Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain. Relevance and risks for companies in the age of digitization

Structure

List of figures

List of tables

List of abbreviations

1 Introduction
1.1 Problem description
1.2 Course of investigation

2 Basics and theoretical foundations
2.1 Fundamentals of Blockchain
2.1.1 Transactions and its particularities in terms of blockchain
2.1.2 How blockchain works
2.2 Blockchain applications
2.2.1 Basic blockchain applications
2.2.2 Practical relevance of blockchain

3 Impacts of blockchain to the banking industry

4 Implications with reference to corporate finance
4.1 General terminology of corporate finance
4.2 Blockchain-based financing as addition to traditional sources
4.2.1 Bank loans as a sample of debt financing
4.2.2 Initial Public Offering as a sample of equity financing
4.2.3 Peer-to-Peer-Lending as a counterpart to bank loans
4.2.4 Initial Coin Offering as a counterpart to an Initial Public Offering
4.3 Risks of dealing with cryptocurrencies

5 Critical review and deduction

6 Conclusion and outlook

Bibliography

List of figures

Figure 1: Types of networks

Figure 2: Process of cryptography

Figure 3: Symmetric cryptography

Figure 4: Asymmetric cryptography

Figure 5: How the blockchain works

Figure 6: Smart contracts in terms of blockchain

Figure 7: Smart contracts in the insurance business

Figure 8: Vision of Everledger

Figure 9: Invoicing via blockchain

Figure 10: Overview of financial sources

Figure 11: P2P lending process based on Ethereum

List of tables

Table 1: Comparison of traditional banking business, Fintech 1.0 and Fintech 2.0

List of abbreviations

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

1 Introduction

The progress of change in society through digitization, globalization and the rapid de- velopment of technology prompts new and innovative opportunities for companies across the world. Over the past few years, nearly everything is based on smart devices that are able to communicate among themselves. As a result, new technologies have arisen, been published and are able to be used by people around the world. One of the recently-released and most popular topics is blockchain. This term earned its attention through its innovative and unpresented form of technology and has motivated several parties to learn more about this issue, examine it more closely and develop it further. Particularly the range of potential applicability makes it interesting for companies to analyse possibilities for implementation with respect to their own business.

In addition, blockchain is related to another term that has arisen along with this technol- ogy, namely cryptocurrency. Especially Bitcoin is the forefather in the world of digital currencies. Over the past few years, Bitcoin has skyrocketed in popularity and value since its founding in 2009.¹ Consequently, this digital currency has gained the attention of many people who are trying to predict the commercial development and future per- formance in the world’s economy. There are many pros and cons and some powerful businessmen have published their own opinions based upon the respective commercial interests. For example, Jamie Dimon – CEO of JP Morgan Chase – stated that Bitcoin is a fraud and that it will have no future due to its intangibility and its emergence out of nothing. It is understandable that the CEO of one of the largest financial institutes clas- sify cryptocurrencies as a counterparty to the banking business.² By contrast, John McAfee challenged the statement of Jamie Dimon and compared the costs of Bitcoin mining with printing money. He said: “I'm a Bitcoin miner. We create Bitcoins. It costs over $1,000 per coin to create a Bitcoin. What does it cost to create a U.S. dollar? Which one is the fraud? Because it costs whatever the paper costs, but it costs me and other miners over $1,000 per coin. It's called proof of work.”³

1.1 Problem description

Taking a step back, the ubiquitous digitization can be stated as the baseline for compa- nies to research potential implementable innovations to digitalize their processes. In this context, the term Industry 4.0 often appears. It implies a complex technical revolution that has led to an entire redesign of the industrial value chains. Ultimately, this involves a paradigm shift, namely the combination of virtual and real production chains in the form of a cyber physical system or the "Internet of Things".⁴ “Digital firms leverage technologies such as mobile, social and cloud to make better decisions, automate pro- cesses, deepen their connection with customers, employees and intermediaries, and pur- sue profitable innovation, all at a rapid development pace. Furthermore, the most suc- cessful digital firms across all industries are distinguished by the degree to which digital is integrated at all levels and functions of the enterprise. Digital informs everything from strategy and organizational structure to day-to-day operations and workplace cul- ture.”⁵ For this reason, this thesis analyses blockchain and describes opportunities in relation to companies’ processes.

Besides the already-mentioned blockchain technology, the central question in this study is based in the field of cryptocurrencies. Essentially, currencies are the specific financial unit of a state, e.g. Dollar for the US or Yen for Japan.⁶ Given that cryptocurrencies are based on a decentralized peer-to-peer network (P2P), it can be measured as an interna- tional currency without a representing country.⁷ Especially for companies, it might be interesting to use digital currencies in the context of corporate finance.

As a result, the object of investigation in this study is the following question:

“Is it possible to use cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument in the context of corporate finance?”

1.2 Course of investigation

Quantitative and Qualitative research

Research methods can be distinguished into two main terms, namely quantitative and qualitative research.⁸ The main objectives of qualitative and quantitative research are essentially data reduction to select the significant data out of a large amount of data. In addition, both methods imply research questions that ultimately have to be answered.⁹ Nevertheless, both research methods differ from each other in several aspects. Quantita- tive research is an explanation of phenomena that are analyzed by using numbers and statistically-based methods. As a result, quantitative methods are empirical investiga- tions of phenomena that can be observed.¹⁰

Qualitative research tends to be concerned with words rather than numbers. Bryman and Bell name the researcher as the “main instrument of data collection” who decides what he/she will focus on within the research.¹¹ Qualitative research has no theory or para- digm that is distinctly its own and it is used in many separate disciplines, rather than belonging to a single discipline.¹² Moreover, it is a combination of multiple qualitative research methods; for example, participant observation, interviewing, focus groups, conversation analysis, texts and documents.¹³

In this thesis, a qualitative research approach is chosen, which allows a holistic view of the object of investigation and enables a general understanding of relevance and risks concerning blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Essentially, there are two major approaches to analyzing qualitative data. On the one hand, there is the strategy of reducing large sets of data or the complexity in the data. The most common methodological step is to code the data. On the other hand, there is the most prominent way called content analysis. This strategy aims rather at expanding the material by producing one or more interpretations.¹⁴ To answer the research ques- tion in this study, content analysis is utilized.

Deductive and inductive approach

In general, there are two fundamental approaches for the generation of scientific state- ments, namely deduction and induction.

Deductive theory is the most common view of the relation between theory and research. The researcher must skillfully deduce a hypothesis and translate it into operational terms. Hence, there is a need to specify how data can be collected in relation to the con- cepts that make up the hypothesis. By contrast, an inductive approach includes state- ments regarding experiments or observations that are referred to general hypothesis and theories. The researcher infers the implications of his/her findings for the theory that prompted the whole exercise. The findings are fed back into the stock of theory and the research findings are associated with a certain domain of enquiry.¹⁵

The methodological approach adopted in this study is the deductive approach. This the- sis aims to investigate a hypothesis with reference to qualitative research. Moreover, the relevant literature is based upon secondary data, which has been initially produced by others for other research questions and not for the topic named in this thesis.¹⁶

The first part of this study deals with the terms blockchain and cryptocurrencies and it enables a basic understanding of how these technologies are working and what are the core benefits or even disadvantages with references to the world’s economy. In addi- tion, current projects in the field of blockchain will be introduced and recent develop- ments of possible forms of implementation in company’s processes will be more closely illuminated. The second part refers to corporate finance, whereby the fundamental char- acteristics and circumstances will be illuminated. Furthermore, Bitcoin will be investi- gated to declare the major differences and similarities in the context of corporate fi- nance.

Subsequently, the core findings and results are valuated, whose explanation forms the baseline for answering the research question. Finally, the outlook for future develop- ments in this technological area forms the conclusion of this study.

2 Basics and theoretical foundations

In this chapter, the meaning of blockchain is explained based on technological charac- teristics and the current state of the art. Possibilities of implementations for companies are emphasized and practical examples of successful applied processes based on this new technology show the advantage of future attention in this area. Additionally, the uniqueness of cryptocurrencies is explained and will be compared to usual currencies.

2.1 Fundamentals of Blockchain

Essentially, this section explains the technical concepts that make up blockchain and examples of business-relevant applications, as well as bridging the gap between a tech- nical and practical explanation.

The blockchain first emerged – largely unheralded – in 2009. Indeed, attention was di- rected towards the application based on the existence of which blockchain technology was made possible. The focal application and the first to run on this technology was the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.¹⁷ However, this study switches the focus and will introduce the technology of blockchain first.

Simply put, a blockchain is a ledger of transactions of digital assets: of who owns what, who transacts what, of what is transacted and when.¹⁸ From a more technical perspec- tive, “a blockchain is a distributed, transactional database. Globally distributed nodes are linked by a peer-to-peer (P2P) communication network with its own layer of proto- col messages for node communication and peer discovery.”¹⁹ P2P networks can be ex- plained as a network with equal parties (peers) that are connected without any central- ized intermediaries or regulatory entities.²⁰ P2P networks can be stated as a special type of distributed systems. They comprise individual computers (called nodes) that make their computational resources (e.g. processing power, storage capacity, data or network band-width) directly available to all other parties of the network without having any central point of coordination.²¹ In other words, it is a distributed database that runs on millions and millions of computers as a giant and global spreadsheet.

Distinction between different types of networks

In order to make the uniqueness of the technology of blockchain more tangible, it is necessary to understand the differences between centralized, decentralized and distrib- uted networks.

In a centralized network (Fig. 1a), all resources of the computing system, information and variables are stored on a central computer hardware (server). Computers (nodes) need to be connected to the central computer to access these computing resources whenever they need it. The control of the nodes is carried out centrally from the central computer. Therefore, it is guaranteed that every application runs on every single node in the same way.²² “Although this model gives a little bit more control in terms of admin- istration, it has been criticized as not being transparent, stringent and unexclusive. Moreover, centralized servers are high risk data breach targets as attackers not only ex- pect to get all the information they need by hacking into a single node, but it is also time and cost effective from an attacker’s perspective. It is simply less time to breach a sin- gle node than it is to write exploit for more than one node.”²³

In comparison to centralized computing systems, decentralized or distributed computing systems exploit a set of autonomous computers. Computers in the network have to co- ordinate the required tasks autonomously due to the absence of a central node. Conse- quently, every node in a decentralized computing system must be able to make its own decisions. They can be based on their own information, interactions with or information from other nodes.²⁴ “The major difference between distributed (Fig. 1c) and decentral- ized (Fig. 1b) computing is in the manner of task distribution. The tasks are split up between nodes in a distributed network and all nodes are up-to-date with the current state of all other nodes. However, in decentralized computing, the resources are split up between nodes and each node queries for a resource and finds respective node on which needed resource exist.”²⁵ A suitable example in the area of decentralized systems is the telephone network or the already-described P2P networks. Based upon the connection of two or more partic pants, there is no central computer necessary to share the infor- mation between the participants.²⁶

Figure 1: Types of networks

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 63.

Overall, centralized, decentralized and distributed networks are all networking frame- works that work effectively in various business or industrial sectors. The distributed structure of the blockchain network enables an independent exchange of information between nodes where one node does not depend on other nodes for information re- quired. All nodes only have to ensure that they are up to date by synchronizing with all other participants. Resources and computing power are not shared but are independently distributed across all nodes.²⁷ Given that participants in the distributed network are equal concerning their rights and roles in the system, they can identify each other by their IP address and users reference each other via their public key.²⁸ However, it should be noted that there is a difference between nodes and users.

2.1.1 Transactions and its particularities in terms of blockchain

In order to explain the particularities of transactions, first and foremost the following facts can be seen as already derivate. First, the blockchain can be stated as a distributed P2P system made of the computational resources contributed by its users. Second, the P2P system uses the internet as a network for connecting the individual nodes.²⁹

As already described in the previous section, blockchain is the ledger of transactions and forms the baseline of the authentication and verification technology for transac- tions.³⁰ Transactions are linked with the terms private key and public key, which can be associated with the users. Therefore, a distinction between users and nodes is necessary. “A node is a physical/virtual machine that communicates via TCP/IP and UDP with other nodes. [Simply put, a computer.] In contrast, a user is only represented by a public key address and could theoretically login from any other node. This is possible as each of the nodes maintains a database of all historical, valid transactions that have been sent between the nodes of the network.”³¹

Private key vs. public key

Blockchain uses cryptography as a base technology for uniquely identifying users with- in the blockchain and protecting their property. It is the ultimate goal to ensure that only the lawful owner can access to his/her property.³²

The idea is to treat the accounts of users like mailboxes. In the context of transactions, whenever a member of the network decides to send funds, they would follow a proce- dure similar to signing a check, except here the signing is done by using public and pri- vate keys. A public key can be compared with an email address.³³ “This concept has been used for a very long time and we still use a similar concept when we send an e- mail to an e-mail address, when we send a message in the latest chat app, or when we transfer money to a bank account. In all these cases, the security concept is based on a separation of two kinds of information: first, publicly known information that serves as an address to a trapdoor-like box; and second, private information that serves as the key for opening the box and accessing the things it contains.”³⁴ A user would share the pub- lic key with others to send or receive emails or money in the context of transactions. To sign the transaction, the private key is necessary. It can be compared with the password to an email account and the digital signature is similar to signing a check when the user is making a transfer.³⁵

Given that blockchain is a P2P system and it provides an open decentralized database of any transaction involving value, such as money, goods, property, work or even votes, it is not desirable for everyone to access the property assigned to the accounts managed by the blockchain. Thus, the challenge is to protect the property assigned to the account without restricting the open architecture of the system. At this point, the term cryptog- raphy gains relevance.³⁶

Terminology of cryptography

In order to enable a general understanding of the uniqueness of transactions processed within the distributed system, it is necessary to explain the different terms of cryptog- raphy from a more technical perspective.

Essentially, cryptography has a long history of protecting secrets and messages that can be traced back thousands of years. Modern cryptography has come a long way from its origins, although the principle is similar: it is about encrypting the original message by replacing letters and numbers so that the original message cannot be read unless the targeted person has the code or method to decrypt it.³⁷

Simply put, the digital equivalent to close a lock is encryption, whereas the digital equivalent to open a lock is decryption. In terms of blockchain, encrypted data is called cypher text. It is an extensive, incomprehensive pile of letters and figures to everyone who does not know how to decrypt this combination. In comparison to encrypted cy- pher text, decrypted cypher text contains the original data that has been encrypted.³⁸

Figure 2: Process of cryptography

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 95.

There are two different types of cryptography, namely symmetric and asymmetric cryp- tography.

The symmetric approach can be practically explained as a safe with a strong lock, where the message is stored inside. The sender and the receiver must have the same key to put the message in the safe and open the safe to read the message.³⁹ “Hence, everyone who was able to encrypt data with such a key, was automatically able to decrypt cypher text created with that key as well.”⁴⁰

Figure 3: Symmetric cryptography

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 95.

As a result, many keys must be generated and distributed via secure channels. Neverthe- less, there is no protection against cheating among individuals.⁴¹ Consequently, the idea of asymmetric cryptography already emerged in the 1970s to solve the key exchange and trust problem.⁴²

In order to solve the illustrated problems of the symmetric approach, asymmetric cryp- tography uses two complementary keys. Together, they build the pair of corresponding keys.⁴³ The idea was to replace the single shared secret key with a pair of mathematical- ly-related keys. This refers to the already-mentioned public key, which can be shared without any safety issues, and the private key, which must be kept secret.⁴⁴ The core characteristic of this approach is that it is not necessary for the key of the sender to en- crypt the message. The key indicator for decrypting the message is that the receiver is in possession of the corresponding private key to generate the original message that has been sent. It can be stated that the whole key has two parts: a public part and a private part.⁴⁵ Essentially, it does not matter whether the private key has been used to encrypt the message or the public key; rather, it is possible through the previously-described approach or vice versa. However, it is necessary that both parties (sender and receiver) have access to one of the keys; otherwise, an isolated key can only be used for encryp- tion or decryption.⁴⁶ In a figurative sense, the problem of trustworthiness is solved given that any message (or transaction) is uniquely identifiable.⁴⁷ These facts are illustrated after the following figure, which initially describes the mentioned facts under consider- ing of the public key in black color and the private key in white color.

Figure 4: Asymmetric cryptography

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 97.

The figure above demonstrates that there are two approaches used within the blockchain technology. Asymmetric cryptography is applied in the public-to-private approach and consequently “by using the keys in this way, the information flows from the public key, where it is encrypted, to the private key, where it is decrypted. This usage of the two complementary keys is similar to a mailbox, where everyone can put letters in but only the owner can open it. It is the straightforward usage of asymmetric cryptography be- cause it fits our intuition about privacy and publicity in the same way as our address and our mailbox is public but its content is private.”⁴⁸ In addition, asymmetric cryptography is also applied in the private-to-public approach. By using this method, the private key is used for encrypting the message and the public key is necessary to decrypt the mes- sage. It is comparable to a public news board, where everyone who has a copy of the corresponding public key can read the message, but only the owner of the private key can create the message. Consequently, the cypher text created with the private key serves as proof that the owner encrypted the message.⁴⁹

For this reason, asymmetric cryptography aims to achieve two goals in the context of blockchain. First, identifying user accounts to maintain the mapping between owner and property by using the public key of users involved in transactions as the account num- ber.⁵⁰ Second, authorizing transactions. In case of a digital currency, the authorization can be seen as the authorization of transfer of ownership.⁵¹ “Blockchain transactions are similar to what one finds in a standard double-entry ledger. Every transaction contains at least one input or debit request and at least one output which credit requests are. Transaction operations move digital currencies or values of digital currencies from one input to output or form sender to receiver.”⁵² When one party authorizes a change of ownership on digital currencies, the transaction output receives this message and as- signs the second party (receiver) to the digital currency. This is possible due to the pri- vate-to-public approach by digitally signing the transaction with the private key to prove the ownership of the particular currency.⁵³ Transactions can be propagated as inputs of another transaction and thereby a transaction chain or a chain of ownership.⁵⁴

2.1.2 How blockchain works

Based upon the previous chapter – which described the fundamentals of transactions – this section refers to the working process of blockchain as a whole. Essentially, block- chain was created as the main technology behind Bitcoin for authentication and verifi- cation.⁵⁵ Given that blockchain enables trustless transactions that need no intermediary agent to verify the exchange, the distributed (P2P) computer network with all of its nodes builds the first part of the fundamental construct for the working process.⁵⁶ This theoretical background has been described in section 2.1.1. In addition, the particularity of transactions described in chapter 2.1.2 builds an advanced part to process transac- tions in terms of authorizing transactions and identifying users within this decentralized system. These characteristics can be measured as one of three core attributes of block- chain, namely so-called decentralization.⁵⁷

Blockchain owes its name due to the fact that every time a transaction is validated, it is added to a block that contains other recent transactions. It is added to the ledger com- prising other older blocks when the block reaches a certain size.⁵⁸ This is based on the validation system proof-of-work (PoW), which represents a complement to the block- chain and generates competition among network members to validate transactions. “It improves its security by requiring network nodes to solve computationally-intensive mathematical problems before they can validate a particular block of transactions. A new block is added to the blockchain only after the network has reached consensus about the validity of all the transactions contained into that block.”⁵⁹ In order to solve these mathematical problems, nodes are rewarded for generating the correct hash puz- zle, which is unique for every block. Hash puzzles can be described as a complex math- ematical problem that has to be solved. They build an integral element to the blockchain data structure, which makes it immutable.⁶⁰ The immutability is given by the fact that blocks are linked to another with a time stamp. This is done for security purposes, given that if a network member wants to manipulate the address from one transaction to their address then not only would they need to change the time details of the described trans- action but also every other transaction within the previous block.

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¹ Cf. Sixt, E., Bitcoins und andere dezentrale Transaktionssysteme, 2017, p. 5.

² Cf. http://www.faz.net, Access: 29.10.2017.

³ https://www.cnbc.com, Access: 29.10.2017.

⁴ Cf. Koehler, O., Skorna, A., Insurance 4.0, 2016, p. 9.

⁵ Catlin, T. et al., The Making of a Digital Insurer, 2015, p. 3.

⁶ Cf. Wildmann, L., Makroökonomie, Geld und Währung, 2015, p. 202.

⁷ Cf. Sixt, E., Bitcoins und andere dezentrale Transaktionssysteme, 2017, p. 5.

⁸ Cf. Silvermann, D., Doing qualitative research, 2001, p. 1 et seq.

⁹ Cf. Hardy, M., Bryman, A., Handbook of Data Analysis, 2009, p. 4 et seq.

¹⁰ Cf. Murray Thomas, R., Blending quantitative and qualitative research methods, 2003, p. 3.

¹¹ Cf. Bryman, A., Bell, E., Business research methods, 2011, p. 408.

¹² Cf. Denzin, N. K., Licoln, Y. S., Qualitative Research, 2017, p. 12.

¹³ Cf. Flick, U., Qualitative Data Analysing, 2014, p. 11 et seq.

¹⁴ Cf. Flick, U., Qualitative Data Analysing, 2014, p. 11.

¹⁵ Cf. Bryman, A., Bell, E., Business research methods, 2011, p. 29.

¹⁶ Cf. Harris, H., Content analysis of secondary data, 2001, p. 192.

¹⁷ Cf. Kewell, B. et al., Blockchain for good?, 2017, p. 431.

¹⁸ Cf. Kewell, B. et al., Blockchain for good?, 2017, ibid.

¹⁹ Glaser, F., Pervasive decentralisation of digital infrastructures, 2017, p. 1545.

²⁰ Cf. Mahlmann, P., Schindelbauer, C., Peer-to-Peer-Netzwerke, 2007, p. 7.

²¹ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain Basics, 2017, p. 23.

²² Cf. Moldovyan, A. et al., Intranet, intranet and virtual private networks, 2003, p. 9.

²³ Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 62.

²⁴ Cf. Lewis, P. R. et al., Self-aware computing systems, 2016, p. 106.

²⁵ Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 64.

²⁶ Cf. Lewis, P. R. et al., Self-aware computing systems, 2016, p. 106.

²⁷ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 64.

²⁸ Cf. Glaser, F., Pervasive decentralisation of digital infrastructures, 2017, p. 1545.

²⁹ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 58.

³⁰ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 22.

³¹ Glaser, F., Pervasive decentralisation of digital infrastructures, 2017, p. 1545.

³² Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 94.

³³ Cf. Bheemaiah, K., The blockchain alternative, 2017, p. 56.

³⁴ Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 94.

³⁵ Cf. Bheemaiah, K., The blockchain alternative, 2017, p. 56.

³⁶ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 21.

³⁷ Cf. Fleming, S., Introduction to blockchain technology, 2017, p. 9.

³⁸ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 95.

³⁹ Cf. Paar, C., Pelzl, J., Understanding cryptography, 2009, p. 150.

⁴⁰ Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 96.

⁴¹ Cf. Paar, C., Pelzl, J., Understanding cryptography, 2009, p. 151.

⁴² Cf. Thorsteinson, P., Ganesh, G., NET Security and cryptography, 2004, p. 102.

⁴³ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 97.

⁴⁴ Cf. Thorsteinson, P., Ganesh, G., NET Security and cryptography, 2004, p. 102.

⁴⁵ Cf. Paar, C., Pelzl, J., Understanding cryptography, 2009, p. 152.

⁴⁶ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 97 et seq.

⁴⁷ Cf. Lemieux, V. L., Is blockchain technology the answer?, 2016, p. 119.

⁴⁸ Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 99.

⁴⁹ Cf. Brooks, R. R., Disruptive security technologies, 2004, p. 42.

⁵⁰ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 100.

⁵¹ Cf. Schlatt, V. et al., Blockchain: Grundlagen, Anwendung und Potentiale, 2016, p. 11.

⁵² Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 68.

⁵³ Cf. Schlatt, V. et al., Blockchain: Grundlagen, Anwendung und Potentiale, 2016, p. 10 et seq.

⁵⁴ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 68.

⁵⁵ Cf. Sixt, E., Bitcoins und andere dezentrale Transaktionssysteme, 2017, p. 39.

⁵⁶ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, p. 23.

⁵⁷ Cf. Morabito, V., Business innovation through blockchain, 2017, ibid.

⁵⁸ Cf. Bheemaiah, K., The blockchain alternative, 2017, p. 56 et seq.

⁵⁹ Pazaitis, A. et al., Blockchain and value systems in the economy, 2017, p. 109.

⁶⁰ Cf. Drescher, D., Blockchain basics, 2017, p. 156 et seq.