Abeer ElBahrawy, Laura Alessandretti, Anne Kandler, Romualdo Pastor‐Satorras · 5 authors
The cryptocurrency market surpassed the barrier of \$100 billion market capitalization in June 2017, after months of steady growth. Despite its increasing relevance in the financial world, however, a comprehensive analysis of the whole system is still lacking, as most studies have focused exclusively on the behaviour of one (Bitcoin) or few cryptocurrencies. Here, we consider the history of the entire market and analyse the behaviour of 1,469 cryptocurrencies introduced between April 2013 and June 2017. We reveal that, while new cryptocurrencies appear and disappear continuously and their market capitalization is increasing (super-)exponentially, several statistical properties of the market have been stable for years. These include the number of active cryptocurrencies, the market share distribution and the turnover of cryptocurrencies. Adopting an ecological perspective, we show that the so-called neutral model of evolution is able to reproduce a number of key empirical observations, despite its simplicity and the assumption of no selective advantage of one cryptocurrency over another. Our results shed light on the properties of the cryptocurrency market and establish a first formal link between ecological modelling and the study of this growing system. We anticipate they will spark further research in this direction.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency which has received increasing interest over the last five years. Built upon a decentralized peer to peer system, it supports transparent, fast, cost effective, and irreversible transactions, without the need for trusting third party financial institutions. We know however little about people's motivation and experience with bitcoin currency. This paper reports on interviews with 20 bitcoin users in Malaysia about their experience and trust challenges. Findings show that bitcoins are used more as store of value for speculative investment or savings' protection. The paper advances the HCI theories on trust by identifying main bitcoin characteristics and their impact on trust, such as decentralization, unregulation, embedded expertise, and reputation, as well as transactions' transparency, low cost, and easiness to complete. We discuss insecure transactions, the risk of dishonest traders and its mitigating strategies. The paper concludes with design implications including support for the transparency of two-way transactions, tools for materializing trust, and tools for supporting reversible transactions.
Martin Weiss, Adéle Botha, Marlien Herselman, Glaudina Loots
Blockchain technology underpins a radical rethink of information privacy, confidentiality, security and integrity. As a decentralised ledger of transactions across a peer-to-peer network, the need for a central third party intermediate verification authority is disrupted. To unlock the potential for mHealth, the need for authentication and verified access to often sensitive data, specialised services and transfer of value need to be realised. This paper interrogates current processes and aims to make a case for Blockchain technology as an improved security model that has the potential to lower the cost of trust and an alternative to managing the burden of proof. This is particularly relevant for mHealth that, by its nature, is often a distributed endeavour involving the goal-orientated collaboration of a number of stakeholders.
Haneffa Muchlis Gazali, Rusni Hassan, Rizal Mohd Nor, M. M. Hafizur Rahman
The issue of default payments from borrowers of the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) is worrisome. Many borrowers fail to pay their loans and claims that the PTPTN has poor management and filing system. This study proposed a prototype for managing study loan repayment utilizing blockchain and smart contracts. Borrowers have full access toward their accounts and ledgers while corporation filing and management system get automatically up-to-date with the assistance of smart contracts.
Blockchain is the technology at the core of what could become the "Fintech" transformation of capital markets. It can potentially facilitate cheaper, more efficient and secure operations. The mechanism behind it is introduced in this paper, as are its uses and suggested areas for future academic research. The paper critically reviews the promise that blockchain and distributed ledgers will speed up financial settlements and transactions. In it we recommend financial institutions evaluate the adoption of blockchain and/or adapt their existing legacy systems to allow for digital clearing over the internet.
Since its creation in 2009, the electronic currency Bitcoin has generated volumes of online debate in the business press. While there have been plenty of economic arguments situating it as a financial bubble about to collapse including from Nobel Prize winning economists, its price value has proven to be more durable than many have predicted. To explain this durability, Karpik’s conception of market singularities is used to understand the Bitcoin phenomenon by outlining the beliefs that maintain Bitcoin’s status as a volatile financial asset. Market singularities are markets for particular kinds of goods and services that are of uncertain and incommensurable value. Singularities markets have communities of followers and a distinctive belief system that ascribes value to a particular product, service, or asset. Developing Karpik’s conception, the paper explores the libertarian political belief system that surrounds Bitcoin’s status as a financial asset. I also outline some political tensions within the electronic currency community concerning governance and centralisation.
Purpose This paper aims to examine the key regulatory challenges impacting blockchains, innovative distributed technologies, in the European Union (EU) and the USA. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative perspective underpins the study. This paper relies on primary data from applicable statutes and secondary data from the public domain including relevant case study insights. Findings The smart regulatory hands-off approach adopted in the EU and the USA to a large extent bodes well for future innovative contributions of blockchains in the financial services and related sectors and toward enhanced financial inclusiveness. Practical implications The paper’s findings provide support for blockchain technology to advance with minimum regulatory brakes for greater value-adding and efficiency advancement, especially for financial services, thereby expanding accessibility and therefore financial inclusiveness. Originality/value This paper helps to draw greater attention to the technology underpinning virtual currencies. It also highlights other economic potentials flowing from blockchain advancement.
Jan Mendling, Ingo Weber, Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Jan vom Brocke · 32 authors
Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM.
Digital currency platforms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple are slowly but surely revolutionizing trade and commerce alongside their potential to impact people's economic lifestyles immensely. Digital currencies present a unique medium for humanitarian, mission, and more notoriosly arms and terrorism transactions around the globe. Various factors like security, legislature, and infrastructure affect the viability of adopting digital currencies in developing countries such as Zimbabwe. The research study assesses whether this technology's shortcomings outweigh the conventional means of exchange: hard cash, gold, and checks. Therefore, aiding stakeholders in making informed decisions concerning interfacing technology with economics in the developing world.
Corporate finance leaders face four main challenges. Tackling them will allow CFOs to shape strategy and drive innovation necessary for sustainable growth, but it will also rapidly expand their role, EY research suggests. majority of finance leaders said they are increasingly expected to have digital know-how, use data analytics, and manage risks. They also have to deal more with shareholders and regulators than before, according to a global EY survey of more than 750 finance leaders (see the EY report Do You Define Your CFO Role? Or Does It Define You?, available at tinyurl.com/zjedwk3). Taking on the additional responsibilities is crucial to help develop and enable an overall strategy for the provide insights and analysis to the company's executive management, ensure that business decisions are grounded in sound financial criteria, and represent progress on financial goals to external stakeholders, according to EY. A CFO is required to be a strategic business partner above all else, with an appreciation for all the moving parts in the business, said Pip Spibey, ACMA, CGMA, the CFO at Travelport Locomote, an Australian company that offers a business travel platform. That's probably the most significant shift in recent years. Financial leaders see the patterns in the data and make sure senior management understands them, said Chris Rogers, CPA, CGMA, the CFO of Infragistics, a U.S. software developer with operations in Europe and Asia. great CFO is a partner to the CEO and in private his or her harshest critic when warranted, he said. 4 MAIN CHALLENGES Digital know-how To fulfill critical strategic priorities, 58% of the respondents said they need to better understand digital technologies and data analytics. Two technologies are shaping up to become particularly important for finance leaders to understand: Blockchain, which allows data to be exchanged with the help of a decentralized ledger, could transform corporate reporting. Robotic process automation promises to automate and reduce the cost of backoffice processes. Twenty years ago, PivotTables were cuttingedge, Rogers said. Mobility is today's challenge-- taking disparate systems and putting them in the cloud and making them secure and accessible in real time, so you can make decisions today instead of tomorrow. Digital savvy is a priority across industry sectors because it offers opportunities for growth--in new markets, through new products and delivery models, or by transforming existing products. Financial leaders who understand how their company can deliver on its digital strategy can coordinate and focus investments accordingly. Digital issues to tackle include global tax implications for how goods and services are sold; where companies base their operations; robotics; and new competitors. good digital strategy helps a company figure out which technology provides the best return on investment and possibly other intangible benefits, Spibey said. Not everything will work for your business. Data analytics In the past decade, half of the finance leaders polled by EY have increased the amount of time they dedicate to advanced analytics to provide more insight to the CEO and senior management. Of the respondents in the 2016 survey, 57% said that being able to deliver the data and advanced analytics will be critical for the finance function. Using big data along with your own internal data makes your internal data even more powerful, and it provides context and connection to the marketplace, Rogers said. For companies to turn these efforts into a longterm competitive advantage, data must become integral to the business strategy, and analytics delivery must match business requirements. To gain more value from analytics, business leaders should focus on training, easy-to-use tools for data users, and aligning incentives, rewards, and measurements. …
The innovative ideas behind blockchain offer exciting perspectives in research and development of electronic distributed ledger technologies. Bitcoin introduced an "eventual consistency" blockchain with the apparent intent of providing an open and inclusive system for secure, anonymous, yet cost-effective financial transactions based on peer-to-peer computing. It uses Proof ofWork as a cryptographic puzzle to control growth of a chain and to strengthen the resiliency of a chain against subsequent rewrite attempts. Commercial sectors and the public sector have realized the potential of this technical approach, and we now see a number of blockchains that may be called private, closed or permissioned - and that may eschew the values inherent in the design of Bitcoin type systems. From a value-neutral research perspective, there are no clear definitions of blockchain attributes such as "private" or "permissioned", nor is there typically a good understanding of the trust assumptions that clients must make when using such services - for example in systems that do not rely on Proof of Work but on a limited and controlled set of consensus-creating agents. We believe that more research in this direction could establish firm foundations for domain-specific or coalition-specific blockchains, and that such underpinnings would offer novel trust architectures beyond those provided by completely open/public blockchains and third-party operated, closed/private blockchains.
Lian Yu, Wei‐Tek Tsai, Guannan Li, Yafe Yao · 6 authors
Business processes are often related to operational processes, contracts, and regulations. Modeling such processes needs to address regulation monitoring and enforcement, and maintain a reliable history of data for evidence. This paper proposes modeling business processes as smart contracts (SCs) on permissioned blockchains (BCs). The challenges with the proposed approach are state synchronizations among distributed nodes (called authnodes), and real-time requirements. This paper separates the executions of SCs from the state managements on multi-BCs, and proposes a pipeline model to verify and create blocks in parallel.
Blockchain or distributed ledger technology is the key innovation inside Bitcoin, the virtual currency, or distributed database commodity. Regulators in different states and nations have viewed and now regulate Bitcoin variously. For example, Bitcoin is property (IRS), a virtual currency (New York State Department of Financial Services and its BitLicense), and an unregulated technology (California, Texas). This regulatory divergence has not prevented the emergence of an $18 billion Bitcoin global market. It has however led some of its early enthusiasts to prison for crossing the line from trusted blockchain anonymity to money laundering. Distributed ledger applications are presently in experimental and early commercial use in applications and for industry sectors now extending far beyond Bitcoin, and far beyond fintech (financial technology.)
This paper evaluates blockchain technology and the role of regulators and policymakers in shaping the evolution and commercialization of this disruptive innovation particularly for the Internet of Things. As blockchain is increasingly used to establish a secure trust relationship and permanent record in a wide array of networked markets, will the diverse regulatory treatments of –essentially the same – innovation create new policy barriers to its wide application? Are there information policy measures, which can help industry and users, avoid the inevitable pitfalls of a novel technology? If so, is there a new alignment of distribution of authority among regulators, which these innovations will spark? Presently for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission, IRS, and This original research will be among the first to deconstruct blockchain for a wide array of industrial sectors and Internet of Things markets. Most prior work has focused on blockchain applications for financial markets, and specifically the cybercurrency Bitcoin, and in particular its cryptographically driven consensus process to establish and maintain trust. While it is important to understand how blockchain technology utilization can increase technical efficiency and reduce transaction costs with an immutable, auditable record of all transactions, that only explains why this technology innovation has sparked such interest. Most important is the ability of blockchain to combine trust and privacy with transparency in new way.
The research methods for evaluation of blockchaining the Internet of Things include socio-technical field tests and multi-method pilot studies currently being planned. Preliminary results and insights from industry and policymaker interviews and will be shared in this paper. Suggestions for further blockchain Internet of Things policy research will conclude the paper.
Bitcoin telah menarik investor di seluruh dunia karena menyajikan pilihan yang menarik untuk sistem moneter saat ini. Ini adalah mata uang virtual yang dapat berpotensi menggantikan mata uang moneter yang ada karena menawarkan konsep baru pembayaran dikenal sebagai reksa persetujuan tanpa bergantung pada kepercayaan untuk setiap bank atau desentralisasi. Bitcoin sebagai mata uang telah diberlakukan di beberapa negara, meskipun tanggapan telah kecurigaan dan memperingatkan.Makalah ini akan memeriksa bitcoin isu-isu terkait menggunakan pendekatan normatif-yuridis dan kritis dalam konteks hukum yang berlaku di Indonesia, Undang-Undang Nomor 11 Tahun 2008 tentang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronik. Sejauh ini, undang-undang serupa telah diberlakukan oleh California, Uni Eropa dan Singapura untuk menangani masalah-masalah mata uang virtual. Tujuan dari makalah ini adalah untuk menggambarkan bitcoin, mengapa mata uang dan bagaimana kerangka perlindungan hukum untuk Bitcoin investor di Indonesia.Berdasarkan luas-tersebar adopsi bitcoin dan sisi gelap dari kasus bitcoin membentuk sikap pemerintah tentang bitcoin di Amerika Serikat, makalah ini mengeksplorasi bagaimana memberikan peraturan yang tepat untuk melindungi bitcoin investor di Indonesia.
Distributed ledger technology, a method of storing and maintaining the integrity of multiple copies of critical data using a massively redundant network of participating machines, has found a “killer application” in blockchain, a type of distributed ledger. A blockchain consists of sequential blocks that may never be modified or reordered, leaving a public, auditable record that is consistent and highly resistant to tampering and deletion. These qualities make blockchain eminently suitable for its most common use, cryptocurrency, and its occasional variants in the form of cryptocurrency tokens, used to represent ownership or some other right to virtual or physical goods and capabilities. Blockchain also enables smart contracts, discrete bodies of software written to serve both as the memorial and the means of execution of an agreement between parties. Smart contracts can have all the elements of a traditional contract, and as jurisdictions legislate or jurists rule on the fine points of enforceability and the acceptability of smart contracts as traditional contracts, applications in nearly every area of commerce have emerged. Digital lawyers may not need to become software developers, but deepening their understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the technology, developing a keen awareness of the issues at the intersection between code and the law, as well as the law’s readiness in this area, will be of great advantage to them and their clients in this rapidly evolving area at the intersection of technology, commerce and law.
Emanuele Di Pascale, Jasmina McMenamy, Irene Macaluso, Linda Doyle
The disruptive power of blockchain technologies represents a great opportunity to re-imagine standard practices of telecommunication networks and to identify critical areas that can benefit from brand new approaches. As a starting point for this debate, we look at the current limits of infrastructure sharing, and specifically at the Small-Cell-as-a-Service trend, asking ourselves how we could push it to its natural extreme: a scenario in which any individual home or business user can become a service provider for mobile network operators, freed from all the scalability and legal constraints that are inherent to the current modus operandi. We propose the adoption of smart contracts to implement simple but effective Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between small cell providers and mobile operators, and present an example contract template based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Fintech is a term given to financial technology in the digital age. At its core sit the twin concepts of blockchain and distributed ledgers. These technology solutions bring with them the promise of faster, cheaper, more secure and transparent financial transactions over the internet. In a more widely used context, Fintech is conceived and even defined as enabling disruptive innovation in financial markets and financial services. This briefing explains what Fintech is and investigates whether the promise of Fintech is hype or reality. It also highlights the resultant policy implications that are generated by the phenomena and what issues lawmakers should be cognisant of.
We introduce blockchains and distributed ledgers and describe their potential applications to money and banking. The analysis compares public and private ledgers and outlines the suitability of various types of ledgers for different purposes. Furthermore, a few historical prototypes of blockchains and distributed ledgers are presented, and results of their hard forking are illustrated. Next, some potential applications of distributed ledgers to trading, clearing and settlement, payments, trade finance, etc. are outlined. Monetary circuits are argued to be natural applications for blockchains. Finally, the role of digital currencies in modern society is articulated and various forms of digital cash, such as central bank issued electronic cash, bank money, bitcoin and P2P money, are compared and contrasted. Keywords: blockchains, distributed ledgers, digital currencies, modern monetary circuit; credit creation banking; interconnected banking network.
In zunehmendem Maße wird das Finanzsystem von digitalen Technologien beeinflusst. Welche Potenziale bringen diese neuen Technologien für das Geld- und Austauschsystem mit sich? Und wie können diese für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung eingesetzt werden?
Olga Gouveia, Enestor Dos Santos, Santiago Fernández de Lis, Alejandro Neut · 5 authors
Distributed ledgers are a technology that can support a digitized version of cash while potentially withholding its four major features: universality, anonymity, peer-to-peer exchangeability (P2P) and a constant nominal value.
Increasingly in e-commerce, smart contracts have relied on the code as the contract. But code can be hacked and fail, leaving multiple parties potentially exposed to legal gray areas, great financial loss, and little recourse. Here, Kieron O'Hara considers the ramifications of such contracts by exploring what happened when the Ethereum platform was hacked in the summer of 2016.