The Concept of the Cryptocurrency and the Downfall of the Banking Sector in Reflecting on the Financial Market

This paper aims to explain the concept of Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and others, discuss their advantages and their disadvantages, and how is reflecting on the financial market and on the other currencies that are adopted in each country, like us dollar and the euro and the pound and so on (fiat currencies). This paper will discuss the major change that would occur if or when cryptocurrencies get adopted worldwide when the cryptocurrency becomes the who will benefit from this change and who will cease to exist, and what would this change mean to the banking sector, and where is it going to leave this sector. Could it destroy it or be a partner with it? It all depends on how this sector will handle this change when it happens because it will happen sooner or later

Disruptive Power of Blockchain on the Insurance Industry

Kindlustus on olnud globaalse majanduse võtmekomponendiks oma lisatasude suuruse, investeerimismahtude ja ennekõike oma isikliku ja äririski katva sotsiaalse ja majandusliku rolli tõttu. Aastate jooksul on antud sektoris olnud püsiv reform, kuid sellele vaatamata on kindlustuse tööstusharu jäänud suuremalt jaolt samaks oma ärimudeli ja toimimise osas. Seda sektorit domineerivad vahendajad, kes mängivad võtmerolli kliendi vajaduste mõistmises ja viivad selle kokku kindlale sihtgrupile mõeldud kindlustustootega. PwC poolt tehtud uuring raportis „Kindlustus 2020: Muutuse pööramine võimaluseks“ [1] võtab arvesse sotsiaalsed, tehnoloogilised, keskkondlikud, majanduslikud ja poliitilised faktorid ning viitab sellele, et kindlustuse sektoril on vajadus muutuda agentuuripõhisest jaotusmudelist kasutusepõhiseks ärimudeliks. Antud uurimustöö uurib plokiahela tehnoloogiat ja selle häirivat mõju kindlustussektorile hinnates praegust äriprotsessi ja –mudelit ning seda, kuidas see tehnoloogia suudab antud mudeleid täiustada. Uurimustöö järeldusena pakutakse uut protsessi suunda kindlustuse tööstusharule rõhutades kliendile pakutavat parema väärtusega teenust, kus on kasutusel plokiahela tehnoloogia. Võtmesõnad: plokiahela tehnoloogia, kindlustuse äriprotsess, jaotatud peaarvetehnoloogiaThe insurance industry has been a key component of the global economy by the amount of premiums it generates, the scale of its investment and more fundamentally, the essential social and economic role it plays in covering personal and business risk. Over the years, there have been a growing reform in this sector but despite some of these reforms, the insurance industry has remained much the same in its business model and operations. The sector has been dominated by intermediaries who play the key role of understanding and matching the need of the customer with specific tailored insurance product. A research conducted by PwC in a report titled “Insurance 2020: Turning change into opportunity” [1], takes into account STEEP (Social, Technology, Environmental, Economic and Political) drivers all points to the need of the insurance sector to evolve from the agency- based distribution model to an usage based business model. This paper examines the blockchain technology and its disruptive power in the insurance sector by evaluating the current business process and model in the industry and how this technology can improve this model. This paper concludes by proposing a new process flow for the insurance industry placing emphasis on better values service to the customer using blockchain technology

Rethinking Virtual Currency Regulation in the Bitcoin Age

This Article investigates an increasingly important yet under-developed body of law: regulation of virtual currency. At its peak in March of 2014, the daily volume of Bitcoin transactions in United States dollars exceeded $575,000,000. The growing mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin, however, is best illustrated by the growing number of leading merchants that have decided to accept Bitcoin payments. While Bitcoin’s rise as an alternative payment method is well-chronicled, Bitcoin’s impact extends further due to its use as an investment vehicle and its ability to spur the growth of an industry of Bitcoin-based businesses. Despite increasingly widespread use, Bitcoin (and other virtual currencies) have largely operated without the burden of regulation. Why? Like the potentially transformative innovations that preceded Bitcoin, virtual currency raises unique challenges for which existing legal models may be unprepared. As policymakers struggle to catch-up, the effort to develop an appropriate regulatory regime for virtual currency is at a critical juncture. The response in the United States has thus far involved regulatory bodies acting independently to clarify the treatment of virtual currency under a variety of different laws designed to regulate traditional payment systems, financial services, and investments. This Article argues, contrary to this approach, that a narrow focus on the technical application and extension of existing law creates a deficient regulatory regime. Instead, we suggest that policymakers should: (1) engage the various agency stakeholders to promote cross-communication; (2) think more globally about the wide spectrum of issues arising from virtual currency; and (3) embrace the unique and distinct characteristics of virtual currency. In support of this proposition, we show that refocusing on the collection of policy goals advanced by existing law offers policymakers an additional tool to aid in the development of a comprehensive, cohesive, and appropriately-scaled virtual currency regulatory model

Advances in the Convergence of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence

Blockchain (BC) and artificial intelligence (AI) are currently two of the hottest computer science topics and their future seems bright. However, their convergence is not straightforward, and more research is needed in both fields. Thus, this book presents some of the latest advances in the convergence of BC and AI, gives useful guidelines for future researchers on how BC can help AI and how AI can become smarter, thanks to the use of BC. This book specifically analyzes the past of BC through the history of Bitcoin and then looks into the future: from massive internet-of-things (IoT) deployments, to the so-called metaverse, and to the next generation of AI-powered BC-based cyber secured applications

Scaling Distributed Ledgers and Privacy-Preserving Applications

This thesis proposes techniques aiming to make blockchain technologies and smart contract platforms practical by improving their scalability, latency, and privacy. This thesis starts by presenting the design and implementation of Chainspace, a distributed ledger that supports user defined smart contracts and execute user-supplied transactions on their objects. The correct execution of smart contract transactions is publicly verifiable. Chainspace is scalable by sharding state; it is secure against subsets of nodes trying to compromise its integrity or availability properties through Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). This thesis also introduces a family of replay attacks against sharded distributed ledgers targeting cross-shard consensus protocols; they allow an attacker, with network access only, to double-spend resources with minimal efforts. We then build Byzcuit, a new cross-shard consensus protocol that is immune to those attacks and that is tailored to run at the heart of Chainspace. Next, we propose FastPay, a high-integrity settlement system for pre-funded payments that can be used as a financial side-infrastructure for Chainspace to support low-latency retail payments. This settlement system is based on Byzantine Consistent Broadcast as its core primitive, foregoing the expenses of full atomic commit channels (consensus). The resulting system has extremely low-latency for both confirmation and payment finality. Finally, this thesis proposes Coconut, a selective disclosure credential scheme supporting distributed threshold issuance, public and private attributes, re-randomization, and multiple unlinkable selective attribute revelations. It ensures authenticity and availability even when a subset of credential issuing authorities are malicious or offline, and natively integrates with Chainspace to enable a number of scalable privacy-preserving applications

Disrupting Finance

This open access Pivot demonstrates how a variety of technologies act as innovation catalysts within the banking and financial services sector. Traditional banks and financial services are under increasing competition from global IT companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and PayPal whilst facing pressure from investors to reduce costs, increase agility and improve customer retention. Technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, mobile technologies, big data analytics and social media therefore have perhaps more potential in this industry and area of business than any other. This book defines a fintech ecosystem for the 21st century, providing a state-of-the art review of current literature, suggesting avenues for new research and offering perspectives from business, technology and industry