Search Results

Alternative money for transactions | FRED Blog

What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin? Paying for a loaf of bread with gold wouldn’t be very practical, as you’d need a very small speck of the precious metal. But one can imagine a system of gold substitutes, such as notes giving you ownership of a fraction of an ounce of gold, thereby overcoming the small-change problem. With Bitcoin, it’d be much easier, as a virtual currency can be divided any way you want.Now

fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/alternative-money-for-transactions

FRED Blog | Interesting graphs from the FRED library | Page 189

What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin? Paying for a loaf of bread with gold wouldn’t be very practical, as you’d need a very small speck of the precious metal. But one can imagine a system of gold substitutes, such as notes giving you ownership of a fraction of an ounce of gold, thereby overcoming the small-change problem. With Bitcoin, it’d be much easier, as a virtual currency can be divided any way you want.Now

fredblog.stlouisfed.org/page/189

FRED Adds Cryptocurrency Series | St. Louis Fed Economic Research

FRED has added four series on the prices of different cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The price data are updated daily and span from as early as 2014 to the present. All data were obtained from Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange company, whose overall digital asset performance is depicted in the above graph (Coinbase Index).

news.research.stlouisfed.org/2018/06/fred-adds-cryptocurrency-series

August | 2018 | FRED Blog | Page 3

What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin? Paying for a loaf of bread with gold wouldn’t be very practical, as you’d need a very small speck of the precious metal. But one can imagine a system of gold substitutes, such as notes giving you ownership of a fraction of an ounce of gold, thereby overcoming the small-change problem. With Bitcoin, it’d be much easier, as a virtual currency can be divided any way you want.Now

fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/page/3

An Introduction to Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Blockchains and Economics - Review

With a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP), a party can prove that a statement is true without revealing any information except for whether it is indeed true or not. The obvious benefit is privacy since the prover does not need to reveal any additional information, and the second benefit is that it can significantly reduce the cost of verifying the correctness of a statement. 

research.stlouisfed.org/.../an-introduction-to-zero-knowledge-proofs-in-blockchains-and-economics

Fintech Unfolds - Cryptocurrencies and Fintech

How are financial technology, or "fintech," firms evolving?

www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/february/basics-fintech

Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets - Review

The term decentralized finance (DeFi) refers to an alternative financial infrastructure built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. DeFi uses smart contracts to create protocols that replicate existing financial services in a more open, interoperable, and transparent way. This article highlights opportunities and potential risks of the DeFi ecosystem. I propose a multi-layered framework to analyze the implicit architecture and the various DeFi building blocks, including token standards, decentralized exchanges, decentralized debt markets, blockchain derivatives, and on-chain asset management protocols.

research.stlouisfed.org/.../

Tornado Cash and Blockchain Privacy: A Primer for Economists and Policymakers - Review

This article explores non-custodial crypto asset mixers such as Tornado Cash. We analyze what types of mixers exist and how they work.

research.stlouisfed.org/.../

On the Benefits of Currency Reform - Working Paper 2018-021

Money allows agents to achieve allocations that are not possible without it. How-ever, currency in most economies is a uniform object, and there may be incentive compatible allocations that cannot be implemented with a uniform currency. We showthat currency reform, ie, changing the monetary base by replacing one currency withanother, is a powerful tool that can enable a planner to achieve his desired allocation.Our monetary mechanism with currency reform is anonymous and features nonlinearpricing of consumption goods and future assets, as observed in practice. Our resultsuggests that currency reform is rarely seen in practice precisely because it is sucha powerful tool and none but the most benevolent planner can be trusted to use itwisely.

research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2018-021