Sedekah QR (SQR): Charity System in Modern Era

Badan Amil Zakat Nasional (Baznas) has launched a donation system with QR code on Friday, December 22th 2017. Baznas’ Deputy Chief, Arifin Purwakananta said the usage of QR code was the first in alms services. Other than using QR code, Baznas also cooperated with various online multipayment services such as Go-Pay and OVO. Observing such trends, by using research with qualitative and quantitative approach and modifying both Theory of Planned Behavior and Technology Acceptance Models, this research aims to formulate the concept of cashless alms donation payment done by every feasible mosque and to discover society’s interest toward alms donation using QR code. Therefore, there need to be a synergy between Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) as financial transaction supervisor and Dewan Masjid Indonesia (DMI) as the highest position in mosques’ management in Indonesia. This direct collection approach done by this service is expected to increase mosques’ welfare and the communities around mosques so that the equality of welfare to all mosques can happe

Evolving Bitcoin Custody

The broad topic of this thesis is the design and analysis of Bitcoin custody systems. Both the technology and threat landscape are evolving constantly. Therefore, custody systems, defence strategies, and risk models should be adaptive too. We introduce Bitcoin custody by describing the different types, design principles, phases and functions of custody systems. We review the technology stack of these systems and focus on the fundamentals; key-management and privacy. We present a perspective we call the systems view. It is an attempt to capture the full complexity of a custody system, including technology, people, and processes. We review existing custody systems and standards. We explore Bitcoin covenants. This is a mechanism to enforce constraints on transaction sequences. Although previous work has proposed how to construct and apply Bitcoin covenants, these require modifying the consensus rules of Bitcoin, a notoriously difficult task. We introduce the first detailed exposition and security analysis of a deleted-key covenant protocol, which is compatible with current consensus rules. We demonstrate a range of security models for deleted-key covenants which seem practical, in particular, when applied in autonomous (user-controlled) custody systems. We conclude with a comparative analysis with previous proposals. Covenants are often proclaimed to be an important primitive for custody systems, but no complete design has been proposed to validate that claim. To address this, we propose an autonomous custody system called Ajolote which uses deleted-key covenants to enforce a vault sequence. We evaluate Ajolote with; a model of its state dynamics, a privacy analysis, and a risk model. We propose a threat model for custody systems which captures a realistic attacker for a system with offline devices and user-verification. We perform ceremony analysis to construct the risk model.Comment: PhD thesi

A Digital Cash Paradigm with Valued and No-Valued e-Coins

Digital cash is a form of money that is stored digitally. Its main advantage when compared to traditional credit or debit cards is the possibility of carrying out anonymous transactions. Diverse digital cash paradigms have been proposed during the last decades, providing different approaches to avoid the double-spending fraud, or features like divisibility or transferability. This paper presents a new digital cash paradigm that includes the so-called no-valued e-coins, which are e-coins that can be generated free of charge by customers. A vendor receiving a payment cannot distinguish whether the received e-coin is valued or not, but the customer will receive the requested digital item only in the former case. A straightforward application of bogus transactions involving no-valued e-coins is the masking of consumption patterns. This new paradigm has also proven its validity in the scope of privacy-preserving pay-by-phone parking systems, and we believe it can become a very versatile building block in the design of privacy-preserving protocols in other areas of research. This paper provides a formal description of the new paradigm, including the features required for each of its components together with a formal analysis of its security.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant number MTM2017-83271-R

Lavagem de dinheiro e consequências económicas da transição para uma sociedade sem dinheiro

One of the biggest revolutions we are witnessing is in the field of financial transactions, where efforts are being made to bring payments to a completely electronic way. There are many benefits expected from this step, but few are the evidence reported, especially as regards the repercussions on Money Laundering and Economic Growth. In this work, I want to investigate a relationship between the increase in electronic money at the expense of paper money with the trend of money laundering with subsequent overall analysis in economic growth. To compensate for the limited amount of data that can be obtained for a different number of countries, and analysis composed of several different analyzes will be carried out, examining the effects of electronic money on some of the components of money laundering. This ensures the validity of the analysis. It will be seen that the results found will confirm some previous assumptions but will open the way to new issues since if in some ways electronic money is at a disadvantage of money laundering, in other ways, there are new opportunities that open up also for potential criminals.Uma das maiores mudanças que se verifica nos nossos dias é na área das transações financeiras, onde estão a ser feitos esforços para que os pagamentos em dinheiro sejam substituídos completamente por pagamentos através de meios eletrónicos. Há muitos benefícios esperados para essa etapa, mas poucas são as evidências relatadas, principalmente no que diz respeito às repercussões sobre a lavagem de dinheiro e o crescimento económico. Neste trabalho, tem-se como objetivo investigar a relação entre o aumento do dinheiro eletrónico em detrimento da moeda fiduciária e a tendência de lavagem de dinheiro com uma análise geral subsequente do crescimento económico. Para compensar a quantidade limitada de dados que podem ser obtidos para um número diferente de países, será realizada uma análise composta por várias análises diferentes, examinando os efeitos da moeda eletrónica em alguns dos componentes da lavagem de dinheiro, garantindo, assim, a validade da análise. Os resultados obtidos confirmam algumas premissas anteriores, mas abrem caminho para novas questões, pois, se de alguma maneira, o dinheiro eletrónico está em desvantagem na lavagem de dinheiro, de outra forma, há novas oportunidades que também se abrem para potenciais criminosos.Mestrado em Economi

Financial Patenting in Europe

We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). As is the case at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the number of financial patents in Europe has increased significantly in parallel with significant changes in payment and financial systems. Scholars have argued that financial patents, like other business methods patents, have low value and are owned for strategic reasons rather than for protecting real inventions. We find that established firms in non-financial sectors with diversified patent portfolios own a large share of financial patents at the EPO. However, new specialized technology providers in the financial area also hold a number of such patents. Decisions on the financial patent applications take longer and they are more likely to be refused by the patent office, suggesting greater uncertainty over validity than for other patents. They are also more likely to be opposed, which is consistent with the fact that their other economic value indicators are higher.market valuation, intangible assets, patents, software, Europe

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains