including special status regions, is currently achieving a growing popularity. In particular, the discussion analyzes the broad doctrinal debate, in both its classical and recent forms, concerning regionalism and federalism, and the theoretical debate on the great principles of equality and autonomy; of uniformity and differentiation. Furthermore, it analyzes in-depth the laws enacted at both state and regional level, the identification of the Best Practices and the constitutional law steps taken in this regard (first part). In the following, the recent experiences of several European countries are taken into account, using the same comparative method: the German, Spanish and Scottish systems of differentiation are analyzed for their many analogies, which can be presented as a step needed for the development of the orientation of the Italian system (second part). The paper then examines the peculiar specialties which have always been in the Italian Constitution in order to verify if, even following the European integration process, the reasons and justifications of the historical specialties still exist (third part). We will show which legislative actions were made with regard to this, as well as the interpretation of the Constitutional Court and the main doctrinal acquisitions achieved during the scientific debate. More specifically, the first part aims to assess, in the first chapter, the constitutional principle of differentiation within the Italian legal system, by considering the theoretical and doctrinal development that accompanied Italian regionalism, and by improving this principle, starting from the of Law no. 142 of the year 1990, up to Bassanini reform. In this context, it is possible to perform an assessment of the third decentralization, which dates over fifteen years ago, by analyzing the tangible situations that have been implemented in the Italian Regions. The discussion then focuses on the origin of Article 116, paragraph III, of the Constitution as changed by Article 2 of the Constitutional Law of October 18, 2001, no. 3, which amended the whole Title V. Methodologically, we decided to illustrate the procedures and limitations with regard to the creation of the differentiation law, as well as the reasons why Article 116, paragraph III, of the Constitution was not implemented, to then analyze the possible areas in which the principle of differentiation could be developed, even in the light of the draft of the Constitutional Law A.C. 2613. The Second part, which is divided into four chapters, depicts the principle of regional differentiation in the European framework. Chapter one specifically focuses on the German federal system, or the so-called Föderalismusreform I – II, which was approved between 2006 and 2009, as a model that is able to effectively combine the flexibility required for continuous development with the rigidity needed to ensure gradual changes in the system. Chapter two covers the evolution of the territorial organization system included in the Spanish Constitution, from 1978 to date, with particular attention to the final result of the differentiated regionalism process by evaluating it both in terms of the doctrinal comments and tangible results. Chapter three focuses on the latest developments concerning Spanish Law and especially on the so-called "Catalan issue" and its statutory events. About this, the research started with an in-depth analysis of the organic law of July 19, 2006, no. 6, before later highlighting the effects of the Constitutional Court ruling (STC 31/2010) of June 28, 2010. Therefore, the composite events that then led to the suspension of the referendum for the independence of Catalonia, as a result of the appeal of the Constitutional Court requested by the Spanish Government, were analyzed. In order to complete the analysis of the differentiation processes, chapter four covers the most recent developments of the nation-building process that occurred in Scotland, whose legislative development and doctrinal issues were studied in-depth. The third part of our research is divided into six chapters and specifically analyzes the only structural differentiation in our country: the one affecting the special status Regions, in order to highlight the main elements of differentiation, both amongst themselves and by comparing them to the other ordinary autonomies. In particular, chapter one contains an in-depth analysis of differentiation within the special status Italian regions. The beginning of the dissertation consists of preparatory works within the Constituent Assembly. After describing the main positions developed in the Italian doctrinal context, some remarks are made on the current status of existence of the special autonomy, even by considering to what extent the financial privileges of some of these special regions can be justified. Chapter two concerns the specialty given to Valle d’Aosta region since a changing process of incremental nature characterizes it. The historical grounds of the specialty are specified by focusing on autonomy in terms of legislation and administration and by describing the structure of the financial autonomy that exists in the region. Chapter three focuses on the autonomy of Friuli Venezia Giulia region by analyzing the specific powers, the exclusive and concurrent regional areas of competence with regard to the different sectors. Chapter four focuses on the specialty of Trentino Alto Adige region, or rather on the autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano. With regard to this, an analysis was performed both on the implementation of the legislative decrees of the Statute and on the provincial and regional legislation. In particular, the financial structure, after the Milan Agreement, is discussed in-depth. Chapter five examines the special Statute of Sardegna region at a legislative, administrative and financial level. Furthermore, the constitutional laws that modified the Statute over time (Constitutional Law 1/1972; Law 122/1983; Constitutional Law 1/1986; Constitutional Law 3/1989; Constitutional Law 2/1993; Constitutional Law 2/2001) were carefully analyzed, as well as the actions of the Constitutional Court. Chapter six covers the specialty recognized to region of Sicily by the legislator in terms of exclusive, integrative – concurrent legislations and within the administrative and financial organization. The recent decision no. 255/2014 of the Constitutional Court is also highlighted. The final chapter focuses, even in the light of the comparative analysis carried out, on an overall evaluation of the principle of differentiation by providing observations on the outlook of Italian regionalism.

Ilya R P Cuypers, Gokhan Ertug, Jean-François Hennart

No abstract is available for this record.

Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc., et al. 35 U.S.C. §271(b)

No abstract is available for this record.

Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. A cyber-enigma with an enthusiastic following, it pops up in headlines and fuels endless media debate. You can apparently use it to buy anything from coffee to cars, yet few people seem to truly understand what it is. This raises the question: Why should anyone care about bitcoin? In The Age of Cryptocurrency, Wall Street journalists Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey deliver the definitive answer to this question. Cybermoney is poised to launch a revolution, one that could reinvent traditional financial and social structures whilebringing the world's billions of unbanked individuals into a new global economy. Cryptocurrencyholds the promise of a financial system without a middleman, one owned by the people who use it and one safeguarded from the devastation of a 2008-type crash. But bitcoin, the most famous of the cybermonies,carries a reputation for instability, wild fluctuation, and illicit business; some fear it has the power to eliminate jobs and to upend the concept of a nation-state. It implies, above all, monumental and wide-reaching changefor better and for worse. But it is here to stay, and you ignore it at your peril. Vigna and Casey demystify cryptocurrencyits origins, its function, and what you need to know to navigatea cyber-economy. The digital currency world will look very different from the paper currency world; The Age of Cryptocurrency will teach you how to be ready.

Muhammad Imam Sabirin

Seiring berkembangnya zaman pada saat sekarang ini banyak transaksi yang dilakukan bukan melalu tatap muka saja akan tetapi sekarang banyak orang yang bertransaksi menggunakan internet karena mudah dan praktis sehingga banyak masyarakat melakukan transaksi jual beli menggunakan internet. Dewasa ini pemakaian internet dan bisnis melalui internet berkembang sangat pesat, sehingga sektor hukum pun diminta untuk turun tangan sehingga dalam bisnis melalui internet seperti itu, dapat dicapai ketertiban dan kepastian dalam berbisnis, disamping tercapai pula unsur keadilan bagi para pihak dalam berbisnis. Berbisnis lewat internet ( dengan menggunakan perangkat elektronik) ini sering disebut dengan electronic commerce (E-Commerce) atau electronic business (E-Business). Berdasarkan latar belakang di atas, maka perumusan masalah dari kajian ini adalah: 1. Bagaimana mekanisme Jual Beli Bitcoin dalam transaksi? 2. Bagaimana pandangan hukum Islam tentang Bitcoin sebagai alat transaksi dalam jual beli? Tujuan Penelitian Skripsi ini adalah: 1. Untuk mengetahui mekanisme jual beli bitcoin dalam transaksi. 2. Untuk mengetahui bagaimana pandangan hukum Islam tentang bitcoin sebagai alat transaksi dalam jual beli. Metode penelitian yang dipakai dalam penelitian ini yaitu menggunakan metode penelitian kualitatif yaitu penelitian yang dilakukan dalam kondisi yang alamiah berdasarkan temuan lapangan dengan argumen dan deskripsi. Kesimpulan yang dapat diambil dari skripsi ini adalah: 1. Bitcoin dikatakan sebagai implementasi pertama dari mata uang kripto atau cryptocurrency yang memakai teknologi blockchain yang terdesentralisasi sehingga banyak dijadikan induk dari alternatif mata uang kripto lain (Al-tcoins).Ketika terjadi transaksi dengan bitcoin, sebenarnya pembeli dan penjual akan terdata didalam jaringan database Bitcoin. Jaringan bitcoin dikelola oleh jaringan desentralisasi yang diverifikasi oleh operator bitcoin. 2. Karena Bank Indonesia sendiri melarang transaksi menggunakan bitcoin dan juga melanggar prinsip-prinsip Fatwa Dewan Syariah Nasional (DSN) Majelis Ulama Indonesia, maka menurut penulis bitcoin tidak boleh digunakankarena mengandung unsur gharar dengan alasan tidak ada Bank atau lembaga yang bertanggunjawab atas pengelolaan sistem dan/atau jaringan antar anggotanya.

Gus Gutoski, Douglas Stebila

Abstract. A Bitcoin wallet is a set of private keys known to a user and which allow that user to spend any Bitcoin associated with those keys. In a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet, child private keys are generated pseudorandomly from a master private key, and the corresponding child public keys can be generated by anyone with knowledge of the master public key. These wallets have several interesting applications including Internet retail, trustless audit, and a treasurer allocating funds among departments. A specification of HD wallets has even been accepted as Bitcoin standard BIP32. Unfortunately, in all existing HD wallets—including BIP32 wallets—an attacker can easily recover the master private key given the master public key and any child private key. This vulnerability precludes use cases such as a combined treasurer-auditor, and some in the Bitcoin community have suspected that this vulnerability cannot be avoided. We propose a new HD wallet that is not subject to this vulnerability. Our HD wallet can tolerate the leakage of up to m private keys with a master public key size of O(m). We prove that breaking our HD wallet is at least as hard as the so-called “one more ” discrete logarithm problem. 1

Melanie Swan

Bitcoin is starting to come into its own as a digital currency, but the blockchain technology behind it could prove to be much more significant. This book takes you beyond the currency (Blockchain 1.0) and smart contracts (Blockchain 2.0) to demonstrate how the blockchain is in position to become the fifth disruptive computing paradigm after mainframes, PCs, the Internet, and mobile/social networking. Author Melanie Swan, Founder of the Institute for Blockchain Studies, explains that the blockchain is essentially a public ledger with potential as a worldwide, decentralized record for the registration, inventory, and transfer of all assetsnot just finances, but property and intangible assets such as votes, software, health data, and ideas. Topics include:Concepts, features, and functionality of Bitcoin and the blockchain Using the blockchain for automated tracking of all digital endeavors Enabling censorship? resistant organizational modelsCreating a decentralized digital repository to verify identity Possibility of cheaper, more efficient services traditionally provided by nations Blockchain for science: making better use of the data-mining network Personal health record storage, including access to ones own genomic dataOpen access academic publishing on the blockchain This book is part of an ongoing OReilly series. Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Crypto-Currencies introduces Bitcoin and describes the technology behind Bitcoin and the blockchain. Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy considers theoretical, philosophical, and societal impact of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.

Paul Lajoie-Mazenc, Emmanuelle Anceaume, Gilles Guette, Thomas Sirvent · 5 authors

—Open and large-scale systems do not encourage their users to behave trustworthily, which may entail non-negligible risks when interacting with unknown users, for instance when buying an item on an e-commerce platform. Reputation mech-anisms reduce these risks by associating a reputation score to each user, summarizing their past behavior. To be useful to users, reputation mechanisms need to guarantee two main properties: the non-monotonicity of reputation scores, in order to exactly reflect the users' behavior, and the privacy of their users, so that the history of their transactions is not publicly available. We propose a distributed privacy-preserving reputation mechanism handling non-monotonic ratings. Our proposition relies on two distinct distributed third parties and on cryptographic tools, including zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge, anonymous proxy signatures, and verifiable secret sharing. We show that this proposal is computationally efficient, and thus practical. To the best of our knowledge, this solution is the first one that preserves users' privacy and handles both positive and negative ratings without relying on a central authority.

Joichi Ito

No abstract is available for this record.

Feng Wang, Yujie Wu, Daofeng Li

The protocols for member expansion in secret sharing schemes are very useful for key management in dynamic topology networks. In order to reduce the computation complexity of the existed protocols for member expansion in secret sharing schemes, a new protocol is proposed based on the problem of elliptic curve discrete logarithm. This paper examines fifteen most recent patens that were awarded in the area of secret sharing. Unlike traditional detailed patent reviews that are focused on applying the simple secret sharing method, the proposed protocol has the following merits: 1) there is no trust center ; 2) only requesting broadcast 2 1 t + times to generate the sub-secret for the new participant and the new participant can verify the truth of the sub-secret; 3) the old participants can verify the new sub-secret by the noninteractive zero-knowledge proof protocol; 4) In the sub-secret generation stage, not only sub-secrets of old participants but also the sub-secret of new participant is secure. Compared to the existed protocols, the proposed protocol has lower computational complexity and less communications. Therefore, the proposed protocol has higher performance and is suitable for resource-constrained terminals of dynamic networks.

Loy D. Lytle, William Kops, Christopher B. Seaman

This is the second paper drawn from a two-phase study aimed at (1) determining how summer sessions are organized and administered at AUSS, NAASS, NCCSS, and WASSA member institutions to better understand the range and diversity of essential summer session functions performed and (2) examining whether these administrative/organizational differences affect performance-based outcomes important to the success of the summer term. The first phase of the study (Kops & Lytle, 2013) reported that the organization and administration of summer session functions—assessed by a 38-item survey returned by 115 member institutions—fell along a centralized/decentralized continuum characterized as highly centralized (all or most functions performed by a single summer session office), hybridized (some functions performed by a summer sessions office while others are devolved to campus units/departments), or decentralized (most functions performed by campus units/departments other than summer session). This paper reports on the total 134 member institutions that completed the 38-item survey. As well, it reports on the findings of an outcomes questionnaire sent to all survey respondents to explore the possible extent to which differences in summer session organizational structures affected selected student-based (unduplicated headcount and credit hours) and finance-based (tuition revenue and instruction-related expenses incurred in teaching courses) performance outcomes in the summer 2012 term. The 38-item survey instrument proved sensitive to how functions important for the summer term are managed and performed at the colleges and universities participating in the study. Although the organizational structure of summer sessions varied significantly among survey respondents, with private institutions somewhat more centralized than publicly funded ones, the results of the outcomes questionnaire indicated that the organizational structure had no significant effect on student-based or finance-based performance outcomes.

Anna Piotrowska

The appearance of bitcoin is the beginning of a new era in which advanced technological capabili- ties have changed the perspective on the financial system's functioning rules and have expanded the understanding of the category of money. Bitcoin is used in commercial transactions, transfers and as an investment asset. The establishment of bitcoin is a part of the movement away from cash transactions and the general acceptance of non-material form of money observed around the world. The aim of the study is to analyse the bitcoin cryptocurrency in the scope of the fulfilment of the definition criteria and functions of money formulated in an economic theory, and to present the current legal situation in selected countries relating with its functioning.

Petar Čekerevac, Zoran Čekerevac

Bitcoin, new digital money, recently got into focus. It uses P2P interaction where each owner transfers the electronic coin to the next owner signing and adding to the end of the coin a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner. Payment verification is accomplished by notifying the entire network about the transaction. This prevents double-spending and avoids the generation of nonexistent money. Personal information between parties in the transaction are not transferred. Unlike completely anonymous transaction, the

Robert Zinko, Mark Rubin

Abstract Drawing from fields such as marketing psychology, strategy, social psychology, and organizational behavior, the present examination explores the individual and organizational bases for personal reputation; specifically, how different bases interact with one another to produce an individual’s reputation within organizations. It is proposed that individuals use personal reputations to satisfy their need for positive self-esteem as well as to secure their sense of belonging in organizations. Furthermore, reputation allows individuals to obtain rewards such as autonomy, power, and career success and the opportunity to signal key information to audiences. Likewise, organizations utilize personal reputations to predict their members’ behaviors, market those who are a part of the organization to others, build their own corporate reputations, and signal information to consumers and competitors. To further this understanding of personal reputation an examination is presented as to how organizations serve as an essential context within which individuals realize their personal reputations and regulate their behavior.

Saravanan Sundaresan, Robin Doss, Wanlei Zhou

In this paper, we propose a novel zero knowledge grouping proof protocol for RFID Systems. Over the years, several protocols have been proposed in this area but they are either found to be vulnerable to certain attacks or do not comply with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 (C1G2) standard because they use hash functions or other complex encryption schemes. Also, the unique design requirements of grouping proofs have not been fully addressed by many. Our protocol addresses these important security and design gaps in grouping proofs. We present a novel approach based on pseudo random squares and quadratic residuosity to realize a zero knowledge system. Tag operations are limited to functions such as modulo (MOD), exclusive-or (XOR) and 128 bit Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNG). These can be easily implemented on passive tags and hence achieves compliance with the EPC Global standard while meeting the security requirements.

Asheesh Gupta, John M. Redmond, Jon E. Hammarstedt, Dror Lindner · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Joseph Krug, Jack Peterson

Sidecoin is a mechanism that allows a snapshot to be taken of Bitcoin's blockchain. We compile a list of Bitcoin's unspent transaction outputs, then use these outputs and their corresponding balances to bootstrap a new blockchain. This allows the preservation of Bitcoin's economic state in the context of a new blockchain, which may provide new features and technical innovations.

Jack Peterson, Joseph Krug

Augur is a trustless, decentralized platform for prediction markets. It is an extension of Bitcoin Core's source code which preserves as much of Bitcoin's proven code and security as possible. Each feature required for prediction markets is constructed from Bitcoin's input/output-style transactions.

Kristijan Kotarski

The interconnectedness of financial deepening and income inequality has been a highly controversial discussion which has not been concluded despite many empirical and theoretical studies up to date. One of the basic building blocks for many research designs is the reliance upon the Kuznets inverted U-shaped curve which postulates that in the first phase of economic growth income inequality increases, peaks and then decreases to a tolerable level in the later phase after a certain income level had been attained. The role of financial deepening in financing economic growth is an indispensable and necessary condition enabling us to easily draw an analogy between financial deepening and income inequality in a financial version of the Kuznets curve. In spite of 30 years of economic and financial reforms in China, which represents a fairly young history of economic growth and development, there are many indicators that Chinese experience significantly deviates from the presupposed inverted U-shaped curve trajectory and its final equalizing effect. This paper relies on financial deepening data measured by monetary aggregate M2/GDP and domestic banking credit/GDP ratios in its claim that they significantly correlate with rising income inequality. The author’s intention consists not in claiming that financial deepening per se causes income inequality, but provides a political economy analysis of the specific institutional and power configuration which leads to their positive relationship. This configuration is determined by the prevailing banking model, the hukou system, financial repression and the decentralized authoritarian system. On the other hand, the absence of inequality-narrowing institutitons further aggravate the problem. All the aforementioned factors are geared at avoiding mechanical and spurious claims that financial deepening increases or decreases income inequality across countries. A historical institutionalism approach to explain China’s path related to the Kuznets curve prediction shows the central validity of open and inclusive institutions in generating inequality-narrowing benefits of financial deepening.