Background: The convergence of payment behaviours can contribute to the diffusion of new payment technologies and thus economic performance. There is evidence that the electrification of the retail payment system promotes the performance of the banking sector and economic growth. The retail payment market is a prime example of a two-sided market where new payment instruments need to reach a critical mass of users to become viable and grow further (Martikainen, Schmiedel & Takalo, 2015). Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse Bitcoin, as a payment method, and review the models already used to shed more light on its further potential adoption by retailers. We apply the DOI theory and review the TAM model to determine the underlying characteristics of Bitcoin that will enable further adoption or rejection among retailers. Method: We conduct a case study on Bitrefill AB which offers a rich method for investigating and researching. With the process of interpretation in context, we make inference from the case of Bitrefill in connecting with events and experiences of other retailers (Expedia, Alibaba, Overstock and CheapAir). Conclusion: According to the results, the adoption of Bitcoin relies heavily on positive relative advantages to other payment methods, compatibility and simplicity of its use while negative characteristics that pull it back from being adopted include the complexities in understanding the technology behind it, damaging outcomes varying from the expected.

This study investigates the cryptocurrency called bitcoin. A cryptocurrency is a type of currency that depends on cryptography to issue new units instead of depending on government decree like fiat currencies. The study will first explain some of the technical details that make bitcoin work. This is necessary to lay groundwork to get to the actual aim of the study, namely investigating the economic aspects of bitcoin. The study will evaluate bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, along with fiat currencies against certain definitions. In the process it will introduce a new subclass of cryptocurrency - the sovereign cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s implied monetary policy will also be discussed, as well as the problems it creates for central banks. A hypothesis on the behaviour of the bitcoin price will be explained and research will be provided to support the acceptance of the hypothesis. Using this hypothesis, a stochastic pricing model for bitcoin will be derived. Arbitrage trading strategies will also be provided that explain certain price constraints that operate in the bitcoin market. The dissertation will also introduce a means to improve the anonymity of a user of bitcoin and will reason that improvements such as these and others will increase the use of bitcoin. Therefore, improvements to anonymity will increase the economic relevance of bitcoin and increase its competitive edge over the traditional banking system. It will be reasoned, based on the possible problems created by bitcoin’s monetary policy, as well as the growth projections implied by the stochastic pricing model, and the increased economic relevance due to improvements in anonymity, that central banks would need to create their own cryptocurrency that conforms to certain requirements – the previously introduced sovereign cryptocurrency. The study will conclude by explaining the technical changes needed for a fork of bitcoin to become a sovereign cryptocurrency, as well as a mathematical model to control the monetary policy of the sovereign cryptocurrency. As its aim, adaptive monetary policy will have stable prices for the economy using the sovereign cryptocurrency to price its goods and services. Please note, that while every effort was made to use published references, the field of cryptocurrencies is very young and changing constantly. Thus, most publications on the subject are simply placed on websites on the internet. This is especially true for the work relating to the founding of the field, and the data sources of the operation of the cryptocurrencies. Therefore a lot of the references do refer to websites on the internet. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Mathematics and Applied Mathematics / MSc / Unrestricted

This dissertation consists of three parts. In the first part, we study an oligopoly model in which firms compete across several geographic regions. This networked competition is prevalent in many markets, such energy, metals, and agricultural commodity markets. Firms operating in these industries are constrained by physical limits on production capacities. Our paper provides the first analytical study on firms' competition in industries where players are capacity constrained. We find that a reduction in import-export taxes can have qualitatively different effects on consumer welfare depending on whether or not the impacted firm is capacity constrained. Our results imply that policies that promote free trade (e.g. NAFTA, European Union) may have unintended consequence and reduce the consumer surplus in capacity constrained industries. The second part of this dissertation analyzes the pros and cons of Bitcoin payment systems. The creator of Bitcoin envisioned a decentralized payment system in which mining can be performed by anyone using their home computers. Since it was introduced in 2008, Bitcoin attracted significant attention, both by public media and by investors. This led to a surge in the bitcoin price, and its market capitalization exceeded $170 billion (as of February 2, 2020). With the rise of bitcoin price, firms started to invest in developing efficient hardware to increase their probability of successfully mining blocks. As a result, mining operations became vertically integrated with single firms designing and manufacturing mining chips, and operating them in data centers. These major developments in mining technology bring up the following question: Does Bitcoin's proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of enabling and supporting a decentralized payment system? We propose a two-stage game to answer this question. Firms first invest in research and development to subsequently compete in a Bitcoin mining game. We show that firms fail to capture the surplus created from their research, because higher research expenditures induce a more aggressive mining game. We calibrate our model to rewards and operational costs observed in the Bitcoin system, and quantitatively demonstrate that the mining industry has a tendency towards centralization, against the core principles of cryptocurrencies. The third part of this dissertation studies the emerging robo-advising industry. Roboadvisors are threatening traditional wealth management firms due to their ability to offer lower fees and minimum balance requirements, as well as transparent and systematic advise. Robo-advisors had $300 billion in assets under management during 2016, and are projected to reach $2.2 trillion by 2020. Currently, robo-advising firms employ questionnaires to assess the risk preference of investors. While appealing, the use of questionnaires presents various shortcomings: (i) investors' answers do not account for emotional responses observed when the loss is incurred, (ii) survey responses are subject to noise, and (iii) risk tolerance assessments are sensitive to the specific wording and formats used in questionnaires. To overcome these limitations, we propose a reinforcement learning framework for retail roboadvising. The robo-advisor does not know the investor's risk preference, but learns it over time by observing her portfolio choices in different market environments. We develop an exploration-exploitation algorithm which trades off costly solicitations of portfolio choices by the investor with autonomous trading decisions based on stale estimates of investor's risk aversion. We illustrate how, by correcting for the investor's mistakes, the robo-advisor may outperform a stand-alone investor regardless of the investor's opportunity cost for making portfolio decisions.

AbstractThe European Central Bank defines virtual currencies as ”unregulated, digital money, which is issued and usuallycontrolled by its developers, and used and accepted among the members of a specific virtual community.”(European Central Bank, 2012, p. 5) The interest in virtual currencies has increased immensely over the last fewyears as they become increasingly prevalent in our society across many different industries. Up until now, the field ofvirtual currencies has been mainly uncharted land and despite interest in specific currencies, few attempts havebeen made at understanding or structuring the entire landscapeThe main research question in this thesis is related to the previously mentioned dilemma: understanding andstructuring the virtual currency ecosystem, today and in the future. How can the virtual currency landscape currentlybe analyzed in a structured manner and what framework can be used to reflect and make predictions on the futuredevelopment?The thesis is based on four different sources of information: a literature study of existing material, corporateinterviews with companies dealing with virtual currencies and consumer interviews with potential early adopters, anonline survey and a case study performed at Ericsson M-Commerce. The case study of Ericsson M-Commerce hasprovided valuable insight into understanding how companies reason when considering adopting virtual currenciesinto their product portfolio and greatly helped the process of structuring the virtual currency market in acomprehensive manner. In return, the thesis has also provided decision material for the department concerningvirtual currencies.This thesis divides virtual currencies into five groups: Prepaid Value, Loyalty Points, Monetization Currencies, GamingCurrencies and Value Encoded Currencies. This model has been developed as a framework for the analysis of thecurrent situation in this thesis. However, the analysis in the thesis has shown that as virtual currencies evolve, it willprobably become more relevant to instead consider their functions. It is likely that virtual currencies will consolidateinto three distinct functional types: virtual currency as a unit of account, virtual currency as a business model formonetization, and virtual currencies as a product that can be sold.As virtual currencies evolve, the future is not only filled with many challenges, but also many new opportunities. Inthis thesis, an attempt to gain an abstract understanding of how the field is developing has been made, but it remains to be seen what the real impacts of virtual currencies will be as they continue to gain traction.

This study explores Bitcoin’s volatility characteristics using different extensions of the GARCH model. The volatility characteristics of bitcoin are compared with to a gold commodity and the S&P 500 index. The purpose is to identify which model fits best for the data and to see how the volatility changes during the time period of 1st February 2017 to 1stFebruary 2022. The dataset is divided into two time periods, one prior to the pandemic which is the low uncertainty period and the other after the pandemic being the high uncertainty period. The attention for cryptocurrencies and especially bitcoin, has risen expeditiously the last couple of years, this makes the analysis appropriate and current for the market. The result showed that bitcoin’s volatility is more effected by the volatility of gold than for S&P 500. The volatility shows that bitcoin was more similar to the behavior of the gold than the S&P 500 prior to the pandemic. Further is there still no clearer explanation and bitcoins behavior cannot be stated as a commodities or financial asset. The GARCH model results showed that bitcoin’s volatility is persistent over time and can therefore be an explanation that will apply well as for the next years. The high volatility time periods of bitcoin can be explained by optimism and overestimate bias. The bias connected the overly confident investment decisions to less accurate rents. Bitcoin is still new on the financial market which makes new knowledge extremely important in order to create safer investment portfolios.

This paper explores the possibility of gold and Bitcoin acting as safe haven investments during the Corona pandemic. To answer the research question the authors use OLS-, GARCH-, and TGARCH-models. The S&P 500 stock- and S&P U.S. Aggregate bond-indexes are used as a measure of the performance on U.S. stock- and bond-market. Safe haven assets have a negative beta during turbulent times and therefore the period of 2020-01-01 to 2022-03-31 will be analyzed. A period of five years leading up to the pandemic as well as the turbulent time period will be used as an average to enable comparison between regular and trying times. The results conclude that neither Bitcoin nor gold can be viewed as safe haven assets. However, it is found that both assets can work as diversifiers in the two markets.

The world has faced tumultuous times in recent years with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine causing the stock market to be unusually volatile. During such times investors tend to flee to alternative investment opportunities that are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with the stock market, called safe-haven assets. Traditionally, the most prominent safe-haven asset has been gold but with the rise of cryptocurrencies as a new asset class there has been much speculation if they could act as a safe-haven against the stock market. The leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin is often the main target for such research and has even been called “digital gold”. However, some studies have explored the possibility that the second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum has an even greater potential as a safe-have asset. With the stock market crash in 2020 providing the first “real” test if cryptocurrencies can behave as safe-haven assets a myriad of papers on the topic have been published. However, little research has been done taking on the perspective of a Swedish investor. This thesis aims to fill this research gap by investigating whether the two major cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum have acted as safe-havens towards the Swedish stock index OMX30 during the COVID-19 crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For this purpose, DCC-GARCH analysis was conducted, and the results were compared with gold as benchmark of how a more traditional safe-haven asset has behaved. The findings in this study showed that neither Bitcoin or Ethereum have acted as safe-havens during the COVID-19 crisis or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The study also finds that gold did not act as a safe-haven for the COVID-19 crisis while it did during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These findings imply that Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to be unable to act as “digital gold” for Swedish investors in a safe-haven and hedging sense. Instead, these cryptocurrencies have only provided diversification benefits during the recent stock market turmoil.

Background: Money has changed many forms throughout human history. About anything has served as money, sea snails, salt, and stones. Money is valuable as long as we believe in its value and are willing to exchange this money for goods and services; it can therefore be viewed as a part of a social convention that changes forms as the way of communication evolves. One of the common trends that have been taking place in social patterns is the increasing gaps between different generations, a particular one being the decrease in financial literacy for every new generation since the silent generation. Moreover, lower levels of financial literacy have been identified with increased indebtedness, lower savings, and increased risk-taking. A negative trend taking place during a time when the economic environment is becoming increasingly complex. Something that has added to the complexity is Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency introduced in 2008 amid the financial crisis.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore how millennials' decision-making process to use Bitcoin occurs, how the individual perception is related to trust, usefulness, and safety, and in turn, explore what affects the perception and how this is related to the decision-making process. Method: This is a qualitative paper that has followed an interpretivism research philosophy, the approach has been inductive, and data has been collected through semi-structured interviews.  Conclusion: The decision-making process is influenced by perception, which heavily depends on subjective and objective knowledge. Therefore, it is not fiat currencies, Bitcoin, or other alternatives that are changing, but the perception of which options we perceive to be trustworthy, useful, and safe is changing.

Bitcoin was established as an independent digital currency. Today, Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and the currency has had an exponential growth in development and usage. Today’s standing point regarding this revolutionary currency in society is therefore interesting to investigate in relation to the traditional fiat currency. To determine whether Bitcoin is a comparable means of payment in relation to already established fiat currencies, it is important to look at different factors. The factors considered in the study are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability and the perceived risk. The study shows that relative advantage, observability and the perceived risk are factors that statistically influenced the attitude to adopt Bitcoin as a means of payment. Relative advantage and observability proved to have a positive effect on Bitcoin. The perceived risk gave rise to individuals not being willing to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment. The qualitative data has given the study reasons to believe that all factors can influence the attitude to adopting Bitcoin as a means of payment.

The development of Internet technology has promoted the progress of all aspects of society. Under the background of Internet finance, the traditional financial model is changing, such as currency payment. With the deepening of Internet technology, the virtualization of money is deepening, and the market entry, trading and payment methods are also subverting the tradition. Bitcoin as a new means of payment began to appear in the public eye. It is a challenge to the traditional way of trading supported by Internet technology. Despite the constant controversy since its inception, Bitcoin still occupies a place with its unique advantages - Asymmetric encryption, decentralization,transparency of transaction records and so on. In the eyes of opponents, Bitcoin is more of a highly speculative asset, and as it becomes progressively more difficult to mine, the cost of mining is increasing. However, in the eyes of supporters, it is a reliable means of payment, not subject to government supervision, nor will it produce a virtual transaction record. From the regulator's point of view, it is more like a shelter for unscrupulous people to evade regulation and commit money laundering and crime. It is undeniable that in just a few years, Bitcoin has developed to a certain scale,has a certain industrial chain...