Cryptocurrency: A Report On Growing Industry And Global Impact

Decentralized System and Production of Cryptocurrency

Question:

Discuss about the Analysis of Cryptocurrency Marketplace.

Cryptocurrency refers to any digital asset that is designed to work as exchange medium using cryptographic methods to secure transactions (Dictionary.cambridge.org 2017). Cryptocurrencies also help in controlling the creation of additional currency units. These are considered to be a part of digital currencies, virtual currencies and alternative currencies. In this report is investigated the increasing use of cryptocurrency. This report analyses the growing industry of cryptocurrencies and the effect of it on the global scenario. The report will discuss the origin of the concept of these currencies and three such cryptocurrencies. In the following report, a paper on Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto is discussed which discusses the origin of cryptocurrencies. This report goes on to draw comparisons on the capabilities and resources needed by personal and commercial users to mine such cryptocurrencies and sheds light on the viability and costs of bitcoin. This report further discusses the threat that these cryptocurrencies pose to the financial organizations that deal with hard currency, the ways in which these currencies are put to use by people with a criminal mindset. The report ends with the interest taken by the government of China in cryptocurrencies and implications of the same all around the globe.

The cryptocurrency system is decentralized and is produced collectively by the total cryptocurrency system.  A group or an individual named Satoshi Nakamoto created the underlying basic technical system of cryptocurrencies (Lemieux 2013). In case of cryptocurrencies, production is gradually decreased until there is a capping on the total amount of currencies circulating in the cloud. There are a number of such cryptocurrencies in use these days like Bitcoins, Ethereum, Litecoins, Auroracoins and many other such currencies.

Cryptocurrency came into the being with the need of trusted third parties in the e-commercial financial transactions other than the existing financial institutions that deal in hard currency. The cost of transactions increase with the mediation cost involved in the transactions. There would be a certain amount of fraudulent practices that are unavoidable in case of electronic payments. The uncertainties of electronic payments can be avoided by making payments using physical currency. In case of electronic payments there must be present a trusted third party. Thus, a transaction medium is needed that allows willing parties the scope of engaging in a direct transaction between themselves without the need of any third party (Bitcoin.org 2017).

Trusted Third Parties and Electronic Payments

These electronic payments are made using electronic coins that can be defined a digital signature chain. The coins are passed from owner to owner by digitally signing the previous transaction hash and the public key of the next owner. The payee has the freedom to verify the signatures but not the fact that the coin has not been doubly spent by the previous owner. This problem can be solved only if the parties involved are made aware of all the transaction history.  The solution provided to the problem discussed is a timestamp server. The server works by widely publishing the hash of a certain block of things. A system of proof-of-work is needed to implement the distributed timestamp server. This also helps in solving the problem of deciding the representation of majority in decision-making. In case of hacking, a hacker needs to redo the proofs-of-work for all the blocks in order to actual nodes. There should be a properly run network that would track the progress of the node. In case of discrepancies the longer node is followed. There should be incentives for the nodes to remain honest towards the transaction. Any hacker who is greedy for more coins should find playing by the rules more profitable than adopting unfair means. The spent transactions of a certain bock should be removed after regular intervals to ensure saving of enough disk space to continue transactions.

There are ways to provide for verification of payments made by a user. The user cannot check the transaction by himself but can find out whether the following nodes have accepted the transaction after linking the transaction to some place in the network chain. The verification of the transaction is deemed reliable as long as the network is controlled by the honest nodes in the chain. It becomes vulnerable if the network is controlled by a hacker. There are at least two outputs for every transaction. One output is dedicated towards payment while the other is used to produce returns towards the sender if there is any. Privacy of transactions can be maintained by keeping some of the publics keys of the transactions anonymous. A separate key pair should be used to prevent transactions to be linked to a common owner. Linking the other transactions could be traced back to belonging to one IP address if the owner of the key is revealed.

In modern times, people find investing in equipment of digital currency mining profitable. They may set up the equipment and then spend months to mine the currencies while waiting for their investment return to set in. There are certain coins that are found to be profitable in terms of cost-benefit of the beginners. The mining of cryptocurrencies may be worth in case of it being a hobby but not for the sake of being a secondary income. Cryptocurrencies may generate a small income of almost a couple of dollars daily. Some of the cryptocurrencies such as Feathercoins, Dogecoins and Litecoins are easier to mine. A significant amount of profit can be earned from cryptocurrency mining only if a huge amount is invested into the business. Mining cryptocurrencies generally aim to provide for bookkeeping of coins. It aims to reward the miners for their accounting services. It tries to keep the miner’s costs down.

Mining Cryptocurrency

There are a few things required for the mining of cryptocurrencies apart from high levels of curiosity on the part of the miner.

• Coin base – A coin base is a database that is free and private (Marian 2013). It is a container that is protected by a password. It stores a miner’s earnings and keeps a ledger of the transactions held from all over the network.
• Mining software package – A miner needs to have access to a free software package for mining (Cryptosource.org 2017). This mining software must be built of stratum and cgminer.
• Mining pool membership – The miner must have a membership of an online pool for mining. This is a miner’s community in which miner’s combine and link their computers to gain an increment in the profitability and stability of income.
• Currency exchange membership – The miner must be a member of an online forum of currency exchange. This would enable them to exchange their conventional cash for virtual coins and vice versa.
• Internet connectivity – The miner needs to be connected to a high speed internet connection that is reliable. An ideal internet connection for mining cryptocurrencies should function at a speed of 2 megabits per second or higher.
• Hardware setup – A miner needs to possess a cool location for setting up the hardware and a cooling system for cooling the computer as and when required. A custom-made computer or desktop is required for mining. It is recommended to abstain from using the current working computer of the miner because the miner may not be able to use the system for any other purposes while the mining is under process. The miner would also need a mining ASIC chip. This chip would provide the accounting services and the mining works. The miner needs a motherboard with three PCI-E slots for video cards (Cryptosource.org 2017).

Bitcoins, on the other hand, can be mined by the large scale users only. The mining process involves a series of steps. These steps finally help encouraging the miners to compete with each other to come up with hashes that help meet the needed criteria. The miners of Bitcoin use a specific kind of software to solve mathematical problems. They are issued Bitcoins in exchange for the solved problems. This helps in providing a smarter way of issuing the currency thereby creating incentives for a larger number of people to mine the currencies.

Cryptocurrency	Introduction date	Values	Market trends
Bitcoin	3rd January, 2009	1 bitcoin = around 4214.41 USD	Prices have gone higher since October, 2015 (Worldcoinindex.com 2017).
Litecoin	7th October, 2011	1 litecoin = around 51 USD	Prices have gone higher since May, 2017 but have been fluctuating in the past 30 days (Worldcoinindex.com 2017).
Ethereum	30th July, 2015	1 ethreum = around 292.3 USD	Prices have gone higher since April, 2017 but have been fluctuating in the past 90 days (Worldcoinindex.com 2017).

Bitcoins have been the first decentralized cryptocurrency that has been fully implemented. It is owned or controlled by no one and is open-source (Bitcoin.org 2017). The e-payments through these cryptocurrencies are facilitated based on validation and mathematical proof. Bitcoins can be exchanged for other services, products and currencies and vice-versa. These transactions are direct and take place between two users. Though fast, these transactions are irreversible in nature. These are transparent transactions yet anonymous

In the present day scenario, it has become necessary for national banks to develop their own cryptocurrencies. The People’s Bank of China, a national bank of China is on its way to become the first nationalized bank to develop as well as run a digital currency of its own. There are reports that suggest the use of some prototypes of the transactions between the national digital currency and some commercial banks of the country.  In the present day scenario, though, China is reported to have banned the initial coin offerings or ICOs (Forbes.com 2017). This ban has hurt the local operators mostly.

Cryptocurrencies may lead to eradication of the need for the financial organizations dealing with hard currencies (Bollen 2013). An increase in the number of users of cryptocurrencies is expected in near future. Thus it can be predicted that there will be a substantial amount of decline in the number of payments made and received through conventional methods. During recent times, there has been a rise in the number of criminal activities involving cryptocurrencies. Criminals prefer the cryptocurrencies due to the provision of irreversible and private payment windows (Bitcoin.org 2017).

The following table provides a PESTEL analysis of Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency.

Political analysis	No government body is in control of this currency. Financial institutions of many countries of the world are barred from accepting these cryptocurrencies (Heid 2013). There are some countries like Canada, United States and EU that are considered Pro-bitcoin. Transactions involving bitcoins are generally allowed between two private parties.
Economic analysis	Market capitalization of bitcoins extends beyond 0.008% of the global GDP of 78 trillion dollars which amounts to almost 6 billion dollars. There exist 21 million bitcoins in the present days with almost 15359800 of the total number in circulation. The ability of the federal government of conducting monetary policies remain unaffected by the cryptocurrencies (Brenig, Accorsi, and Müller 2015). Bitcoin is widely used in the global market by more than 88000 merchants.
Socio-cultural analysis	The driving force behind the popularity of the cryptocurrencies is the anonymity of operations (Clarke and Tooker 2017). These cryptocurrencies have wide range of reaches and helps in savings by skipping the cost of processing that can be incurred in the traditional payment methods. The increase in the number of merchants adopting this technology of payment results in the increase of the number of customers availing the same.
Technological analysis	Block chains or the public ledger of Bitcoins need to be leveraged
Environmental analysis	An increase in the requirement of computational power is experienced with the growth of demand of the cryptocurrencies. Miners try and find alternative sources of electricity such as the cheap variety of coal in old places of production (Zohar 2015). Bitcoin is associated with 1.5 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emission.
Legal analysis	Any kind of regulatory measures against Bitcoins are hindered due to the decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency (Chuen 2015). This legal scenario is on its way to change. Many countries like USA, EU and Canada are working on measures to impost regulations on the cryptocurrency usage.

In order to sustain itself in the market, a cryptocurrency must follow the five forces model of management by Porter. According to this model, the threats to the business due to new entrants must be removed. The threats due to the substitutes present in the market must also be removed. A business firm must be aware of the rivalry intensity among the other firms functioning in similar businesses. The firm should also keep an eye on the power of bargaining of the customers and the suppliers (E. Dobbs 2014; Rothaermel 2015).

Bitcoin: The First Decentralized Cryptocurrency

Conclusion

Despite the issues and challenges faced, the landscape and scope of cryptocurrencies are still on its way of evolution. In the present day, cryptocurrencies are almost in the same footing as the concept of internet was back in the year 1990. The concept is in its formative stages and would need to go through a number of changes to be established as an alternate transaction method for the common man. Bitcoins may have earned the title of the first ever decentralized cryptocurrency but it might not be able to earn for itself the title of one of the major future cryptocurrencies. Despite its shortcomings, the open technology platform of bitcoins has been the forerunner of a smoother and more seamless digital economy globally.

References

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