Related papers: Bitcoin and Beyond: Exclusively Informational Moni…
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system proposed by Nakamoto in 2008. Based on the Nakamoto consensus, Bagaria, Kannan, Tse, Fanti, and Viswanath proposed the Prism protocol in 2018 and showed that it achieves near-optimal blockchain…
We review different classes of cryptocurrencies with emphasis on their economic properties. Pure-asset coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple are characterized by not being a liability of any economic agent and most resemble commodities…
Numerous electronic cash schemes have been proposed over the years - however none have been embraced by financial institutions as an alternative to fiat currency. David Chaum's ecash scheme was the closest to something that mimicked a…
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that relies on cryptography rather than trusted third parties such as central banks for its security. Underpinning the operation of the currency is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network that facilitates…
Bitcoin is a "crypto currency", a decentralized electronic payment scheme based on cryptography. Bitcoin economy grows at an incredibly fast rate and is now worth some 10 billions of dollars. Bitcoin mining is an activity which consists of…
Designed to compete with fiat currencies, bitcoin proposes it is a crypto-currency alternative. Bitcoin makes a number of false claims, including: solving the double-spending problem is a good thing; bitcoin can be a reserve currency for…
Modern societies have adopted government-issued fiat currencies many of which exist today mainly in the form of digits in credit and bank accounts. Fiat currencies are controlled by central banks for economic stimulation and stabilization.…
There are different interpretations of the terms "tokens" and "token-based systems" in the literature around blockchain and digital currencies although the distinction between token-based and account-based systems is well entrenched in…
Two taxonomies of money that include cryptocurrencies are analyzed. A definition of the term cryptocurrency is given and a taxonomy of them is presented, based on how its price is fixed. The characteristics of the use of current fiat money…
Bitcoin is a digital currency which relies on a distributed set of miners to mint coins and on a peer-to-peer network to broadcast transactions. The identities of Bitcoin users are hidden behind pseudonyms (public keys) which are…
Digital payment schemes show an ever increasing importance. Out of the countless different schemes available this article focuses on the popular Bitcoin system. The authors provide a description of Bitcoin's unique technological basis and…
A peer-to-peer network, enabling different parties to jointly store and run computations on data while keeping the data completely private. Enigma's computational model is based on a highly optimized version of secure multi-party…
Bitcoin is a decentralized crypto-currency, and an accompanying protocol, created in 2008. Bitcoin nodes continuously generate and propagate blocks---collections of newly approved transactions that are added to Bitcoin's ledger. Block…
A key challenge for Bitcoin cryptocurrency holders, such as startups using ICOs to raise funding, is managing their FX risk. Specifically, a misinformed decision to convert Bitcoin to fiat currency could, by itself, cost USD millions. In…
Modern technology has brought novel types of wealth. In contrast to hard cashes, digital currencies do not have a physical form. They exist in electronic forms only. Yet, it has not been clear what impacts their ongoing growth will make, if…
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptographic currency system. Since its introduction in 2008, Bitcoin has gained noticeable popularity, mostly due to its following properties: (1) the transaction fees are very low, and (2) it is not controlled…
We revisit the fundamental question of Bitcoin's security against double spending attacks. While previous work has bounded the probability that a transaction is reversed, we show that no such guarantee can be effectively given if the…
Bitcoin mining presents a significant economic incentive for efficient hashing and broadcast of data, both parameters stemming from the Proofs of Work used to advance the network. This incentive has led to the development of Bitcoin…
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom…
Bitcoin is a digital currency and payment system based on classical cryptographic technologies which works without a central administrator such as in traditional currencies. It has long been questioned what the impact of quantum computing…