Cryptography , Cryptocurrencies , Monetary theory and banking , Software engineering
Abstract:
This work evaluates a digital cash phenomenon, called cryptocurrencies that was
started in early 2009 and has created a buzz at the latest in the year 2013, by the
virtual explosion of prices in currencies (e.g. prices in EUR or USD) for certain cryptocurrencies,
especially for bitcoin. The evaluation is realized from the perspective
of a software engineer. The central research question is derived of a claim made by
the Bitcoin community: Bitcoin does create “a new kind of money”. The potential
implications for existing payment systems would be tremendous if this proves to be
substantial. This issue is examined by performing a requirements analysis for payment
systems in general, thereby establishing certain definitions and understandings
of terms, including ‘money’. An analysis and evaluation is also done for the Banking
Payment System (BPS) and the Cryptocurrency Payment System (CPS) with the
target to be able to draw conclusions for the CPS by comparing the two payment
systems. Furthermore a detailed evaluation of Bitcoin (first letter capitalized!) and
its proposed money called ‘bitcoin’ (non-capitalized!) is carried out by reverse engineering
parts of the software project using modeling technology that is known in
model driven software development.
Das Dokument wird vom Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim bereitgestellt.