European Legal Regulation of Cryptocurrencies through the AML Scope

This article deals with cryptocurrencies and its impact nowadays on the AML field at a European Union level . The article will be divided into an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion; it will define elementary information and defitions, will identify ways of practical use of cryptocurrencies, will introduce risks connected with the use of cryptocurrencies and will introduce legal regulation of cryptocurrencies by the V . AML Direction . In the conclusion the quality of communitary regulation will be evaluated and a few de lege ferenda tips will be devised to improve regulation for the future.This article deals with cryptocurrencies and its impact nowadays on the AML field at a European Union level . The article will be divided into an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion; it will define elementary information and defitions, will identify ways of practical use of cryptocurrencies, will introduce risks connected with the use of cryptocurrencies and will introduce legal regulation of cryptocurrencies by the V . AML Direction . In the conclusion the quality of communitary regulation will be evaluated and a few de lege ferenda tips will be devised to improve regulation for the future

Analysis of cryptocurrencies as a financial asset

Treball Final de Grau en Finances i Comptabilitat. Codi: FC1049. Curs acadèmic: 2020-2021The following research paper focuses on the analysis of new decentralized digital assets, cryptocurrencies. As an introduction, the concept of cryptocurrencies and the most outstanding references will be put into context. The main objective of the work is to analyze cryptocurrencies not only as a decentralized tool, but also as a speculative financial asset. Research will be conducted on the functioning of the reference currency, Bitcoin and the main factors affecting to understand how its value fluctuates. Subsequently, it will be compared with the coins that currently belong to the top 5 cryptocurrencies with the largest market capitalization

Short Paper: An Exploration of Code Diversity in the Cryptocurrency Landscape

Interest in cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed since their introduction a decade ago, with hundreds of billions of dollars now invested across a landscape of thousands of different cryptocurrencies. While there is significant diversity, there is also a significant number of scams as people seek to exploit the current popularity. In this paper, we seek to identify the extent of innovation in the cryptocurrency landscape using the open-source repositories associated with each one. Among other findings, we observe that while many cryptocurrencies are largely unchanged copies of Bitcoin, the use of Ethereum as a platform has enabled the deployment of cryptocurrencies with more diverse functionalities

Facilitating cross-chain cryptocurrency exchanges: An inquiry into blockchain technology and interoperability with an emphasis on cryptocurrency arbitrage

Since the introduction and proliferation of the blockchain-based cryptocurrency Bitcoin, alternative cryptocurrencies also based on blockchain technology have exploded in number. It was once believed that one, or very few, cryptocurrencies would eventually dominate the market and drive out competitors. This assumption, however, was incorrect. Thousands of cryptocurrencies exist concurrently. The vast number of cryptocurrencies leads to a problem—what if the cryptocurrency that an individual possesses does not meet their current needs as well as another cryptocurrency might? The attempt to solve this problem has led to the rise of many cryptocurrency exchanges and exchange schemes. In this paper, we will discuss the motivations for an individual to be interested in exchanging two or more cryptocurrencies by describing and comparing various popular cryptocurrencies with different desirable attributes. While we will discuss these attributes, this paper will give special focus to arbitrage in particular. In addition, we will describe various cryptocurrency exchange schemes and their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we contribute to the understanding of cryptocurrency exchangeability and interoperability by comparing the historical price data of several cryptocurrencies to determine how often arbitrage has been possible in the past

Cryptocurrencies: A Currency at all, or a Speculative Investment for the Future?

Since the introduction of the first Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, in 2008 there have been many an innumerable amount created. This begs the question, although they are labeled Cryptocurrencies, are they really currencies under the modern definition of Money? This paper will analyze the functions of cryptocurrencies concluding with the idea that currently Cryptocurrencies behave more like a Speculative Asset then an alternative form of money. That is not to say that in the future technologies like blockchain could not be utilized by Central Banks, rather there are to many variables control for at the moment to consider it an alternative to FIAT Currency

Classification of cryptocurrency coins and tokens by the dynamics of their market capitalisations

We empirically verify that the market capitalisations of coins and tokens in the cryptocurrency universe follow power-law distributions with significantly different values, with the tail exponent falling between 0.5 and 0.7 for coins, and between 1.0 and 1.3 for tokens. We provide a rationale for this, based on a simple proportional growth with birth & death model previously employed to describe the size distribution of firms, cities, webpages, etc. We empirically validate the model and its main predictions, in terms of proportional growth (Gibrat's law) of the coins and tokens. Estimating the main parameters of the model, the theoretical predictions for the power-law exponents of coin and token distributions are in remarkable agreement with the empirical estimations, given the simplicity of the model. Our results clearly characterize coins as being "entrenched incumbents" and tokens as an "explosive immature ecosystem", largely due to massive and exuberant Initial Coin Offering activity in the token space. The theory predicts that the exponent for tokens should converge to 1 in the future, reflecting a more reasonable rate of new entrants associated with genuine technological innovations

On the Complexity and Behaviour of Cryptocurrencies Compared to Other Markets

We show that the behaviour of Bitcoin has interesting similarities to stock and precious metal markets, such as gold and silver. We report that whilst Litecoin, the second largest cryptocurrency, closely follows Bitcoin's behaviour, it does not show all the reported properties of Bitcoin. Agreements between apparently disparate complexity measures have been found, and it is shown that statistical, information-theoretic, algorithmic and fractal measures have different but interesting capabilities of clustering families of markets by type. The report is particularly interesting because of the range and novel use of some measures of complexity to characterize price behaviour, because of the IRS designation of Bitcoin as an investment property and not a currency, and the announcement of the Canadian government's own electronic currency MintChip.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 4 table