This paper provides background to the upcoming EU regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA). The first step to regulate crypto-assets at EU level was taken by including virtual currencies in the revision of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) which came into force 2018. Initial coin...

Transaction fees in the bitcoin system work differently from those in conventional payment systems due to the design of the bitcoin mining algorithm. In particular, transaction fees and transaction volume in the bitcoin system increase whenever the network is congested, and our VAR results...

We make a distinction between centralized, decentralized, and distributed payment mechanisms. A centralized payment mechanism processes a transaction using a trusted third party. A decentralized payment mechanism processes a transaction between the parties to the transaction. A distributed...

Bitcoin is the most successful cryptocurrency and one of the best types of private money ever. The blockchain technology underlying bitcoin is presented with the spotlight on distributed consensus, allowing for proper understanding of its peculiarities. Notarization and trust anchoring are...

Bitcoin is a relatively new technology with much promise. As the world's first successful cryptocurrency, it seems likely to lower the costs of transacting. Nonetheless, many regulators hold a strong presumption that something must be done. I considered the popular justifications for regulating...

Recent innovations have made it feasible to transfer private digital currency without the intervention of an institution. A digital currency must prevent users from spending their balances more than once, which is easier said than done with purely digital currencies. Current digital currencies...

Inspired by the great thinkers Knut Wicksell, Friedrich Hayek and Eugene Fama, I propose a pure inside credit money that is elastic and responds to demand automatically. Wixles could serve all the functions of money, pay interest, and not be tied to an external currency or commodity

Can Bitcoin remain tamper proof in the long run? We use block-level data from the Bitcoin blockchain to estimate the impact of congestion and the USD price on fee rates. The introduction and adoption of the Segwit protocol allows us to identify an aggregate demand curve for bitcoin transactions....

Employing representative data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, we disprove the hypothesis that cryptocurrency investors are motivated by distrust in fiat currencies or regulated finance. Compared with the general population, investors show no differences in their level of...

In this chapter we discuss the use of blockchain technology for enterprises, including governments. 7.1. Distributed database: what is it and what for? 7.2. Limitation of Bitcoin’s blockchain for enterprise use. 7.3. Consensus for permissioned distributed systems. 7.4. Enterprise blockchain...