Is Bitcoin Really Untethered?
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Cryptocurrency: the Economics of Money and Selected Policy Issues
Cryptocurrency: The Economics of Money and Selected Policy Issues Updated April 9, 2020 Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov R45427 SUMMARY R45427 Cryptocurrency: The Economics of Money and April 9, 2020 Selected Policy Issues David W. Perkins Cryptocurrencies are digital money in electronic payment systems that generally do not require Specialist in government backing or the involvement of an intermediary, such as a bank. Instead, users of the Macroeconomic Policy system validate payments using certain protocols. Since the 2008 invention of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies have proliferated. In recent years, they experienced a rapid increase and subsequent decrease in value. One estimate found that, as of March 2020, there were more than 5,100 different cryptocurrencies worth about $231 billion. Given this rapid growth and volatility, cryptocurrencies have drawn the attention of the public and policymakers. A particularly notable feature of cryptocurrencies is their potential to act as an alternative form of money. Historically, money has either had intrinsic value or derived value from government decree. Using money electronically generally has involved using the private ledgers and systems of at least one trusted intermediary. Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, generally employ user agreement, a network of users, and cryptographic protocols to achieve valid transfers of value. Cryptocurrency users typically use a pseudonymous address to identify each other and a passcode or private key to make changes to a public ledger in order to transfer value between accounts. Other computers in the network validate these transfers. Through this use of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency systems protect their public ledgers of accounts against manipulation, so that users can only send cryptocurrency to which they have access, thus allowing users to make valid transfers without a centralized, trusted intermediary. -
A Cryptocurrency Spectrum Short Analysis
Journal of Risk and Financial Management Review A Cryptocurrency Spectrum Short Analysis 1 2 3 Mircea Constantin S, cheau , Simona Liliana Crăciunescu , Iulia Brici and Monica Violeta Achim 3,* 1 Faculty of Automation, Computers and Electronics, University of Craiova, 200585 Craiova, Romania; [email protected] 2 Simona Liliana Crăciunescu, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010374 Bucharest, Romania; [email protected] 3 Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babes, -Bolyai University, 400591 Cluj-Napoca, Romania; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 30 June 2020; Accepted: 11 August 2020; Published: 17 August 2020 Abstract: Technological development brings about economic changes that affect most citizens, both in developed and undeveloped countries. The implementation of blockchain technologies that bring cryptocurrencies into the economy and everyday life also induce risks. Authorities are continuously concerned about ensuring balance, which is, among other things, a prudent attitude. Achieving this goal sometimes requires the development of standards and regulations applicable at the national or global level. This paper attempts to dive deeper into the worldwide operations, related to cryptocurrencies, as part of a general phenomenon, and also expose some of the intersections with cybercrime. Without impeding creativity, implementing suggested proposals must comply with the rules in effect and provide sufficient flexibility for adapting and integrating them. Different segments need to align or reposition, as alteration is only allowed in a positive way. Adopting cryptocurrency decisions should be unitary, based on standard policies. Keywords: cryptocurrencies; fraud; algorithms; correlations; impact; risks; regulation; blockchain 1. Introduction In the area of influence of computer science, the terms undergo rapid mutations, both in sense and interpretability. -
Coinbase Explores Crypto ETF (9/6) Coinbase Spoke to Asset Manager Blackrock About Creating a Crypto ETF, Business Insider Reports
Crypto Week in Review (9/1-9/7) Goldman Sachs CFO Denies Crypto Strategy Shift (9/6) GS CFO Marty Chavez addressed claims from an unsubstantiated report earlier this week that the firm may be delaying previous plans to open a crypto trading desk, calling the report “fake news”. Coinbase Explores Crypto ETF (9/6) Coinbase spoke to asset manager BlackRock about creating a crypto ETF, Business Insider reports. While the current status of the discussions is unclear, BlackRock is said to have “no interest in being a crypto fund issuer,” and SEC approval in the near term remains uncertain. Looking ahead, the Wednesday confirmation of Trump nominee Elad Roisman has the potential to tip the scales towards a more favorable cryptoasset approach. Twitter CEO Comments on Blockchain (9/5) Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, speaking in a congressional hearing, indicated that blockchain technology could prove useful for “distributed trust and distributed enforcement.” The platform, given its struggles with how best to address fraud, harassment, and other misuse, could be a prime testing ground for decentralized identity solutions. Ripio Facilitates Peer-to-Peer Loans (9/5) Ripio began to facilitate blockchain powered peer-to-peer loans, available to wallet users in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. The loans, which utilize the Ripple Credit Network (RCN) token, are funded in RCN and dispensed to users in fiat through a network of local partners. Since all details of the loan and payments are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, the solution could contribute to wider access to credit for the unbanked. IBM’s Payment Protocol Out of Beta (9/4) Blockchain World Wire, a global blockchain based payments network by IBM, is out of beta, CoinDesk reports. -
Exploring the Interconnectedness of Cryptocurrencies Using Correlation Networks
Exploring the Interconnectedness of Cryptocurrencies using Correlation Networks Andrew Burnie UCL Computer Science Doctoral Student at The Alan Turing Institute [email protected] Conference Paper presented at The Cryptocurrency Research Conference 2018, 24 May 2018, Anglia Ruskin University Lord Ashcroft International Business School Centre for Financial Research, Cambridge, UK. Abstract Correlation networks were used to detect characteristics which, although fixed over time, have an important influence on the evolution of prices over time. Potentially important features were identified using the websites and whitepapers of cryptocurrencies with the largest userbases. These were assessed using two datasets to enhance robustness: one with fourteen cryptocurrencies beginning from 9 November 2017, and a subset with nine cryptocurrencies starting 9 September 2016, both ending 6 March 2018. Separately analysing the subset of cryptocurrencies raised the number of data points from 115 to 537, and improved robustness to changes in relationships over time. Excluding USD Tether, the results showed a positive association between different cryptocurrencies that was statistically significant. Robust, strong positive associations were observed for six cryptocurrencies where one was a fork of the other; Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash was an exception. There was evidence for the existence of a group of cryptocurrencies particularly associated with Cardano, and a separate group correlated with Ethereum. The data was not consistent with a token’s functionality or creation mechanism being the dominant determinants of the evolution of prices over time but did suggest that factors other than speculation contributed to the price. Keywords: Correlation Networks; Interconnectedness; Contagion; Speculation 1 1. Introduction The year 2017 saw the start of a rapid diversification in cryptocurrencies. -
First Crypto Index in Hong Kong
First crypto index in Hong Kong Index Review 2021 Q1 1 Market Overview 2 Historical Crypto Market Capitalization (free-floated) & Bitcoin Price (Dec 2018 - Mar 2021) 2021 Q1 Market Cap Bitcoin Price The total Market Cap and Bitcoin price kept the upward trend during this quarter. Source: CoinMarketCap as of 31/03/2021 HKT 3 Crypto market overview Top 10 Cryptos No Name Market Cap Price % Change* 2021 Q1 1 Bitcoin $1,099,939,890,804 $58,917.69 104.28% 2 Ethereum $212,788,788,571 $1,846.03 145.61% 9,000 + Crypto Currencies 3 Binance Coin $48,125,603,373 $311.43 716.54% 4 Tether $40,681,086,817 $1.00 0.00% 131 Billion USD Daily Volume 5 Cardano $38,763,410,938 $1.21 557.47% 6 Polkadot $31,495,837,002 $34.07 369.93% 7 XRP $25,737,663,165 $0.57 167.62% 1.88 Trillion USD Market Cap 8 Uniswap $14,871,243,021 $28.49 588.16% 9 Litecoin $13,129,004,499 $196.68 51.91% 10 THETA $12,977,378,293 $12.98 711.25% Source: CoinMarketCap as of 31/03/2021 HKT • % Change since the end of last quarter 4 Crypto market overview 2020 Q4 2020 Q3 9,000 + Crypto Currencies (+11.1%) 8,100 + Crypto Currencies 131 Billion USD Daily Volume (-29.1%) 185 Billion USD Daily Volume 1.88 Trillion USD Market Cap (+147%) 762 Billion USD Market Cap Compared with last review, total market cap rose by 147%, while the daily volume cooled down by 29.1%. -
What Keeps Stablecoins Stable?
What Keeps Stablecoins Stable? Richard K. Lyons and Ganesh Viswanath-Natraj∗ First version: December 21, 2019 (posted SSRN) This version: May 3, 2020 Abstract We take this question to be isomorphic to, "What Keeps Fixed Exchange Rates Fixed?" and address it with analysis familiar in exchange-rate economics. Stablecoins solve the volatility problem by pegging to a national currency, typically the US dollar, and are used as vehicles for exchanging national currencies into non-stable cryptocurrencies, with some stablecoins having a ratio of trading volume to outstanding supply exceeding one daily. Using a rich dataset of signed trades and order books on multiple exchanges, we examine how peg-sustaining arbitrage stabilizes the price of the largest stablecoin, Tether. We find that stablecoin issuance, the closest analogue to central-bank intervention, plays only a limited role in stabilization, pointing instead to stabilizing forces on the demand side. Following Tether’s introduction to the Ethereum blockchain in 2019, we find increased investor access to arbitrage trades, and a decline in arbitrage spreads from 70 to 30 basis points. We also pin down which fundamentals drive the two-sided distribution of peg- price deviations: Premiums are due to stablecoins’ role as a safe haven, exhibiting, for example, premiums greater than 100 basis points during the COVID-19 crisis of March 2020; discounts derive from liquidity effects and collateral concerns. Keywords: Cryptocurrency, stablecoins, fixed exchange rates, monetary policy, intervention JEL Classifications: E5, F3, F4, G15, G18 ∗UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and NBER ([email protected]), and Warwick Business School ([email protected]), respectively. -
Trading and Arbitrage in Cryptocurrency Markets
Trading and Arbitrage in Cryptocurrency Markets Igor Makarov1 and Antoinette Schoar∗2 1London School of Economics 2MIT Sloan, NBER, CEPR December 15, 2018 ABSTRACT We study the efficiency, price formation and segmentation of cryptocurrency markets. We document large, recurrent arbitrage opportunities in cryptocurrency prices relative to fiat currencies across exchanges, which often persist for weeks. Price deviations are much larger across than within countries, and smaller between cryptocurrencies. Price deviations across countries co-move and open up in times of large appreciations of the Bitcoin. Countries that on average have a higher premium over the US Bitcoin price also see a bigger widening of arbitrage deviations in times of large appreciations of the Bitcoin. Finally, we decompose signed volume on each exchange into a common and an idiosyncratic component. We show that the common component explains up to 85% of Bitcoin returns and that the idiosyncratic components play an important role in explaining the size of the arbitrage spreads between exchanges. ∗Igor Makarov: Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. Email: [email protected]. An- toinette Schoar: 62-638, 100 Main Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA. Email: [email protected]. We thank Yupeng Wang and Yuting Wang for outstanding research assistance. We thank seminar participants at the Brevan Howard Center at Imperial College, EPFL Lausanne, European Sum- mer Symposium in Financial Markets 2018 Gerzensee, HSE Moscow, LSE, and Nova Lisbon, as well as Anastassia Fedyk, Adam Guren, Simon Gervais, Dong Lou, Peter Kondor, Gita Rao, Norman Sch¨urhoff,and Adrien Verdelhan for helpful comments. Andreas Caravella, Robert Edstr¨omand Am- bre Soubiran provided us with very useful information about the data. -
From Tether to Libra: Stablecoins, Digital Currency and the Future of Money
From Tether to Libra: Stablecoins, Digital Currency and the Future of Money Alexander Lipton1, Aetienne Sardon2, Fabian Schar¨ 3, and Christian Schupbach¨ 2 1Sila, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2Swisscom, Digital Business Unit, Fintech 3Center for Innovative Finance, University of Basel [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] I. INTRODUCTION of new technologies, such as Distributed Ledger Technology What first started as a niche phenomenon within the (DLT), has subtly diverged our focus away from ”how can cryptocurrency community has now reached the realms of we create value” to ”how can we use this technology”. multinational conglomerates, policy makers, and central banks. In order to prevent falling prey to deceptive innovation, From JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon to Facebook’s Mark policymakers, incumbents, challengers and the general public Zuckerberg, stablecoins have made their way onto the alike should have the interest to develop a sound understanding agenda of today’s top CEOs. As projects like Libra have of stablecoins. enjoyed broad media coverage they are also increasingly III. WIR: A STABLECOIN PRECURSOR scrutinized by regulatory authorities, [1] [2] [3]. And as the term “stablecoin” spread, its meaning started to blur. This is The concept of devising a supplementary currency system problematic. An unclear definition may make us susceptible is not a new one. One of the most successful examples is to deceptive innovation, that is, reintroducing existing services the Swiss WIR Bank, formerly known as the Swiss Economic but in a different appearance. We ought to ask ourselves: are Circle. -
Cryptocurrency and the Blockchain: Technical Overview and Potential Impact on Commercial Child Sexual Exploitation
Cryptocurrency and the BlockChain: Technical Overview and Potential Impact on Commercial Child Sexual Exploitation Prepared for the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography (FCACP) and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) by Eric Olson and Jonathan Tomek, May 2017 Foreword The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) advocates, trains and collaborates to eradicate child abduction, sexual abuse and exploitation around the globe. Collaboration – one of the pillars of our work – is uniquely demonstrated by the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography (FCACP), which was launched in 2006 by ICMEC and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The FCACP was created when it became evident that people were using their credit cards to buy images of children being sexually abused online. Working alongside law enforcement, the FCACP followed the money to disrupt the economics of the child pornography business, resulting in the virtual elimination of the use of credit cards in the United States for the purchase of child sexual abuse content online. And while that is a stunning accomplishment, ICMEC and the FCACP are mindful of the need to stay vigilant and continue to fight those who seek to profit from the sexual exploitation of children. It is with this in mind that we sought to research cryptocurrencies and the role they play in commercial sexual exploitation of children. This paper examines several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, and the Blockchain architecture that supports them. It provides a summary of the underground and illicit uses of the currencies, as well as the ramifications for law enforcement and industry. ICMEC is extremely grateful to the authors of this paper – Eric Olson and Jonathan Tomek of LookingGlass Cyber Solutions. -
How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law Eric D
College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 2019 How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law Eric D. Chason William & Mary Law School, [email protected] Repository Citation Chason, Eric D., "How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law" (2019). Faculty Publications. 1896. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1896 Copyright c 2019 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law Eric D. Chason* Bitcoin replicates many of the formal aspects of real estate transactions. Bitcoin transactions have features that closely resemble grantor names, grantee names, legal descriptions, and signatures found in real property deeds. While these “Bitcoin deeds” may be interesting, they are not profound. Bitcoin goes beyond creating simple digital deeds, however, and replicates important institutional aspects of real estate transactions, in particular recordation and title assurance. Deeds to real property are recorded in a central repository (e.g., the public records office), which the parties (and the public) can search to determine title. When one grantor executes more than one deed covering the same property, recordation acts (race, notice, and race-notice) determine which grantee wins. The Bitcoin blockchain replicates the public records office, giving anyone with a computer the ability to see any Bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin mining replicates the recording of deeds, a process by which formally valid transactions between two parties become essentially a public record. When one grantor executes more than one transaction covering the same Bitcoin, a miner determines which grantee wins simply by moving one transaction to the blockchain before the others. -
How Do Non-Poaching Agreements Distort Competition? the Rise of The
Advancing economics in business April 2020 TheHow rise do non-poachingof the cryptoexchange giants: whatagreements next for distort trading competition? cryptocurrencies? The rise of the cryptoexchange giants: what next for trading cryptocurrencies? Contact How cryptocurrencies work Helen Ralston Partner Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are permissionless forms of blockchain technology that rely on a ‘proof of work’ concept to verify transactions. In such a system, transactions are verified by third parties (commonly referred to as ‘miners’) racing to be the first to solve a unique, complex mathematical problem that is specific to each transaction and the history of preceding transactions. The first miner to solve the problem records the answer in the decentralised blockchain along with Since the inception of Bitcoin over its private key, thereby lengthening the chain. If the network confirms that this is the a decade ago, trading in crypto- correct answer—by other miners also identifying the same solution—the first miner is currencies has exploded. There are rewarded with coins in the system. now thousands of cryptocurrencies and hundreds of cryptoexchanges to Three features of the system make it robust to fraud: first, transactions are verified on a consensus basis (i.e. the majority of the network must agree that the transaction is trade on, of which Binance is by far the correct). Second, the verification (mining) process is time- and energy-intensive and largest. What is the secret of the few intentionally difficult to solve. Third, all transactions are linked, such that if someone big cryptoexchanges, and is the high wanted to change an earlier transaction they would need to redo all the subsequent number of smaller cryptoexchanges mining and do so before the rest of the network approved the next block. -
United States District Court Southern District of Florida
Case 9:18-cv-80176-BB Document 277 Entered on FLSD Docket 08/27/2019 Page 1 of 29 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA CASE NO. 18-CIV-80176-Bloom/Reinhart IRA KLEIMAN, as personal representative of the estate of David Kleiman, and W&K INFO DEFENSE RESEARCH, LLC, Plaintiffs, v. CRAIG WRIGHT, Defendant. ___________________________________/ ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION TO COMPEL [DE 210]1 This matter is before the Court on the Plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel, DE 210, and the Court’s Order dated June 14, 2019. DE 217. The Court has considered the totality of the docketed filings, including all pleadings referenced herein and transcripts of all cited court proceedings. As the judicial officer who presided at the relevant proceedings, I retain a current and independent recollection of the events discussed below. I have reviewed all of the exhibits introduced into the record at the evidentiary hearing, including the deposition excerpts filed in the record. See DE 270. Finally, I have carefully considered the arguments of counsel. The Court is fully advised and this matter is ripe for decision. The Court announced its ruling from the bench on August 26, 1 Magistrate judges may issue an order on any “pretrial matter not dispositive of a party's claim or defense.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(a). “Thus, magistrate judges have jurisdiction to enter sanctions orders for discovery failures which do not strike claims, completely preclude defenses or generate litigation-ending consequences.” Wandner v. Am. Airlines, 79 F. Supp. 3d 1285, 1295 (S.D. Fla. 2015) (J.