Related papers: The Unreasonable Fundamental Incertitudes Behind B…
Bitcoin demonstrated the possibility of a financial ledger that operates without the need for a trusted central authority. However, concerns persist regarding its security and considerable energy consumption. We assess the consensus…
Cryptocurrencies have recently been in the spotlight of public debate due to their embrace by the new US President, with crypto fans expecting a 'bull run'. The global cryptocurrency market capitalisation is more than \$3.50 trillion, with…
Does the proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of supporting decentralized cryptocurrency mining? To address this question, we develop a game-theoretical model where miners first invest in hardware to improve the efficiency 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…
Blockchain is rapidly emerging as an important class of network application, with a unique set of trust, security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants record and update the `server-side' state of an application…
Abrupt changes in the miner hash rate applied to a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain can adversely affect user experience and security. Because different PoW blockchains often share hashing algorithms, miners face a complex choice in deciding…
Blockchain systems often employ proof-of-work consensus protocols to validate and add transactions into hashchains. These protocols stimulate competition among miners in solving cryptopuzzles (e.g. SHA-256 hash computation in Bitcoin) in…
In January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto gave rise to the "Bitcoin Block Chain" creating the first block of the chain hashing on his computers central processing unit (CPU). Since then, the hash calculations to mine Bitcoin have been getting…
The Bitcoin payment system involves two agent types: Users that transact with the currency and pay fees and miners in charge of authorizing transactions and securing the system in return for these fees. Two of Bitcoin's challenges are (i)…
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that serves as an alternative to existing transaction systems based on an external central authority for security. Although Bitcoin has many desirable properties, one of its fundamental…
The security of most existing cryptocurrencies is based on a concept called Proof-of-Work, in which users must solve a computationally hard cryptopuzzle to authorize transactions (`one unit of computation, one vote'). This leads to enormous…
Cryptocurrencies have garnered a lot of attention by governments and internet enthusiasts over the past three years. These currencies are celebrated for their security and speedy transactions in a modern era of digital commerce. Bitcoin was…
Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized global digital cash system. Its mining process requires intense computational resources, therefore its usefulness remains a disputable topic. We aim to solve three problems with Bitcoin and…
Bitcoin uses blockchain technology to maintain transactions order and provides probabilistic guarantee to prevent double-spending, assuming that an attacker's computational power does not exceed %50 of the network power. In this paper, we…
Since Bitcoin's inception in 2008, it has became attractive investments for both trading and mining. To mine Bitcoins, a miner has to invest in computing power and pay for electricity to solve cryptographic puzzles for rewards, if it…
Our aim is to determine conditions for quantum computing technology to give rise to security risks associated with quantum Bitcoin mining. Specifically, we determine the speed and energy efficiency a quantum computer needs to offer an…
Grover's algorithm confers on quantum computers a quadratic advantage over classical computers for searching in an arbitrary data set, a scenario that describes Bitcoin mining. It has previously been argued that the only side-effect of…
Miners play a key role in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin: they invest substantial computational resources in processing transactions and minting new currency units. It is well known that an attacker controlling more than half of the…
Proof-of-work computation used in cryptocurrencies has witnessed significant growth in the U.S. and many other regions around the world. One of the most significant bottlenecks for the scalable deployment of such computation is its energy…
We study the fundamental differences that separate: Litecoin; Bitcoin Gold; Bitcoin Cash; Ethereum; and Zcash from Bitcoin, and draw analysis to how these features are appreciated by the market, to ultimately make an inference as to how…