Follow blockchain research across journals, conferences, and preprint repositories.
1,518 results · page 44 of 64
Vanessa Chicarino, Célio Albuquerque, Emanuel Jesus, Antonio Glauton Varela Rocha
No abstract is available for this record.
Ehsan Meamari, Chien‐Chung Shen
Since Bitcoin's inception in 2008, it has became attractive investments for both trading and mining. To mine Bitcoins, a miner has to invest in computing power and pay for electricity to solve cryptographic puzzles for rewards, if it becomes the first to solve a puzzle, paid in Bitcoin. Given that mining is such a resource intensive effort, miners seek new strategies trying to make the mining process more profitable.
Ilaria Zavoli
In recent years, cryptocurrencies have gained growing importance in various sectors, including the real estate market. This fact has spawned a debate about the money laundering risks of the use of cryptocurrencies for property transactions in the United Kingdom. Some think that cryptocurrencies have revolutionary effects on national economies and that they might bring benefits to the real estate market. However, the use of cryptocurrencies raises concerns for their compatibility with the existing UK anti-money laundering legislation. In particular, cryptocurrency transactions can create issues for the customer due diligence checks that the 2017 Money Laundering Regulations impose on real estate agents. This chapter addresses the topic, examining critically the money laundering risks of the use of cryptocurrencies in the UK real estate market. Through an analysis of the literature and with reference to the author’s empirical research findings, this study sheds light on the subject, providing some innovative perspectives for future legislative and policy action.
João Valente Filho, Denis Forte, Eli Hadad
Cryptocurrencies are nowadays one of the most important alternative investment markets and therefore have been in spotfor regulatory purposes. One of the main characteristics is to be easy traded all over the world without governmentalinterference
A.I. Demchuk
The article considers the problematic issues of the functioning of cryptocurrency in Ukraine. The risks that provoke cryptocurrency as a tool for the money laundering and the financing terrorism in Ukraine are studied. The level of crime and the use of cryptocurrency in the sphere of money laundering are determined. Topical issues affecting the features of the detection and investigation of a crime are considered.<br> Anti-money laundering law of Ukraine openly conflate money laundering (which is concerned with source of funds) with terrorism financing (which is concerned with destination of funds) when regulating the financial system. Furthermore, FATF report on terrorism financing noted the importance of links between financial tools and wider counter-terrorist activity to combat terrorist financing.<br> Terrorism, being a socially dangerous and difficult to predict phenomenon, is changing its forms, methods, but the need for terrorist organizations to collect, move, and use money is always urgent. The legalization (laundering) of proceeds of crime, as well as the financing terrorism, poses a serious threat to national security of Ukraine and its financial system. The use of computer technologies to commit crimes increases their social security, generates new ways of committing them, and simplifies the very process of committing and masking their tracks. Cryptocurrencies are popular on the dark web because they provide a convenient method of obfuscating identities and transaction details. In addition, the absence of rules for exchanges and points of sale, the obligation to identify the e-wallet owner and a clear legal regulation of the use of cryptocurrencies in general, create favorable conditions for criminals. Investigation of such crimes creates considerable difficulties, given the lack of capabilities of law enforcement agencies from the current level of technological and software criminal activity. The author also found out the advantages of such a currency, which determine its use by criminals, and examined possible ways to counter and combat such crime.
Alberto La Cava, Mary Kate Naatus
This article analyzes the research on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and the alternate banking system, led by giants like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and its potential utility for the millions of migrants living in working around the globe, who send nearly half a trillion dollars through various formal and informal channels to family and friends in their home countries. While research on migrant remittances is well established and has been examined from many different lenses, including economic, political, financial, sociological and entrepreneurial, there are few studies to date that examine how the growing crypto-blockchain channel can impact remittance flows, as a lower cost alternative to MoneyGram and Western Union, which have high transaction costs, and also considering that many migrants do not have formal bank accounts, eliminating formal bank transfers, and also that many migrants hold a vulnerable legal status, and may avoid formal money transfer channels. This article is exploratory in nature and identifies the work that has been done to date on this topic, and identifies potential future research in the area.
Fennie Wang, Primavera De Filippi
After introducing key concepts and definitions in the field of digital identity, this paper will investigate the benefits and drawbacks of existing identity systems on the road towards achieving self-sovereign identity. It will explore, in particular, the use of blockchain technology and biometrics as a means to ensure the “unicity” and “singularity” of identities, and the associated challenges pertaining to the security and confidentiality of personal information. The paper will then propose a model of blockchain-based self-sovereign identity based on attestations, claims, credentials and permissions, which is globally portable across the life of an individual. Such a system is not dependent on any particular government or organization for administration or legitimacy, although it might include government issued identification and biometrics as one of many indicia of identity. Such a solution based on a recorded and signed digital history of actions is a system that best approximates the fluidity and granularity of identity, enabling individuals to express only specific facets of their identity, depending on the parties with whom they wish to interact. This paper focuses on two case studies to explain how such a credentials system could work in specific contexts: (1) Kiva’s identity protocol for building credit history in Sierra Leone, and (2) World Food Programme’s Building Blocks program for delivering cash aid to refugees in Jordan. Finally, the paper will explore what the future might look like when blockchain-based cryptocurrencies and self-sovereign identity intersect. With digital transactions functioning as identity claims within an ecosystem based on self-sovereign identity, new business models might emerge, such as identity insurance schemes, along with the emergence of value-stable cryptocurrencies (“stablecoins”) functioning as local currencies.
Jiajing Wu, Jieli Liu, Weili Chen, Huawei Huang · 6 authors
As the first decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency system allowing people to trade with pseudonymous addresses, Bitcoin has become increasingly popular in recent years. However, the P2P and pseudonymous nature of Bitcoin make transactions on this platform very difficult to track, thus triggering the emergence of various illegal activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Particularly,mixing servicesin Bitcoin, originally designed to enhance transaction anonymity, have been widely employed for money laundering to complicate the process of trailing illicit fund. In this article, we focus on the detection of the addresses belonging to mixing services, which is an important task for anti-money laundering in Bitcoin. Specifically, we provide a feature-based network analysis framework to identify statistical properties of mixing services from three levels, namely, network level, account level, and transaction level. To better characterize the transaction patterns of different types of addresses, we propose the concept of attributed temporal heterogeneous motifs (ATH motifs). Moreover, to deal with the issue of imperfect labeling, we tackle the mixing detection task as a positive and unlabeled learning (PU learning) problem and build a detection model by leveraging the considered features. Experiments on real Bitcoin datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our detection model and the importance of hybrid motifs including ATH motifs in mixing detection.
Akinyemi Omololu Akinrotimi
No abstract is available for this record.
Reza M. Parizi, Ali Dehghantanha, Amin Azmoodeh, Kim‐Kwang Raymond Choo
No abstract is available for this record.
Hanyi Sun, Na Ruan, Chunhua Su
No abstract is available for this record.
Amirahmad Chapnevis, Abouzar Arabsorkhi, Tala Tafazzoli
Financial innovation has entered a new era with cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the first decentralised cryptocurrency and the most popular in the world. The main features of this new technology are immutability, decentralised trust and anonymity. Bitcoin anonymous and untraceable system facilitates cash-out and laundering of cybercrime proceeds. Bitcoin currency flow provides an address graph that assigns the flow of bitcoin between two addresses. Identifying suspicious nodes in the bitcoin network is similar to the problem of recognising the origins in the contact network of different applications, i.e., virus propagation, rumour source in social networks, and poison spread in water networks. In order to investigate money laundering in bitcoin, we proposed an automated method to identify suspicious addresses in the bitcoin address graph. We chose two centrality measures to be calculated on the graph. The measures are betweenness centrality and closeness centrality. The nodes with the highest values for the measurements are suspicious. The accuracy of the proposed method is further investigated by comparing the fraudulent candidate nodes with other scenarios. It is shown that the identified nodes are correct candidates for further investigations.
Kevin Keane
No abstract is available for this record.
Rhonda S. Binda
The trifecta of globalization, urbanization and digitization have created new opportunities and challenges across our nation, cities, boroughs and urban centers. Cities are in a unique position at the center of commerce and technology becoming hubs for innovation and practical application of emerging technology. In this rapidly changing 24/7 digitized world, city governments worldwide are leveraging innovation and technology to become more effective, efficient, transparent and to be able to better plan for and anticipate the needs of its citizens, businesses and community organizations. This class will provide the framework for how cities and communities can become smarter and more accessible with technology and more connected.
Gaspare Jucan Sicignano
Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology is a peer-reviewed international journal, which publishes original papers promoting theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology.
Kevin Negy, Peter R. Rizun, Emin Gün Sirer
No abstract is available for this record.
Sarah Jane Hughes
This essay is based on a presentation made on January 24, 2020 at the invitation of the Texas Journal of International Law and the Strauss Center for National Security at the University of Texas. That presentation focused on the two questions mentioned in the title of this essay – Do Blockchain Technologies Make Us Safer? And Do Cryptocurrencies Necessarily Make Us Less Safe? The essay presents answers to the two questions: “yes” and “probably yes.” This essay begins with some level-setting on different types of blockchain technologies and of cryptocurrencies, and gives some background materials on global and national responses to certain cryptocurrencies, such as El Petro sponsored by Venezuela’s PDVSA and Facebook’s Libra.
Byron Kruger, Wai Sze Leung
No abstract is available for this record.
Jiahao He, Guangyuan Zhang, Jiheng Zhang, Rachel Zhang
No abstract is available for this record.
Tessa E. Shurr
Today, companies use blockchain technology and digital assets for a variety of purposes. This Comment analyzes the digital token. If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views a digital token as a security, then the issuer of the digital token must comply with the registration and extensive disclosure requirements of federal securities laws.\nTo determine whether a digital asset is a security, the SEC relies on the test that the Supreme Court established in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Rather than enforcing a statute or agency rule, the SEC enforces securities laws by applying the Howey test on a fact-intensive case-by-case basis. This Comment takes the position that policymaking by enforcement is harmful to the financial technology industry and perpetuates the lack of clarity surrounding regulation of digital assets.\nThis Comment proposes a solution in which both Congress and the SEC play an integral role: 1) Congress should amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to exclude “digital token” from the definition of “security”; and 2) the SEC should issue an agency rule that creates a grace period for digital tokens to become fully decentralized before the SEC may evaluate whether they are securities.
Radosław Michalski
No abstract is available for this record.
Fabian Teichmann, Marie-Christin Falker
No abstract is available for this record.
Alexandra Pogosyan
It can be argued that cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology and have a wide range of advantages for customers. It has become a way of sharing value, investing or even earning money. Unfortunately, cryptocurrency is currently used for money laundering and financing terrorism. Governments of many countries are faced with the range of issues that need to be resolved, such as determining the essence of cryptocurrency, tracking operations and activities of cryptocurrency exchanges, taxation and many others. Moreover, there is a variety of challenges for the market, cryptocurrencies volatility in particular, which is necessary to consider.
Renato Mangano
The market for cryptocurrencies is interspersed with cases of loss, theft and fraud and a new transnational practice in bankruptcy law is emerging whereby cryptocurrency exchanges compensate the injured users on a collective basis. This paper will argue: first, that this trend has transplanted into Asia and Europe the US idea according to which bankruptcy law can be employed to avoid mass litigation; secondly, that this trend has transcended the debate about the characterization of digital assets, including the concerns of those scholars who maintain that digital coins cannot be objects of property; and thirdly that – since this practice follows the pattern of so-called restorative justice and since cryptocurrencies are highly volatile – injured users, as creditors of the exchanges, ought to be satisfied in kind, i.e. incryptocurrencies themselves.