Matching Items (17)
Description
Alternative currencies have a long and varied history, in which Bitcoin is the latest chapter. The pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin as an implementation of the concept of a cryptocurrency, or a decentralized currency based on the principles of cryptography. Since its creation in 2008, Bitcoin has had a fairly tumultuous existence that limited its adoption. Wide price fluctuations occurred as the appeal of free money by running a piece of computer software drove people to purchase expensive hardware, and high-profile scandals cast Bitcoin as an unstable currency well-suited primarily for purchasing illicit materials. Consumer confidence in the currency was extremely low, and businesses were extremely hesitant to accept a currency that could easily lose half (or more) of its value overnight. However, recent years have seen the currency begin to stabilize as businesses and mainstream investors have begun to accept and support it. Alternative cryptocurrencies, titled "altcoins," have also been created to fill market niches that Bitcoin was not addressing. Governmental intervention, a concern of many following the currency, has been surprisingly restrained and has actually contributed to its stability. The future of Bitcoin looks very bright as it carries the dream of the alternative currency forward into the 21st century.
ContributorsReardon, Brett (Co-author) / Burke, Ryan (Co-author) / Happel, Stephen (Thesis director) / Boyes, William (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Cryptocurrencies are notorious for its volatility. But with its incredible rise in price, Bitcoin keep being on the top among the trending topics on social media. Although doubts continue to rise with price, Bloomberg even make critics on Bitcoin as ‘the biggest bubble in the history’, some investors still hold strong enthusiasm and confidence towards Bitcoin. As contradicting opinions increase, it is worthy to dive into discussions on social media and use a scientific method to evaluate public’s non-negligible role in crypto price fluctuation.
Sentiment analysis, which is a notably method in text mining, can be used to extract the sentiment from people’s opinion. It then provides us with valuable perception on a topic from the public’s attitude, which create more opportunities for deeper analysis and prediction.
The thesis aims to investigate public’s sentiment towards Bitcoin through analyzing 10 million Bitcoin related tweets and assigning sentiment points on tweets, then using sentiment fluctuation as a factor to predict future crypto fluctuation. Price prediction is achieved by using a machine learning model called Recurrent Neural Network which automatically learns the pattern and generate following results with memory. The analysis revels slight connection between sentiment and crypto currency and the Neural Network model showed a strong connection between sentiment score and future price prediction.
Sentiment analysis, which is a notably method in text mining, can be used to extract the sentiment from people’s opinion. It then provides us with valuable perception on a topic from the public’s attitude, which create more opportunities for deeper analysis and prediction.
The thesis aims to investigate public’s sentiment towards Bitcoin through analyzing 10 million Bitcoin related tweets and assigning sentiment points on tweets, then using sentiment fluctuation as a factor to predict future crypto fluctuation. Price prediction is achieved by using a machine learning model called Recurrent Neural Network which automatically learns the pattern and generate following results with memory. The analysis revels slight connection between sentiment and crypto currency and the Neural Network model showed a strong connection between sentiment score and future price prediction.
ContributorsZhu, Xiaoyu (Author) / Benjamin, Victor (Thesis director) / Qinglai, He (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Third-party mixers are used to heighten the anonymity of Bitcoin users. The mixing techniques implemented by these tools are often untraceable on the blockchain, making them appealing to money launderers. This research aims to analyze mixers currently available on the deep web. In addition, an in-depth case study is done on an open-source bitcoin mixer known as Penguin Mixer. A local version of Penguin Mixer was used to visualize mixer behavior under specific scenarios. This study could lead to the identification of vulnerabilities in mixing tools and detection of these tools on the blockchain.
ContributorsPakki, Jaswant (Author) / Doupe, Adam (Thesis director) / Shoshitaishvili, Yan (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the history of the Bitcoin arbitrage premium to see if the possibility of 'risk-free' gains existed previously and whether or not the opportunity is still present today. It investigates market structure and price discrepancies in $147B of trading volume across 53 different exchanges between July 2010 and February 2017. This paper aggregates exchange trading into five minute buckets of transaction volume in order to see what exchange volume could have been successfully arbitraged within the context of two cases. The first requires trades to close within the same 5-minute interval and the second requires a 10-minute delay before the position is closed. It finds that the monthly average spreads of these cases have fallen below 3% in 2017 from nearly 10% in 2010. Once exchange fees are included, these spreads fall below 2% on average.
ContributorsNowicki, Gregory Arthur (Author) / Wahal, Sunil (Thesis director) / Simonson, Mark (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Bitcoin is a form of virtual currency that can be used as a medium of exchange for goods or services. Different from other forms of virtual payment, bitcoin is de-centralized and puts all of the power in the hands of the user, rather than a banking institution. However, bitcoin's ability to develop as a renowned medium of exchange has been impeded, potentially due to a lack of knowledge, active bitcoin platforms, and support. In this paper, I conduct a survey to understand factors that affect households' adoption of bitcoin. In particular, I focus on factors that capture the potential benefit and cost of adopting bitcoin. Through a public survey, participants are asked a series of questions on their willingness to adopt bitcoin. I found significant results stating that subjects were more inclined toward bitcoin contingent upon the number of platforms accepting it, the number of acquaintances using bitcoin, and the degree of personal knowledge participants have about bitcoin. These findings suggest that perceived benefit captured by network effect and convenience of use, as well as the potential cost captured by uncertainty help shape the adoption of bitcoin.
ContributorsMorrissey, Michael Joshua (Author) / Wang, Jessie (Thesis director) / Ray, Colter (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The success of Bitcoin has generated significant interest in the financial community to understand whether the technological underpinnings of the cryptocurrency paradigm can be leveraged to improve the efficiency of financial processes in the existing infrastructure. Various alternative proposals, most notably, Ripple and Ethereum, aim to provide solutions to the financial community in different ways. These proposals derive their security guarantees from either the computational hardness of proof-of-work or voting based distributed consensus mechanism, both of which can be computationally expensive. Furthermore, the financial audit requirements for a participating financial institutions have not been suitably addressed.
This thesis presents a novel approach of constructing a non-consensus based decentralized financial transaction processing model with a built-in efficient audit structure. The problem of decentralized inter-bank payment processing is used for the model design. The two key insights used in this work are (1) to utilize a majority signature based replicated storage protocol for transaction authorization, and (2) to construct individual self-verifiable audit trails for each node as opposed to a common Blockchain. Theoretical analysis shows that the model provides cryptographic security for transaction processing and the presented audit structure facilitates financial auditing of individual nodes in time independent of the number of transactions.
This thesis presents a novel approach of constructing a non-consensus based decentralized financial transaction processing model with a built-in efficient audit structure. The problem of decentralized inter-bank payment processing is used for the model design. The two key insights used in this work are (1) to utilize a majority signature based replicated storage protocol for transaction authorization, and (2) to construct individual self-verifiable audit trails for each node as opposed to a common Blockchain. Theoretical analysis shows that the model provides cryptographic security for transaction processing and the presented audit structure facilitates financial auditing of individual nodes in time independent of the number of transactions.
ContributorsGupta, Saurabh (Author) / Bazzi, Rida (Thesis advisor) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member) / Herlihy, Maurice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This report is a summary of a long-term project completed by Ido Gilboa for his Honors Thesis. The purpose of this project is to determine if an arbitrage between different crypto-currency exchanges exists, and if it is possible to acts upon such triangular arbitrage. Bitcoin, the specific crypto-currency this report focuses on, has become a household name, yet most do not understand its origin and patterns. The report will detail the process of collecting data from different sources, manipulating it in order to run the algorithms, explain the meaning behind the algorithms, results and important statistics found, and conclusion of the project. In addition to that, the report will go into detail discussing financial terms such as triangular arbitrage as well as information system concepts such as sockets and server communication. The project was completed with the assistance of Dr. Sunil Wahal and Dr. Daniel Mazzola, professors in the W.P. Carey School of business. This project has been stretched over along period of time, spanning from early 2013 to fall of 2015.
ContributorsGilboa, Ido (Author) / Wahal, Sunil (Thesis director) / Mazzola, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
In recent years, cryptocurrency has become an increasingly popular new alternative investment
among retail traders. Additionally, this attention has grown beyond retail traders and now presents itself as a prominent conversation among media, institutions, and academia. The purpose of this project is to explore the unappreciated aspect of cryptocurrency use such that it is capable of functioning in the foreign exchange markets (FOREX or FX markets). The inherent idea behind cryptocurrency is that it is accessible worldwide, protected, and verifiable via blockchain, holding the same monetary value regardless of location and minimizing the cost of cross-border payments by eliminating financial intermediaries in the traditional FOREX currency markets. Moreover, the goal of cryptocurrency intends to operate at faster rates than current traditional finance intermediaries. The article incorporates frequently debated aspects of cryptocurrency to identify the advantages and limitations of both cryptocurrency and traditional monetary systems. Thus, this research reveals the necessary fundamentals needed in cryptocurrency for the evolution in traditional financial structures and for widespread adoption to occur.
ContributorsKrygier, Jakob (Author) / Van Orden, Joseph (Thesis director) / Hill, John (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
This thesis addresses the widespread questions asked of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies - decentralized ledgers of peer to peer transactions – have taken the world by storm, with Bitcoin leading the way by means of being the original, most valuable, and most popular. Despite this widespread use, skepticism remains as to what Bitcoin is and whether it counts as money. I first defend the framework that I use for understanding Social Objects, Searle’s X counts as Y in C formula, as money is undoubtedly a social object. I then argue that Smit et al.’s account of money, while useful, mistakenly identifies an essential characteristic of money, the relative ratio scale, as a feature. I therefore present an alternative account of money. I then explain why the most commonly held account of Bitcoin, the chain Definition fails, and why Bitcoin being a fictional substance is not a problem for Bitcoin being money. I then demonstrate Bitcoin’s compatibility with my alternative account, and from this conclude that Bitcoin is Money.
ContributorsRistic, Nikola (Author) / McElhoes, David (Thesis director) / Botham, Thad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description基于人类加密学，第一例加密数字货币“比特币”的概念最初由中本聪在2008年11月1日提出，于2009年1月3日正式诞生。经过14年的历程，整个加密货币世界得到了快速的发展、加密生态得到了极大的繁荣、有利的推动了整个人类数字文明的衍进和发展。截至2021年5月，加密货币总市值达到2.4万亿美元的峰值，加密数字货币的数量已经近6000种。单只市值超过10亿美元的数字货币有77个，单只市值超过100万美元的数字货币有1600个。虽然对加密货币究竟应该定义为商品还是证券仍存在巨大争议，但毫无疑问的是加密货币已经成为瞩目且不可忽视的一类投资性资产。
本论文试图从金融资产分析框架和行为金融学角度出发，探究比特币和以太币这两只最具有代表性的数字货币的价格影响因素。本论文分别从宏观和微观两个维度探究两个维度下的因素对价格波动的影响。从宏观视角出发探究问题一：通缩发行机制、联储货币政策、以及中美监管政策对比特币及以太币价格的影响。从微观视角出发探究问题二：加密货币的应用、市场行为金融的视角看其比特币及以太币价格波动的影响。
本论文通过应用定性和定量相结合的研究分析方法，运用一系列时间序列回归模型、相关性分析、区间统计分析、经典行为金融学动能效应模型等工具对上述两个维度的问题进行深度研究和论证，发现各个角度中所涵盖的因素对以比特币和以太币为代表的数字货币价格的影响，同时涵盖了影响的方向和影响的层度，并构建多因素定价模型。
ContributorsLiu, Hongjie (Author) / Zhang, Zhongju (Thesis advisor) / Hu, Jie (Thesis advisor) / Zheng, Zhiqiang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023