While Bitcoin is still the largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization, the Ethereum blockchain maintains the unique ability to tokenize assets and execute smart contracts. These benefits for businesses and investors also come with additional opportunities for cybercriminals, such as when a company simply runs away with the money after tokenizing its assets. … Read More »
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) represents a growing set of financial services that attempt to replicate key functions of the conventional financial system in an open and decentralized way using blockchain technology. This emerging form of capital markets has become economically meaningful; the Federal Reserve estimated the total value of digital contracts locked in DeFi applications exceeded… Read More »
Markets built on public, permissionless blockchains like Ethereum are radically transparent. While pending transactions in traditional finance are considered private information, viewable only by brokers or corporate insiders, transactions submitted to Ethereum’s public mempool—where they wait to be included on the blockchain—are publicly known. This creates profit opportunities and trading strategies that are rarely, if… Read More »
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been in the spotlight for several years now following a trading frenzy and spectacular returns. An NFT is a digital record of ownership, created and stored on a blockchain, and thus tamper-proof and auditable. Blockchains are decentralized ledgers of transactions that are designed to run perpetually, hence providing the basis for… Read More »
Blockchain-based smart contracts have the potential to replace traditional contracts with decentralized contract enforcement in a way that does not involve a third-party intermediary. While smart contracts inherit key advantages from the base-layer blockchain infrastructure, such as decentralization, immutability, and transparency, they are also subject to the same trilemma that blockchains face: scalability, security, and… Read More »
As a new species of cryptographic asset based on blockchain technology, the non-fungible token (NFT) became prominent and attracted attention from academia and practitioners. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which primarily serve as a medium of exchange, NFTs are blockchain-recorded digital assets that can be anything digital, e.g., images, videos, and songs. The NFT market reached its peak… Read More »
This post is a summary of a paper that was selected for inclusion at the inaugural Digital Assets at Duke Conference at Duke University on January 20 and 21. The past year was not a good one for crypto, with Sam Bankman-Fried’s massive fraud through FTX/Alameda, Do Kwon’s failed algorithmic stablecoin experiment (Terra Luna), and… Read More »
Blockchain has been one of the fastest-growing technologies in the last decade. While some of this impressive growth has been organic, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have aided substantially, particularly in the last several years. The recent cryptocurrency report of PricewaterhouseCoopers emphasizes the extent of this contribution by documenting that “(t)he total value of crypto M&A… Read More »
Confront any crypto-enthusiast with statistics regarding the mammoth rise in crimes facilitated by cryptocurrencies, the response will almost always be: What About Fiat? Crimes Committed With Fiat are Far Worse Than Crime With Crypto. This newfangled retort of Whataboutism is a flawed pivot and anemic argument form. Yes, legions of criminals have committed crimes using… Read More »
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