2,126 research outputs found
Questions related to Bitcoin and other Informational Money
A collection of questions about Bitcoin and its hypothetical relatives
Bitguilder and Bitpenny is formulated. These questions concern technical issues
about protocols, security issues, issues about the formalizations of
informational monies in various contexts, and issues about forms of use and
misuse. Some questions are formulated in the more general setting of
informational monies and near-monies.
We also formulate questions about legal, psychological, and ethical aspects
of informational money. Finally we formulate a number of questions concerning
the economical merits of and outlooks for Bitcoin.Comment: 31 pages. In v2 the section on patterns for use and misuse has been
improved and expanded with so-called contaminations. Other small improvements
were made and 13 additional references have been include
Cashless Societies and the Rise of the Independent Cryptocurrencies: How Governments Can Use Privacy Laws to Compete with Independent Cryptocurrencies
Many individuals (including governments) envision living in a future world where physical currency is a thing of the past. Many countries have made great strides in their efforts to go cashless. At the same time, there is increasing awareness among citizens of the decreasing amount of privacy in their lives. The potential hazards cashless societies pose to financial privacy may incentivize citizens to hold some of their money in independent cryptocurrencies. This article argues that in order for governments in cashless societies to keep firm control over their money supply, they should enact stronger privacy law protections for its citizens in order to decrease the real or perceived loss of (financial) privacy. This paper compares the privacy laws that exist today in both the United States and the European Union and suggests combining elements of both legal systems in order create a more privacy-friendly legal framework that can enable governments to complete against independent cryptocurrencies
Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and Deployments
Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple
authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by
all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially
adversarial. We revise fifteen years of research on decentralization and
privacy, and provide an overview of key systems, as well as key insights for
designers of future systems. We show that decentralized designs can enhance
privacy, integrity, and availability but also require careful trade-offs in
terms of system complexity, properties provided, and degree of
decentralization. These trade-offs need to be understood and navigated by
designers. We argue that a combination of insights from cryptography,
distributed systems, and mechanism design, aligned with the development of
adequate incentives, are necessary to build scalable and successful
privacy-preserving decentralized systems
- …