Follow blockchain research across journals, conferences, and preprint repositories.
9,941 results · page 404 of 415
Vanessa Bracamonte, Hitoshi Okada
No abstract is available for this record.
Nashirah Abu Bakar, Sofian Rosbi, Kiyotaka Uzaki
This paper analyses the operation of cryptocurrency system in perspective of Islamic finance. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the cryptocurrency framework whether it is meet the Islamic Finance rule. In addition, this study performed in providing the Islamic minded investor a proper information regarding investment in Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency in which encryption techniques that implement to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank. A transaction is a transfer of Bitcoin value that is broadcast to the network and collected into blocks. A transaction typically references previous transaction outputs as new transaction inputs and dedicates all input Bitcoin values to new outputs. This cryptocurrency has no physical form and exists only in the network. Bitcoin also has no intrinsic value in that it is not redeemable for another commodity, namely gold. Then, this study evaluates the framework according to Islamic Finance rule. The bitcoin account holder is anonymous. Therefore, it is difficult to track the real account holder if any suspicious activity occurs. In addition, the value of Bitcoin is unstable because of high volatility. Bitcoin also suffers variance in perceptions of Bitcoin’s store of value and method of value. All of these three conditions contribute to uncertainty in transaction framework of Bitcoin. As a conclusion, Bitcoin transaction is classified as a transaction with high uncertainty (gharar).
Svetlana Sapuric, Angelika Kokkinaki, Ifigenia Georgiou
This study provides a comparative financial and statistical analysis between the largest and most trad- ed cryptocurrencies. In particular, the exchange rates of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple and Ethereum were collected from August 2010 until May 2017. The raw annualized volatility of cryptocurrencies is compared as well as to fiat currencies and major exchange rates. The results show that Bitcoin is the least volatile cryptocurrency with low correlations with the altcoins, providing possible diversification benefits to cryptocurrency investing. In addition, our results indicate that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that has causality effects on the other cryptocurrencies.
Firas Al Khalil, Tom Butler, Leona O’Brien, Marcello Ceci
No abstract is available for this record.
Joost de Kruijff, Hans Weigand
No abstract is available for this record.
Ronny Hans, Hendrik Zuber, Amr Rizk, Ralf Steinmetz
Blockchain technologies paired with smart contracts exhibit the potential to transform the global insurance industry. The recent evolution of smart contracts and their fast adoption allow to rethink processes and to challenge traditional structures. Therefore, a special focus is on the analysis of the underlying technology and recent improvements. Further, we provide an overview of how the insurance sector may be affected by blockchain technology. We emphasize current challenges and limitations through analyzing two promising use cases in this area. We find that realizing the full potential of the blockchain technology requires overcoming several challenges including scalability, the incorporation of external information, flexibility, and permissioning schemes.
Paul Catchlove
Given the rise of interest, opportunities and use of smart contracts, it is important to understand what they are, what technology they rely upon and how they function so that it can be ascertained whether this new technology requires additional regulation, or whether the law as it stands is adequate to administer their usage. This paper will outline two key contentions. First, that smart contracts are well managed by existing contract law principles, however, there are some novel issues associated with this new technology. Second, this paper will suggest a resolution on how to take these novel issues into consideration and ensure they are overcome.
Reggie O'Shields, Mahdi Naser, H. Sadeghi
No abstract is available for this record.
Jeremy Sklaroff
Smart contracts" are decentralized agreements built in computer code and stored on a blockchain.Proponents imagine a future where commerce takes place exclusively using smart contracts, avoiding the high costs of contract drafting, judicial intervention, opportunistic behavior, and the inherent ambiguities of written language.These decentralized code-only contracts are part of a decades-long quest to eliminate supposed inefficiencies in traditional written agreements.Electronic data interchange (EDI), a contracting technology from the 1970s, was designed with the same goal and garnered similar fanfare.Commentators at the time imagined a revolution in the way firms transacted and a full shift away from anything resembling a paper contract.Ultimately EDI failed to achieve these goals-it empowered, rather than circumvented, human decisionmakers along with their "inefficient" way of forming agreements.In doing so, EDI successfully reduced some transaction costs while preserving efficient forms of contractual flexibility.Smart contracts are indeed more technologically sophisticated than EDI.Smart contract scripting languages offer a broader range of operations and greater scalability.Smart contracts are capable of seamlessly integrating with the operational and financial systems at the core of modern firms, whereas EDI transactions occurred in very early digital environments that required human intermediaries.
Daniele Magazzeni, Peter McBurney, William L. Nash
Smart contracts might encode legal contracts written in natural language to represent the contracting parties' shared understandings and intentions. The issues and research challenges involved in the validation and verification of smart contracts, particularly those running over blockchains and distributed ledgers, are explored.
Eliza Mik
No abstract is available for this record.
Massimo Bartoletti, Livio Pompianu
Smart contracts are computer programs that can be consistently executed by a network of mutually distrusting nodes, without the arbitration of a trusted authority. Because of their resilience to tampering, smart contracts are appealing in many scenarios, especially in those which require transfers of money to respect certain agreed rules (like in financial services and in games). Over the last few years many platforms for smart contracts have been proposed, and some of them have been actually implemented and used. We study how the notion of smart contract is interpreted in some of these platforms. Focussing on the two most widespread ones, Bitcoin and Ethereum, we quantify the usage of smart contracts in relation to their application domain. We also analyse the most common programming patterns in Ethereum, where the source code of smart contracts is available.
Philipp Hacker, Chris Thomale
Cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and ethereum, have not only risen to public attention as novel means of payments, but also as facilitators of initial coin offerings (ICOs, also called token sales). In these entirely online-mediated offerings, entrepreneurs sell tokens registered on a blockchain in exchange for cryptocoins. Buyers receive tokens that can be understood as cryptographically-secured coupons which embody a bundle of rights and obligations. In July 2017, the SEC released an investigative report that highlighted that such tokens can be subject to the full scope of US securities regulation. It is unclear, however, to what extent EU securities regulation is applicable to ICOs and, particularly, whether issuers have to publish and register a prospectus in order to avoid criminal and civil prospectus liability in the EU. In conceptual terms, this depends on whether tokens are considered “securities” under the EU prospectus regulation regime. Against this background, this paper develops a nuanced approach that distinguishes between three archetypes of tokens: currency, investment, and utility tokens. It analyzes the differential implications of each of these types, and their hybrid forms, for EU securities regulation, and develops policy proposals for their regulation.
Michel Rauchs, Garrick Hileman
The world of money and finance is transforming before our eyes. Digitised assets and innovative financial channels, instruments and systems are creating new paradigms for financial transaction and forging alternative conduits of capital. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, since its founding in 2015, has been at the forefront of documenting, analysing and indeed critically challenging that digital financial transformation. This Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study is our inaugural research focused on alternative payment systems and digital assets. Led by Dr Garrick Hileman, it is the first study of its kind to holistically examine the burgeoning global cryptocurrency industry and its key constituents, which include exchanges, wallets, payments and mining. The findings are both striking and thought-provoking. First, the user adoption of various cryptocurrencies has really taken off, with billions in market cap and millions of wallets estimated to have been ‘active’ in 2016. Second, the cryptocurrency industry is both globalised and localised, with borderless exchange operations, as well as geographically clustered mining activities. Third, the industry is becoming more fluid, as the lines between exchanges and wallets are increasingly ‘blurred’ and a multitude of cryptocurrencies, not just bitcoin, are now supported by a growing ecosystem, fulfilling an array of functions. Fourth, issues of security and regulatory compliance are likely to remain prevalent for years to come. I hope this study will provide value to academics, practitioners, policymakers and regulators alike. We thank Visa very much for its generous support of independent academic research in this important area.
David Lee Kuo Chuen, Li Guo, Yu Wang
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to use blockchain and has been the market leader since the first bitcoin was mined in 2009. After the birth of Bitcoin with the genesis block, more than 1,000 altcoins and crypto-tokens have been created, with at least 919 trading actively on unregulated or registered exchanges. This entire class of cryptocurrencies and tokens has been classified by some tax authorities as having the same status as commodities. If cryptocurrency is viewed in the same class as commodities, how different is it in terms of its risk and return structure? This article sets out to help readers understand cryptocurrencies and to explore their risk and return characteristics using a portfolio of cryptocurrency represented by the Cryptocurrency Index (CRIX). Substantial discussions are centered on Bitcoin and its close variants. Some questions are raised about the potential of cryptocurrencies as an investment class. Results show that the return correlations between cryptocurrencies and traditional assets are low and that adding CRIX returns to a traditional asset portfolio improves risk–return performance. Sentiment analysis also indicates the CRIX has a relatively high Sharpe ratio. Although we should view the results with care, a new form of financing for cryptocurrency and blockchain start-ups is born. The disruption brought about by Bitcoin may be felt beyond payments through what is known as initial crypto-token offerings or initial token sales. <b>TOPICS:</b>Currency, risk management, performance measurement, mutual funds/passive investing/indexing
Garrick Hileman, Michel Rauchs
The first global cryptocurrency benchmarking study presents a systematic and comprehensive picture of a rapidly evolving industry, illustrating how cryptocurrencies are being used, stored, transacted and mined. The study gathered non-public data from more than 100 cryptocurrency companies and over 30 individual cryptocurrency miners in 38 countries around the world via secure web-based questionnaires, capturing an estimated 75 per cent of the cryptocurrency industry. The study breaks down the cryptocurrency industry into four key sectors – exchanges, wallets, payments and mining. Key findings and highlights from the study include our estimate that over three million unique individuals are actively using cryptocurrency today, data on regulation and compliance practices and costs at firms, and a global map of cryptocurrency mining.
Alex Biryukov, Dmitry Khovratovich, Sergei Tikhomirov
No abstract is available for this record.
Wanda Presthus, Nicholas Owen O’Malley
Bitcoin as concept was coined in 2009 and can be described as a partly open and shared transactional database. What makes bitcoin unique is that for the first time, we can prove and move ownership of anything digital without a central authority. The technology facilitates many benefits, one being a worldwide, digital currency and we observe that some stores allow payments in bitcoin. Drawing on concepts from the Diffusion of Innovation theory we investigated: What are the end-users’ motivations and barriers for using bitcoin as digital currency? Through a small survey, we collected 135 answers during the summer of 2016. Our findings include that the bitcoin users embrace bitcoin due to technological curiosity, thus an individual reason. The largest group, the non-users, state that they are awaiting for others to start using bitcoin, as they question the value and security issues. We conclude that we may witness a deadlock where “everybody waits for everybody”, and that more research is needed.
Pierluigi Cuccuru
The technology underpinning Bitcoin—the blockchain—is acknowledged to offer security, stability and efficiency to online transactions. After a brief introduction to Bitcoin system, I touch upon the most innovative implementation of blockchain technology: the so-called smart contracts, ie programmable computer protocols that are able to self-enforce the terms therein encoded upon certain triggering conditions. First, I sketch their core functioning and benefits for digital relationships. Secondly, I stress their structural constraints and the issues of regulability fully decentralized blockchains pose. The elements underlined highlight the reasons why the financial and banking sectors represent smart contracts most immediate testing ground.
Adrian Jackson, Ashley Lloyd, Justin Macinante, Markus HHwener
No abstract is available for this record.
Benno Ferrarini, Julie A. Maupin, Marthe Hinojales
No abstract is available for this record.
Meghna Bal
India registered rapid economic growth over the past couple of years, with the GDP growing 7.6 percent in 2015-2016. While economic activity remains buoyant, however, the country still has a long way to go. The government must capitalise on the current economic momentum and use it to accelerate its reform agenda. One of the areas requiring regulatory attention is the property market. Despite a push for reform through the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme (DILRMP), India’s current land title system remains plagued with deficiencies. There is a need for a standardised property rights regime if India aims to be an economic powerhouse. To bolster current systems, a decentralised, open, and transparent method of record-keeping must be introduced, supplemented by a legal framework capable of guaranteeing and enforcing property rights. A possible solution to the current record-keeping conundrum lies in blockchain technology.
James A. Cunningham, John Ainsworth
The rise of distributed ledger technology, initiated and exemplified by the Bitcoin blockchain, is having an increasing impact on information technology environments in which there is an emphasis on trust and security. Management of electronic health records, where both conformation to legislative regulations and maintenance of public trust are paramount, is an area where the impact of these new technologies may be particularly beneficial. We present a system that enables fine-grained personalized control of third-party access to patients' electronic health records, allowing individuals to specify when and how their records are accessed for research purposes. The use of the smart contract based Ethereum blockchain technology to implement this system allows it to operate in a verifiably secure, trustless, and openly auditable environment, features crucial to health information systems moving forward.
Chris Khan, Antony Lewis, Emily Rutland, Clemens Wan · 6 authors
R3 has built a global consortium to focus on the application of distributed-ledger technology (DLT), which can help banks combat low return on equity and alleviate pressure on their operating costs. The authors explain the conditions that led to interest in DLT and introduce Corda, R3's shared ledger for recording and managing financial agreements.