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1,898 results · page 76 of 80
Giuliano Lemme, Sara Peluso
parte di due revisori con il sistema del doppio cieco.
Giovambattista Palumbo
No abstract is available for this record.
Christian Thiel, Christopher Brown, Mario Hellenkamp, Marius Spancken
Der Abschlussbericht fasst die Ergebnisse des Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprojektes 2015/2016 im Studiengang Master of Science Wirtschaftsinformatik (FH MĂŒnster) zur Themenstellung "KryptowĂ€hrungen und Smart Contracts" zusammen. Das Projekt analysierte die Einsatzzwecke, Potenziale und Architekturen von Blockchain-Anwendungen. Des Weiteren wurden verschiedene Fragestellungen zum Nutzen der Blockchain-Technologie in modernen GeschĂ€ftsprozessen und zu den technischen Herausforderungen mittels der Entwicklung zweier Prototypen betrachtet. Der erste Prototyp realisiert eine eigene Blockchain, in der verschiedene Angriffsszenarien durchgespielt werden können. Der zweite Prototyp realisiert eine Clearinghouse-Anwendung in Form einer verteilten Smart-Contract-Implementierung (in Ethereum). Der Bericht vermittelt einen Ăberblick ĂŒber AnsĂ€tze, Strukturen, interne AblĂ€ufe und Rahmenbedingungen aktueller Blockchain-Implementierungen. Die erzielten Ergebnisse verdeutlichen neben dem Nutzen auch die Besonderheiten und EinschrĂ€nkungen der Blockchain-Technologie.
Michel Rauchs
No abstract is available for this record.
Gianni Bonaiuti
Technology innovation and new consumersâ habits are fostering two interesting experiences in the paymentsâ landscape: the increasing use of mobile payment instruments and the emergence of alternative payment schemes without fiat or banking money, like Bitcoin. This contribution considers both cases as useful drivers for innovation, but at present their positive outcomes are unclear. A synthetic economic analysis highlights costs and benefits for consumers and third-party operators, arguing that mobile payments could improve competition and force banks to rethink their strategies. More controversial issues concern bitcoin: on this topic enthusiastic expectations of financial operators are jointly considered with cautious positions expressed by regulatory and monetary authorities. Recent tendencies in Bitcoinâs informal infrastructure are confirming that an effective decentralized and peer-to-peer payments system is rather hard to build.
José Parra-Moyano
No abstract is available for this record.
Trent MacDonald, Darcy W E Allen, Jason Potts
No abstract is available for this record.
Hanna HaĆaburda
In this article, we review the recent developments in the digital currency landscape. We survey the economic drivers that led to the creation of digital currencies and show that they are a natural step in the evolution of means of payment. We overview two major classes of digital currencies, cryptocurrencies and platform-based digital currencies and discuss how the design of such currencies affects the incentives of their users and ultimately their popularity. Finally, we discuss competition in the digital currency market.
Scott A. Wiseman
At Bitcoinâs peak in November 2013, there were 93,000 global transactions made in a single day. These users purchased everyday items such as personal services, food, and real estate. This alone suggests that Bitcoin is not primarily used as a long-term investment tool, but rather is used as a currency and a vehicle for global transactions. Congress and the IRS should regulate it accordingly. Representative Stockmanâs Virtual Currency Reform Act offered an attempt to negate the IRS decision and officially classify Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as currency instead of property. A tax reclassification would alleviate typical usersâ many inconveniences caused by burdensome accounting and tax reporting. A reclassification would also allow and encourage the use of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies because imposing a sales tax on transactions similar to everyday currencies is a small change that most users would not find prohibitive or restrictive. While it is evident that there needs to be some form of IRS taxation of virtual currencies, attempting to classify Bitcoin according to existing tax principles is challenging and ineffective.\nAlthough this is new technology and subsequently uncharted territory for many doctrines of law, the technology should be embraced and encouraged to prosper. For example, typical sales tax on transactions made on the internet are currently an unsolved dilemma. It gets even trickier trying to throw virtual currencies into the mix. Between complex tax law, jurisdictional issues, and the constant globalization of our economy, challenging legal questions will arise. Classifying certain Bitcoin transactions for a sales tax instead of a capital gains and losses tax is the first step in the right direction toward answering these difficult questions and encouraging the use of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies to further global trade in the future.
Michael Mainelli, Alistair Milne
This paper reports the outcome of a series of interviews and focus group meetings with professionals working in post-trade processing and the provision of mutual distributed ledger services. The objective was to elicit and document views on three research hypotheses about the potential impact of mutual distributed ledger technology (âblockchainâ) on post-trade processing global securities markets. \n\nThese hypotheses are (a) on the appropriate access to mutual distributed ledger; (b) on whether change would be piecemeal or âbig bangâ; and (c) on the extent to which applying mutual distributed ledger in securities settlement would require major changes in business processes. Our research finds that while the use of blockchain to validate operational data in mutual distributed ledgers can yield substantial reductions in both cost and risk, the concept of data sharing itself is far from new. Current interest in mutual distributed ledgers has established significant momentum, but there is a danger of building unrealistic expectations of the extent to which the technology on its own will address the underlying need for co-ordination of business processes both within and between firms. Achieving all the potential benefits from mutual distributed ledgers will require board level buy-in to a substantial commitment of time and resource, and active regulatory support for process reform, with relatively little short term payoff.
Brett Scott
The decentralized digital currency Bitcoin - and its underlying "blockchain" technology - has created much excitement in the technology community, but its potential for building truly empowering social and solidarity-based finance has yet to be tested. This paper provides a primer on the basics of Bitcoin and discusses the existent narratives about the technologyÂŽs potential to facilitate remittances, financial inclusion, cooperative structures and even micro-insurance systems. It also flags up potential points of concern and conflict; such as the tech-from-above "solutionism" and conservative libertarian political dynamics of some of the technology start-up community that surrounds Bitcoin. As a way of contrast the paper considers "blockchain 2.0" technologies with more overtly communitarian ideals and their potential for creating "cooperation at scale". It concludes with suggestions for future research.
Neil Gandal, Hanna HaĆaburda
We analyze how network effects affect competition in the nascent cryptocurrency market. We do so by examining early dynamics of exchange rates among different cryptocurrencies. While Bitcoin eventually dominates this market, our data suggest no evidence of a winner-take-all effect early in the market. Indeed, for a relatively long period, a few other cryptocurrencies competing with Bitcoin (the early industry leader) appreciated much more quickly than Bitcoin. The data in this period are consistent with the use of cryptocurrencies as financial assets (popularized by Bitcoin), and not consistent with winner-take-all dynamics. Toward the end of our sample, however, things change dramatically. Bitcoin appreciates against the USD, while other currencies depreciate against the USD. The data in this period are consistent with strong network effects and winner-take-all dynamics. This trend continues as at the time of writing.
Svetlana Abramova, Rainer Böhme
Over recent years, the innovative decentralized payment system Bitcoin has received much attention in practice and academia. Despite a growth of transaction volume and an increasing attention in the area of e-commerce, there is little academic research examining the factors influencing adoption. To fill this research gap, this paper documents an exploratory study of the key determinants and inhibitors of Bitcoin use. Drawing upon the Technology Acceptance Model and a literature review, we integrate various benefits and risks of Bitcoin use to form the multidimensional constructs Perceived Benefit and Perceived Risk. We propose and empirically test a theoretical model that explains the use of Bitcoin as an online payment system for legitimate purchases and money transfers. Furthermore, we recognize several conceptual and methodological development potentialities for technology acceptance theories in the context of decentralized and sharing economy systems.
Vincenzo Morabito
No abstract is available for this record.
Sinclair Davidson, Primavera De Filippi, Jason Potts
Distributed ledger technology, invented for cryptocurrencies, is increasingly understood as a new general-purpose technology for a broad range of economic activities that rely on consensus of a database of transactions or records. However, blockchains are more than just a disruptive new ICT. Rather, they are a new institutional technology of governance that competes with other economic institutions of capitalism, namely firms, markets, networks, and even governments. We present this view of blockchains through a case study of Backfeed, an Ethereum-based platform for creating new types of commons-based collaborative economies.
Christian Catalini, Joshua S. Gans
We build on economic theory to discuss how blockchain technology can shape innovation and competition in digital platforms. We identify two key costs affected by the technology: the cost of verification and the cost of networking. The cost of verification relates to the ability to cheaply verify state, including information about past transactions and their attributes, and current ownership in a native digital asset. The cost of networking, instead, relates to the ability to bootstrap and operate a marketplace without assigning control to a centralized intermediary. This is achieved by combining the ability to cheaply verify state with economic incentives targeted at rewarding state transitions that are particularly valuable from a network perspective, such as the contribution of the resources needed to operate, scale, and secure a decentralized network. The resulting digital marketplaces allow participants to make joint investments in shared infrastructure and digital public utilities without assigning market power to a platform operator, and are characterized by increased competition, lower barriers to entry, and a lower privacy risk. Because of their decentralized nature, they also introduce new types of inefficiencies and governance challenges.
Konstantinos Christidis, Michael Devetsikiotis
ABSTRACT: Motivated by the recent explosion of interest around Blockchains, we examine whether they make a good t for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector. Blockchains allow us to have a distributed peer-to-peer network where non-trusting members can interact with each other without a trusted intermediary, in a variable manner. We review how this mechanism works and also look into smart contracts scripts that reside on the Blockchain that allow for the automation of multi-step processes. We then move into the IoT domain, and describe how a Blockchain-IoT combination: 1) facilitates the sharing of services and resources leading to the creation of a marketplace of services between devices and 2) allows us to automate in a cryptographically variable manner several existing, time- consuming work owns. We also point out certain issues that should be considered before the deployment of a Blockchain network in an IoT setting: from transactional privacy to the expected value of the digitized assets traded on the network. Wherever applicable, we identify solutions and workarounds. Our conclusion is that the Blockchain-IoT combination is powerful and can cause sign cant transformations across several industries, paving the way for new business models and novel, distributed applications.
*Mbonigaba Celestin & ** Olivia Martinez
This study examines how decentralized finance protocols reshape consumer protection outcomes within blockchain financial markets amid growing global concerns regarding digital transaction security, governance transparency, and institutional regulatory adaptation. Using a balanced longitudinal panel dataset of 1,450 institutional year observations derived from BIS, IMF, OECD, and World Bank digital finance databases covering 2005 to 2014, the study applies fixed effects panel regression, moderation interaction modeling, clustered robust estimation, and multidimensional composite index construction to estimate the structural relationship between decentralized finance systems and consumer protection. The findings reveal that Smart Contract Infrastructure, Decentralized Financial Services, Blockchain Technology Integration, and DeFi Governance Structures exert positive and statistically significant effects on Consumer Protection, while the Digital Regulatory Environment significantly strengthens these relationships through regulatory clarity, cybersecurity readiness, legal enforcement, and digital literacy mechanisms. Interaction estimates further demonstrate that institutional readiness amplifies the protective capacity of decentralized financial ecosystems across heterogeneous digital markets. The study extends institutional governance and financial innovation theory by integrating technological infrastructure, decentralized governance, and adaptive regulatory conditioning into a unified explanatory framework. The findings provide policy relevant evidence for regulators, blockchain developers, and digital financial institutions seeking to strengthen consumer protection within technologically evolving financial ecosystems.
Mark Edwin Burge
As technology rolls out ongoing and competing streams of payments innovation, exemplified by Apple Pay (mobile payments) and Bitcoin (cryptocurrency), the law governing these payments appears hopelessly behind the curve. The patchwork of state, federal, and private legal rules seems more worthy of condemnation than emulation. This Article argues, however, that the legal and market developments of the last several decades in payment systems provide compelling evidence of the most realistic and socially beneficial future for payments law. The paradigm of a comprehensive public law regulatory scheme for payment systemsïŸexemplified by Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial CodeïŸhas faded in relevance, while federal law has grown in a specialized consumer protection role. Meanwhile, private contract law has expanded to fill gaps where payment technology has exceeded the scope of public law. The evidence of the successes and failures of payments law in the face of rapid technological development shows that the field is not best governed by comprehensive public regulation on the Uniform Commercial Code model, but that public law still has an importantïŸalbeit narrowerïŸrole for the future. The most beneficial paradigm for governance of payment systems is a division between (1) private law handling systemic matters of operation, and (2) public law focused on protecting payment system end-users from oppression, fraud, and mistake. This demarcation of lawmaking responsibilities has the greatest track record of success and is the most capable of dealing with a foreseeable future of unforeseeable innovations.
Nick Vogel
Bitcoinâs popularity increased as its value increased and people became excited about the prospect of a trustless, decentralized currency that could be used on the Internet. Within the last two years, however, people and organizations began exploiting the potential of the block chain that powers the bitcoin network. These people realized that the block chain â a transparent public ledger that cannot be altered â can be used for more than digital currency. One such organization calls itself Ethereum and its developers plan to use block chains to allow decentralized autonomous applications to operate free of government censorship or corruption. While such a network would have a profound effect on society â allowing trustless voting, uncensored social networking and the like â its impact on copyrights could be devastating. This paper argues that the emerging, decentralized Internet (also known as Web 3.0) will be the straw that breaks the copyright ownerâs back. This paper argues that, with block chain technology and decentralized applications, those buying and selling unauthorized copies of copyrighted material cannot be subject to court injunctions; making enforcement of copyrights nearly impossible on a decentralized Internet. This paper then proposes that copyright holders get out in front of the problem by embracing a decentralized Internet. This can only be done by drastically reducing the price of copyright licenses. In other words, by offering cheap licenses at the dawn of Web 3.0, copyright holders can instill a sense that itâs better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the ongoing struggle between technology and copyrights.
Jakub BartoĆĄ
Bitcoin has emerged as phenomenon of the financial markets as the currency without any central authority. Recent events of Bitcoin has risen question about its behavior and there is crucial question if the price of Bitcoin follows hypothesis of efficient markets. In this paper, there are introduced the main features of Bitcoin and analyzed its price behavior. We found out that price of the most famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin follows the hypothesis of efficient markets and it immediately react on publicly announce information. Furthermore, Bitcoin can be seen as standard economic good that is priced by interaction of supply and demand on the market. These factors can be driven by macro financial development or by speculative investors, but there werenât found any significant impact of these factors on price of Bitcoin.
A.W. Jongbloed
In het Delta Lloyd magazine april 2015, p. 32, wordt aandacht besteed aan Martijn Wismeijer (43 jaar). Hij liet onlangs twee chips onder zijn huid implanteren, een voor bitcoins en een voor de honderden wachtwoorden die hij voor digitale toepassingen gebruikt. 1 Het is een feit dat we in het huidige ICT-tijdperk te maken krijgen met heel veel wachtwoorden die liefst zo weinig mogelijk identiek mogen zijn en het is duidelijk dat wie toegang krijgt tot die wachtwoorden ons leven behoorlijk kan ontwrichten. Maar is een chip voor bitcoins niet overbodig? Wat zijn bitcoins eigenlijk, wat is hun juridische status en zijn ze betaalmiddel?
Christian Jaag, Christian W. Bach
Contrary to traditional currencies, cryptocurrencies neither have physical form nor are they guaranteed or backed by any central authority. They simply attain value by usage and the confidence of those participating in the respective system. A crypto-paymentsystem is a technology which allows for payments between individuals digitally without relying on central institutions, intermediaries or further infrastructure as required for conventional payment systems. While its legitimacy as currency has been questioned due to its high exchange rate volatility, the significant potential of the Bitcoin technology as a payment system is undeniable. As postal operators typically have a role as financial intermediaries and act in an inter-national and increasingly digital environment, crypto-paymentsystems may be of particular interest to them. In fact, as the post has a wide network of access points and is highly trusted by the general public, it may be well-suited to offer services which counter some disadvantages of crypto-paymentsystems and cryptocurrencies, while retain-ing the benefits of their technology. By turning to crypto-paymentsystems postal operators may extend their role as a financial intermediary with new domestic and interna-tional services. Furthermore, postal operators may even issue their own cryptocurrency to protect customers from the high exchange-rate volatility of cryptocurrencies.
Ashley S. Harrison, M. Scott Niederjohn, J. R. Clark
Economists define money as anything that is generally accepted in payment for goods and services or in the repayment of debts.1 Paper money and coins clearly fit this definition, but deposits in checking accounts are so widely accepted that they are also considered in the narrowest definition of money used by the Federal Reserve, called âM1.â M1 is the sum of all currency, checkable deposits, and travelers checks. How about savings accounts? These amounts are so quickly convertible into M1 that many economists consider them money too, part of a larger total called M2 that includes all of M1 plus all small denomination time deposits (bank CDs), savings accounts, and money market account balances. M2 then represents a form of money that is less âliquidâ (less easily converted and spent) than M1. In addition to this definition, money is expected to satisfy three functions: serve as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. In this article, we will explore what Bitcoin is and why it has been so prevalent in the news of late. Further, we will apply the three functions of money to Bitcoin and discuss whether it should be considered a form of money. Some of the benefits and problems associated with Bitcoin will be discussed along with its future potential.