Beyond Bitcoin: Issues in Regulating Blockchain Transactions

The buzz surrounding Bitcoin has reached a fever pitch. Yet in academic legal discussions, disproportionate emphasis is placed on bitcoins (that is, virtual currency), and little mention is made of blockchain technology—the true innovation behind the Bitcoin protocol. Simply, blockchain technology solves an elusive networking problem by enabling “trustless” transactions: value exchanges over computer networks that can be verified, monitored, and enforced without central institutions (for example, banks). This has broad implications for how we transact over electronic networks. This Note integrates current research from leading computer scientists and cryptographers to elevate the legal community’s understanding of blockchain technology and, ultimately, to inform policymakers and practitioners as they consider different regulatory schemes. An examination of the economic properties of a blockchain-based currency suggests the technology’s true value lies in its potential to facilitate more efficient digital-asset transfers. For example, applications of special interest to the legal community include more efficient document and authorship verification, title transfers, and contract enforcement. Though a regulatory patchwork around virtual currencies has begun to form, its careful analysis reveals much uncertainty with respect to these alternative applications

Electronic Payment Systems Development in a Developing Country: The Role of Institutional Arrangements

This paper examines the institutional arrangements in the development of Nigeria’s electronic payment system (EPS) using a new institutional economics (NIE) perspective. A case study of Nigeria’s EPS was carried out using semi structured interviews to collect data from 18 participating stakeholders; a thematic method was used for the data analysis. The study suggests that a well-functioning set of arrangements, which is lacking in the institutional setup in Nigeria may be required to build necessary institutional capacity suitable for development of safe and efficient electronic payment systems. Although the technological payment infrastructure in Nigeria is modern and of comparable standard, the failure to put in place reliable and relevant market and collaborative agreements has not enabled full exploitation of the available infrastructure. Current governance structures show elements of power struggle and distrust between stakeholders (players and regulators), hampering the creation of an environment that would sustain free market economic activities and effective development of payment systems

Reprofiling Sovereign Debt

• The IMF staff’s 2013 proposal to reprofile (i.e., stretch out for a short period without haircutting principal or interest) the maturing debt of a country that has lost market access is a sensible policy in cases where the IMF is uncertain whether the country’s debt stock is sustainable. • The motivation for the policy is to avoid situations, such as occurred during the Eurozone debt crisis, in which Fund resources are used to bail-out commercial creditors in full. • But a debt reprofiling is a species of debt restructuring and as such is susceptible to holdout creditor behaviour. • By allowing a small portion of its loans to the debtor country to be used to neutralise some or all of the additional credit risk caused by the reprofiling, the IMF could minimise holdout creditors in these operations. • The authors propose a technique for minimizing the risk that certain creditors may elect to decline a reprofiling proposal, no matter how lenient its terms

Treatment of palm oil mill secondary effluent (POMSE) using ultrafiltration and nanofiltration membranes

Malaysian palm oil industry has grown rapidly over the last few decades, to becoming the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil. This success story however, comes with a greater challenge and equally required more sacrifices in order to maintain the tempo. In the year of 2004, it has been recorded that 26.7 million tons of solid biomass and approximately a 30 million tons of palm oil mill effluent (POME) were generated from 381 palm oil mills in Malaysia [1]. Although different kind of wastes are generated in the palm oil mills, the perceived harmful waste among all the waste generated is the palm oil mill effluent (POME) due to its associated harm if discharged into the environment untreated [2]. POME is a colloidal suspension originating from mixture of sterilizer condensate, separator sludge and hydro cyclone wastewater in a ratio of 9:15:1 respectively [3]. It is a brownish colored, thick liquid that is containing high amount of oil, solids, and grease with high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) values. Table 15.1 describes the characteristic of POME obtained from Malaysian Palm Oil Board

Improving Public Administration Performance through Electronic Government Applications

Electronic Government applications have been the focus of hundreds of local and national government administrations all over the world during the past decade. The emphasis of most of these applications lies in their effort to improve the experience of the user in interacting with public administration services and to minimise waiting times in completing transactions public services and citizens. Early applications were relying mainly on the speed and simplicity of submitting a request by the user while most of the work beyond the web based interaction was carried out as in the era before the introduction of the web based applications. The benefits from such endeavours have been short lived as citizens are looking for real enhancements in they way public administration serves their needs and responds to their requests. The authors argue that for e-government applications to succeed changes would have to be effected in the way public administration organizes itself and how it utilizes information management systems to respond to user / citizen requirements including and addressing the goals of all stakeholders involved. Currently the number of successful applications to that end is quite low when compared to the projects implemented so far. The authors propose steps that would maintain the focus of future implementations in doing so

Penggunaan model servqual bagi mengukur perkhidmatan pendidikan tinggi di UTHM

Kajian ini adalah bertajuk "Meningkatkan Kualiti Perkhidmatan Pendidikan Teknik dan Vokasional bagi mengubah dan meningkatkan pandangan masyarakat terhadap pendidikan teknik dan vokasional". Di dalam kajian ini terdapat lima bahagian utama iaitu pengenalan kajian, kajian literrator, metodologi kajian, analisis data kajian dan juga cadangan kajian. Kajian ini dimulakan dengan pendahuluan kajian yang akan dibuat dengan mengenalpasti semua aspek-aspek utama kajian seperti latar belakang masalah, penyataan masalah, tujuan kajian, objektif kajian, persoalan kajian, kepentingan kajian, batasan kajian dan juga kerangka kajian. Pada bahagian kedua kajian ini pula ia lebih kepada kajian literatur ke atas kajian yang akan dijalankan pada awal kajian literatur, pada bahagian ini terdapat maklumat mengenai kawasan kajian yang akan dijalan iaitu di Fakulti Pendidikan Teknik dan Vokasional UTHM sebagai kawasan kajian. Selain itu, bahagian kajian literatur ini juga dinyatakan kepentingan mengenai kualiti pendidikan dan model-model kajian yang akan digunakan dalam kajian ini seperti model SERVQUAL. Pada bahagian ketiga iaitu metodologi kajian, dibahagian ini dinyatakan bagaimana kajian ini akan dilakukan seperti pemilihan sampel kajian, cara pengumpulan data dan juaga kaedah analisis yang akan dijalankan. Bahagian keempat kajian ialah bahagian analisis data, lima aspek utama SERVQUAL dianalisis pada perkhidmatan di FPTV UTHM. Di bahagian terakhir kajian bab lima iaitu penambahbaikan keatas kualiti perkhidmatan di FPTV UTHM dinyatakan dan juga cadangan yang boleh dilakukan oleh pengkaji lain dalam kajian yang akan datang