Related papers: FTX Collapse: A Ponzi Story
This paper investigates the causes of the FTX digital currency exchange's failure in November 2022. We identify the collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystem as the pivotal event that triggered a significant decrease in the exchange's liquidity.…
This paper investigates the cryptocurrency network of the FTX exchange during the collapse of its native token, FTT, to understand how network structures adapt to significant financial disruptions, by exploiting vertex centrality measures.…
Trust mechanisms diverge between centralized and decentralized exchanges, representing distinct sociotechnical governance paradigms. However, quantifying trust dynamics and their redistribution between these architectures remains…
The Ethereum blockchain plays a central role in the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem, enabling a wide range of financial activity through the use of smart contracts. This paper investigates how individual Ethereum wallets responded to the…
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) took shape in 2020. An unprecedented amount of over 14 billion USD moved into DeFi projects offering trading, loans and insurance. But its growth has also drawn the attention of malicious actors. Many projects…
Within just four years, the blockchain-based Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem has accumulated a peak total value locked (TVL) of more than 253 billion USD. This surge in DeFi's popularity has, unfortunately, been accompanied by many…
On February 2014, $650.000.000 worth of Bitcoins disappeared. Currently it is unclear whether hackers or MtGox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, are to be blamed. In either case, the anonymous and unregulated nature of the Bitcoin system makes…
In May 2022, an apparent speculative attack, followed by market panic, led to the precipitous downfall of UST, one of the most popular stablecoins at that time. However, UST is not the only stablecoin to have been depegged in the past.…
We analyze the token transfer network on Ethereum, focusing on accounts associated with Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm implicated in the misuse of FTX customer funds. Using a multi-token network representation, we examine…
Cybercriminals exploit cryptocurrencies to carry out illicit activities. In this paper, we focus on Ponzi schemes that operate on Bitcoin and perform an in-depth analysis of MMM, one of the oldest and most popular Ponzi schemes. Based on…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) in Ethereum is a financial ecosystem built on the blockchain that has locked over 200 billion USD until April 2022. All transaction information is transparent and open when transacting through the DeFi protocol,…
DEX, or decentralized exchange, is a prominent class of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on blockchains, attracting a total locked value worth tens of billions of USD today. This paper presents the first large-scale empirical study…
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008, caused by the accumulation of excessive financial risk, inspired Satoshi Nakamoto to create Bitcoin. Now, more than ten years later, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a peer-to-peer financial paradigm which…
The trustless nature of permissionless blockchains renders overcollateralization a key safety component relied upon by decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. Nonetheless, factors such as price volatility may undermine this mechanism. In…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been the target of numerous profit-driven crimes, but the prevalence and cumulative impact of these crimes have not yet been assessed. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of profit-driven crimes…
Algorithmic trading is well studied in traditional financial markets. However, it has received less attention in centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) attributed the $2010$ flash crash, one of…
Blockchains, and specifically smart contracts, have promised to create fair and transparent trading ecosystems. Unfortunately, we show that this promise has not been met. We document and quantify the widespread and rising deployment of…
Decentralized finance (DeFi) lacks centralized oversight, often resulting in heightened volatility. In contrast, centralized finance (CeFi) offers a more stable environment with institutional safeguards. Institutional backing can play a…
In Bitcoin, transaction malleability describes the fact that the signatures that prove the ownership of bitcoins being transferred in a transaction do not provide any integrity guarantee for the signatures themselves. This allows an…
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a nascent set of financial services, using tokens, smart contracts, and blockchain technology as financial instruments. We investigate four possible drivers of DeFi returns: exposure to cryptocurrency market,…