Cryptocurrency as a of store of value, medium of exchange and alternative payment mechanism

Secondary Research Module. Submitted: 06 January 2021 - Melcom Copeland, MRes Candidate (2022),?Computing Science, Staffordshire University [email protected]?

?Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the latest trends in academic and corporate Cryptocurrency research. Since 2017, cryptocurrency and its underlying technology blockchain have become more of a mainstream topic, yet is still widely misunderstood and a mystery to the masses. Cryptocurrency is no longer a subject reserved for the techno geeks, and today has garnered the interest from a diverse range of people and backgrounds representing all walks of life globally. In fact, one could say that this disruptive phenomenon of cryptocurrency as an alternative to the current fiat based monetary system being used has in itself become a legitimate industry over the course of the past 11-years. There are many types of cryptocurrencies serving different purposes depending on the use case of the particular blockchain project or initiative a cryptocurrency is associated with. Although the term “currency” is embedded in “cryptocurrency”, this new? means of stored value does not always constitute that? a cryptocurrency is destined to be used as an alternative payment method. This research paper will provide a basis and foundation for general knowledge transfer into what blockchain and cryptocurrency is, as well as provide insight into the latest cryptocurrency research and analyzing several key areas that are important for the growth and adoption of cryptocurrency by the masses.

Keywords: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technology, Cashless, Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Digital Currency, Digital Assets, Digital Wallet, FinTech, Mobile Wallet, Mobile Banking Applications, Payments, Stablecoin

I. Introduction

There is currently a major trend taking place in global monetary systems related to digital transformation initiatives in both regulated and unregulated forms of digital money or digital currencies that allow transactions of stored value to be spent or transferred between both trusted and trustless entities. In fact, due to the more recent global financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of disruption in the financial services industry has been growing exponentially with a shift towards the use of innovative technologies to create new cashless economies.?

The Financial Technology or Fintech industry has threatened and disrupted the traditional consumer banking sector where branch banking will eventually become a thing of the past replaced by applications (apps) - smartphone banking applications, payment applications, remittance applications, lending applications, savings applications, and other financial services applications that were once all housed under one roof. These new digital applications serving the financial services industry have also created an opportunity for financial inclusion and serving the unbanked in underserved communities and countries where cash was once king. These new innovations are a direct result of the evolution of the Internet and developments taking place in mobile telecom infrastructure that today easily supports e-commerce as a norm in most people’s lives.?

Not only has the retail banking industry been disrupted by fintech forcing banks to adopt or become redundant, but the level of Government Central Banks have also been forced to explore, experiment and even embrace new forms of digital currency in order to stay relevant and modernize with the times. There has been a surge in activity in governments exploring and actually creating Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a digital form of a country’s fiat currency. A perfect example of this is the CBDC issuance by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) who have been experimenting with digital yuan since 2014 and recently completed a major pilot project in 2020.[1] Cryptocurrency and the underlying technology behind it called Blockchain which allows for decentralized and secure transmission of digital currency has been the driving factor for government CBDC activity. In this secondary research paper, secondary data sets in isolation are used to provide a deep dive into the origins of cryptocurrency, examining the latest research activity and developments in the field. The types of secondary data used in this research will be both qualitative and quantitative. The main question seeking an answer to is whether blockchain based cryptocurrencies are a realistic and feasible alternative or even replacement of traditional cash based fiat currencies.

II. Bitcoin

When discussing the topic of cryptocurrency, it is nearly impossible not to speak about the most popular cryptocurrency - bitcoin which holds the number one position in total market value and market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies.[2]? It could be argued that by default the majority of the masses today who have heard of the term cryptocurrency was a result of the popularization of? bitcoin from 2017 onwards. Although bitcoin’s popularity is a more recent occurrence, most people are unaware that a research white paper that resulted in the creation of bitcoin, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” was written by a presumably pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 soon after the 2008 global financial crisis.[3] The fact that the 2008 crisis was a blatant failure of trusted centralized banking systems spurred the next wave of trustless decentralized and distributed payments and remittance platforms based on concepts described in a short bitcoin white-paper. One of the main problems this bitcoin white paper proposes to address is the concept of double-spending where there is a risk that a digital currency could be spent twice. Satoshi Nakamoto suggested that double-spending could be resolved by using peer-to-peer networks that validate and sign-off a transaction using a consensus mechanism called proof-of-work where an immutable network timestamp is created and hashed together into blocks by CPU nodes within the network. What this process described is ultimately trying to accomplish is the creation of an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.

While the bitcoin whitepaper is amazingly short (only 9 pages), it does not lack in the powerful content and descriptive mechanisms required to build a secure trustless transactional network based on time stamped cryptographic hashes that form chains of transactions. The impact of several key fundamental concepts developed in this paper has made a huge impact towards the evolution of the cryptocurrency industry. The paper briefly goes into describing each core component of a trustless decentralized CPU node network, including: Timestamp Server, Proof-of-Work, Incentives, Reclamation of Disk Space, Payment Verification, Privacy, and Calculations.

Looking more closely at the work of Satoshi Nakomoto’s “bitcoin whitepaper”[3], the basis of his work was to create a framework that would provide for a secure “trustless” transaction environment that would prohibit double-spending based on CPU power of nodes that make up a decentralized network. This platform would not be relying on a centralized trusted third party to facilitate transactions between two parties. These nodes would perform “work” to solve computational problems in order to validate transactions, a process called “Proof-of-Work” in exchange for financial incentives in the form of transaction fees as a reward. As far as security and fraud within this node based network, Nakamoto claims that as long as a majority of nodes are honest and control the majority of the CPU power in the network, then attackers will not be able to steal and compromise the system. This is mainly because the attacker would not have enough resources in the form of? CPU speed and power to keep up with the transactions of the network to cause disruption in the integrity of the transactions. The digital transactions taking place in a block are based on digital signatures between two party’s public and private keys resulting in the creation of a timestamped hash that cannot be changed. This activity is then announced and distributed throughout the network creating long blocks of cryptographic chains that entail the time stamped transaction hash. In terms of privacy considerations between two parties making a direct transaction without the involvement of a trusted third party, the bitcoin whitepaper suggests that the public keys of the transacting parties remain anonymous. When transacting stored value through cryptocurrency, public keys or crypto wallet addresses are indeed anonymous, and that resulting transaction hash records do not contain any decipherable information to tie a particular transaction to any individual.

Fig. 1: Traditional vs. New Privacy Model comparison, Source: Adopted from [1]

The Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System whitepaper in all has served as a foundation to a completely new technology and industry called Blockchain which is one example of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). The global blockchain market size is expected to grow from USD 3.0 billion in 2020 to USD 39.7 billion by 2025, at an impressive Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 67.3% during 2020–2025 according to a study conducted by MarketsandMarkets Research Private Ltd.[4] Blockchain is the underlying technology first for bitcoin, and now for nearly 7,600 different blockchain based cryptocurrencies as per CoinMarketCap (as of 03 November 2020), one of the most popular referenced price-tracking websites for cryptoassets in the rapidly growing cryptocurrency space. This investigation will further look into how the blockchain sector has given rise to a new class of cryptocurrency start-ups, and how these start-ups are able to raise capital through means other than private equity and venture capital.

III. Rise of Blockchain Projects through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

Between 2016 and 2019, blockchain projects popularized a new method of raising start-up capital called Initial Coin Offerings, better known as ICOs by issuing and selling cryptographically secure digital assets, usually called tokens or coins. ICO activity exploded in 2017 and early 2018 where it’s estimated that over $31 billion USD was raised by blockchain projects issuing tokens. An in-depth review was performed on the academic paper “Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales”, where research was conducted on 1,500 ICOs that collectively raised over $12.9 billion USD.[5] This study examines what particular characteristics blockchain projects may have to predict successful and viable projects. Research such as this is of the utmost importance due to the high number of weakly defined and fraudulent projects that have scammed token investors over the past 3-years. Even if not considered a scam or fraud, blockchain projects that raise money by issuing and selling their tokens must do so in a compliant way or potentially risk penalties from the likes of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This paper represents a significant in-depth study about numerous ICOs that have raised funding, and makes an attempt to measure the failure rate of these projects by analyzing employment data reported by individuals associated with each project on Linkedin in late 2018 and 2019. To further support analysis of sustainable projects and their survival rate, the researchers go on to describe dozens of characteristics that influence both the success of an ICO fund raise but also what factors and characteristics a high potential project should exhibit.

The paper described the three (3) different types of digital assets (1. general purpose medium of exchange and store of value cryptocurrency, 2. security token, and 3. utility token) that could be created and issued during an ICO, and emphasized the importance of utility value, and how utility tokens are key to the operational success of a project post-ICO campaign. The categorization of ICO issued coins or tokens is of great importance especially from a regulatory and compliance perspective. Should a digital asset be deemed a security token or commodity, this would then fall under the guidelines federal regulations and governed by compliance requirements interpreted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for example. The study conducted illustrated the complexities of conducting ICOs from both legal and tax implications and the difficulties of categorizing tokens issued. The paper points out how U.S. regulators use a 75-year old test called “Howey'' to identify whether or not a token falls under securities laws. The paper should have performed more detailed analysis on how ICO issued tokens could be further analyzed in order to categorize them versus limiting standards based on an outdated US-centric methodology. ICOs and Token Generation Events (TGE) occur all over the world, thus each jurisdiction will have to adopt some form of regulatory compliance and guidelines in order to first and foremost implement consumer protection and mitigate risk of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing.

IV. Towards an Understanding of Cryptocurrency: A Comparative Analysis of Cryptocurrency, Foreign Exchange, and Stock

Indeed cryptocurrency can be identified in many different ways in terms of use cases and perception depending on the audience’s level of experience. Cryptocurrency or Crypto for short is usually associated with the digital currency Bitcoin, therefore, has financial connotations to it. However, cryptocurrency is not limited to a Fintech innovation for financial transactions and payments, and in fact has been adopted for other areas of use including digital asset management and other non-monetary means of exchange. This research analyzes the academic study and conference transcript of “Towards an Understanding of Cryptocurrency: A Comparative Analysis of Cryptocurrency, Foreign Exchange, and Stock”[6]. To better understand the dynamism of cryptocurrency, these researchers have performed a comparative study to analyze the differences between cryptocurrency and traditional foreign exchange and stock as financial assets. The study collects price data and creates asset trees and a correlation matrix as a foundation of their comparisons between the three financial markets. The study’s sample size was sufficient to validate results as it used the top 50 cryptocurrencies representing 90% of the market capitalization, 50 currencies in foreign exchanges, and 102 stocks from S&P 100 Index.?

The paper uses the rolling windows method to analyze the cryptocurrency market to compare it to the traditional fiat based financial trading markets. Due to the behaviors of fluctuation and volatility, and based on evidence shown in this study, it is deduced that cryptocurrencies have more similarities to stocks. Cryptocurrency is a more fragile and volatile market compared to the other two financial markets with foreign exchange being more robust and stable, and the stock market being a bit less volatile than cryptocurrency. This study has taken a practical approach to understanding how cryptocurrency compares to and correlates against two better known industries in foreign exchange and stocks markets. Tendencies in financial trading across the board? in general is driven by several external factors, and in the case of cryptocurrency, the volatility can be derived from local economic drivers, popularity and interests from crypto savvy communities, as well as intrinsic technical features of a coin or token.

Fig. 2 Pearson’s Correlation of Three Coefficients, , Source: Adopted from [4]

V. A Landscape of Cryptocurrencies

As mentioned previously, cryptocurrencies come in different flavours when it comes to practical use cases and applications. A short academic paper titled, “A Landscape of Cryptocurrencies”[7] makes an attempt to categorize cryptocurrencies into several different domains including Currency, DApp Platform, IoT, Gaming, Supply Chain, and Payments. As of Q3 2020, according to CoinMarketCap, the leading online crypto index reference, there are over 7,500 cryptocurrencies in existence and likely more especially if a coin or token is not listed on a secondary exchange. This paper takes the top 20 cryptocurrencies represented on? CoinMarketCap and simply analyzes the Domain, Consensus Protocol (rules by which a particular blockchain network operates), Social Media followers on Twitter and Reddit, as well as Github activity in order to provide a high-level overview of what the crypto space looks like. A lot of this research is just an extraction from a project’s whitepaper, or by visiting a particular project’s social media presence, for example, their Telegram Group in order to seek out information. What this simple paper has done well is highlight elements of each of the coin’s token economics, in particular, it’s associated token generation events including their token policy and method of issuance. When it comes to security and transaction speeds of blockchain networks that a cryptocurrency is derived from, the consensus protocol driving the blockchain is of importance. The study highlights that of the 20 cryptocurrencies evaluated, the majority of projects are utilizing the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism.??

Fig. 3 Blockchain Consensus Protocols, Source: Adopted from [5]

VI. General Process of Cryptocurrency Payment

This working paper published by the Blockchain Standards Committee of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society[8] is the latest general standard that depicts the process of cryptocurrency payments between a merchant and a consumer.?

Fig. 4 -?General process of cryptocurrency payment, Source: Adopted from [8]

In Figure 4, the authors are clearly aware of the onboarding processes of merchants and customers that transact in a regulated cryptocurrency payment ecosystem including the requirements to process Know Your Customer (KYC) data, as well as have in place transaction monitoring tools for Know Your Transaction (KYT) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML). In terms of fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat on ramp and off ramp conversion processing between an Exchange and the Payment platform in the diagram, this is only one possible way how this transfer and conversion can take place. From my experience, the “exchange” depicted in the flow could be replaced by an advanced deposit, prepaid “liquidity pool” of cryptocurrency or float advanced by a merchant. In this case, a merchant would directly on board his customers into the ecosystem through offhain top-up of cryptocurrency to the consumer’s wallet directly without having to depend on a third party conversion service.

VII. Supporting Blockchain Based Cryptocurrency Mobile Payment With Smart Devices

As society moves towards a cashless payment mechanism and further adopts digital payments, it is evident that the personal mobile smartphone will become the primary payment channel during the post-COVID era. Around the world, and in particular in emerging developing economies, mobile payments are already part of daily life and have been for years now. When it comes to cryptocurrency payments using mobile smartphones or otherwise, global adoption is still in its infancy. Fact of the matter is we could probably project that less than 1% of the global population use cryptocurrency as a means to buy goods and services. The academic paper, “Supporting Blockchain Based Cryptocurrency Mobile Payment With Smart Devices”[9], proposes two (2) different models for smartphone based cryptocurrency payments where a bank would facilitate the transaction, and alternatively where there? is no dependency on a banking system to transact. In the later case, a cryptocurrency transaction between a merchant and a consumer is a direct payment through a blockchain based cryptocurrency platform.?

Fig. 5 Blockchain based Cryptocurrency Platform, Source: Adopted from [9]

The authors fail to mention and assume that KYC and AML compliance requirements are less important in the case where there is no bank to facilitate crypto payments on behalf of consumers and merchants. This is actually far from the case, and the reality is that consumers using mobile wallets on smartphones need to pass KYC in order to make full use of the application. Equally, in order for amerchanr to be onboarded and supplied a mobile POS device, they themselves will have to go through an enhanced due diligence process for KYC. Due to pressures from global regulators, anonymous payment transactions may not flourish, and regulatory compliance will be the only way forward. Knowing that mobile smartphone cryptocurrency payments have such potential in developing countries, these are the very places that will be the most difficult to perform extensive KYC due to possible lack of documentation. However, it will not be impossible, and will be dependent on the resourcefulness of those excited to conduct transactions using cryptocurrency.

VIII. Blockchain Interoperability with Cross-chain Stablecoin Payments

One of the main barriers for the adoption of cryptocurrency as an alternative payment method is the highly volatile nature and extreme price fluctuations inherent to the cryptocurrency market. Fortunately, there has been some radical innovation within the space to minimize price volatility through special cryptocurrencies called stablecoins. These stablecoin cryptocurrencies are generally backed by some “stable” asset or basket of digital assets, and come in three (3) different flavours. The (3) stabilization mechanisms for stablecoins are: 1. [off-chain collateralized stablecoins] ie. Tether $USDT, 2. [on-chain collateralized stablecoins] ie. MakerDAO $DAI, and 3. [algorithmic stablecoins] ie. Ampleforth $AMPL. According to stablecoin index website published by Messari Research, the total market capitalization of stablecoins has grown from $2.6 billion at the start of 2019 to $20 billion by early October 2020.?

Fig. 6 - Stablecoin Market Capitalization, Source: Adopted from [10]

In the end, the "behind-the-scenes" workings of blockchain based cryptocurrency payments will be largely dependent on the adoption and #interoperability of stablecoin based payment platforms. A more recent graduate thesis paper, “Blockchain Interoperability with Cross-chain Stablecoin Payments” [11] which attempts to propose a solution to the different stablecoin blockchain platforms inefficiently operating in silos. The paper proposes a decentralized conversion service between stablecoins from different blockchains, and in this case, an experimental transfer and conversion of an Ethereum based stablecoin to a Cosmos stablecoin. The research conducted has gone in-depth to cover most of the main stablecoin ecosystem platforms that are involved in supporting interoperability protocols between different blockchain networks. An important finding the paper reveals is that there is a limitation with the different cross-chain bridges in that only swaps can take place between two specific blockchains at a time. Much more research is required to further test stablecoin cross-chain swaps.

Fig. 7? Transfer between different stablecoins implemented on different blockchains, Source: Adopted from [11]

IX. Blockchain Games: A Survey

With all the potential applications of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, there has not been one single domain to really take off and utilize the full potential of cryptocurrency. Today, blockchain based cryptocurrencies are mostly popular as speculative investments where investors are buying cryptocurrency with the hopes that there will be a price increase in the token. Other than the successful 2017-2018 fund raising activities through ICOs and the associated smart contracts that govern them, most of the cryptocurrency based platforms and decentralized applications (DApps) are still being developed and while some are evolving in the case of cryptocurrency wallets. One niche market that aligns very well with blockchain and cryptocurrency is the gaming market. The demographics of gaming users, the inherent digital nature of transactions, the decentralized and transparent smart contract based games all provide for a vibrant and highly transactional ecosystem. Digital assets and user generated content is now owned by the gamers versus the gaming operators that previously controlled the centralized gaming platforms. These new digital assets are transferable and can be used cross-platform on compatible blockchain gaming systems.

The blockchain gaming paper analyzed, “Blockchain Games: A Survey”[12] takes a statistical approach and performs surveys to provide insight on the state-of-the-art blockchain based games. The researchers studied twenty-three (23) games, and gathered data based on four (4) categories: 1. Rule Transparency, 2. Asset Ownership, 3. Asset Reusability, 4. User-Generated Content in order to produce this study. This academic paper merely places identified games under each of the respective category classifications where they fit. The blockchain platform used is identified and a short description of the game is provided.?

Fig. 9? Blockchain Game Categories, Source: Adopted from [12]

What could be deduced from this study is that although there are some limitations at this early stage in the development of decentralized blockchain based games, there has been progress developing games on certain game friendly blockchain platforms that utilize smart contracts such Ethereum, EOS and TRON. In terms of daily active users (DAU) and transaction volume, the EOS blockchain platform seems to consistently outperform Ethereum due to free gas fees and faster transaction speeds EOS provides. Real money gaming, or gambling games such as online casinos in general from data analyzed appear to have the highest DAU and daily transaction volumes. The paper highlights user experience and stickiness as the main issues for blockchain gaming entertainment adoption, but the study fails to propose concrete potential solutions that may enhance game play.?

X. Conclusion

This secondary research literature review performed to analyze the latest in cryptocurrency innovations has convincingly shown that the blockchain based cryptocurrency market is in for substantial adoption and exponential growth periods in the coming years. Today, there is much more academic and industry generated content on various subject matters surrounding cryptocurrencies, but it is quite evident that the amount of data available is only scratching the surface. Due to being such a new industry, it is normal that the white papers reviewed for the most part appeared to be open-ended and non-conclusive in their findings. To better enhance this working paper, plans are to incorporate more definitive secondary research methods, and possibly compare different approaches and solutions to existing research. From a general mass public perspective, the topic of cryptocurrency is becoming more and more frequent in discussion, and the public is starting to become more curious about this alternative digital currency system. It’s starting to become more common to hear more people inquiring about buying cryptocurrency, in particular, Bitcoin.?

Satashi Nakamoto’s initial white-paper described a peer-to-peer payment system as one of the first proposed applications of blockchain technology. Instead, both retail and enterprise investors have got involved with Cryptocurrencies to be used as speculative investments. Today the majority of people are buying, selling and trading cryptocurrency instead of using crypto as an alternative payment method over traditional payment methods such as cash, pre-paid debit and credit cards. The main issue today inhibiting mass adoption usage of cryptocurrency for payments is the volatility, complexity and lack of understanding by existing payment ecosystems including merchants and consumers. The tech savvy millennials in the gaming sector may be one of the few early adopters of cryptocurrency for payments associated with gaming activity especially in-app or in-game purchases. The use of stablecoins and accomplishing interoperability amongst different blockchains to support cross-chain stablecoin payments and transfer will be key to mass adoption of crypto payments.

From this paper and applied research previously performed, further advanced research is planned to cover what the current role and future trends of blockchain and cryptocurrency are in the online gaming sector, in particular within the millennial dominant esports niche. More specifically, further investigation on how cryptocurrencies are being used as a primary financial asset and mode of payment within both social gaming and real money gaming industries. A particular subset and specialisation within cryptocurrency that will be explored in-depth is stablecoin technology[13], and their use for cross-border remittance and payments between online gaming operators and their customers. Furthermore, the advanced research will cover various use cases of cryptocurrency including in-app game purchases and the various technologies used to enable these transactions. Research will also include how cryptocurrency payments are implemented within gaming technology architecture and identify existing technical platforms and system integrators driving this niche market forward. The advanced research will also incorporate new, innovative proposals and solutions to how stablecoins can be a key component to solve cryptocurrency volatility issues for payments in the esports gaming sector.?

References:

[1] C. Vi?uela, J. Sapena, G. Wandosell, The Future of Money and the Central Bank Digital Currency Dilemma, Sustainability 202020 November 2020, 12(22), 9697

[2] CoinMarketCap OpCo, LLC [Online].Available: https://coinmarketcap.com/. [Accessed: 03 January 2021]

[3] S. Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, https://bitcoin.org/, 31 Oct. 2008

[4] MarketsandMarkets Research Private Ltd., Blockchain Market by Component (Platform and Services), Provider (Application, Middleware, and Infrastructure), Type (Private, Public, and Hybrid), Organization Size, Application Area (BFSI, Government, IT & Telecom), and Region - Global Forecast to 2025, May 2020, . [Online]. Available:? https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/blockchain-technology-market-90100890.html#?

[5] S. Howell, M. Niessner, and D. Yermack, "Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales", The Review of Financial Studies / v 33 n 9 2020

[6] J. Liang, L. Li, W. Chen, D. Zeng, “Towards an Understanding of Cryptocurrency: A Comparative Analysis of Cryptocurrency, Foreign Exchange, and Stock”, Chinese Academy of Sciences, IEEE, 2019, pp. 137-139.

[7] Z. Li?, Q. Lu, S. Chen, Y. Liu, and X. Xu, “A Landscape of Cryptocurrencies” IEEE, 2019, pp. 165-166.

[8] IEEE Standard for General Process of Cryptocurrency Payment, Blockchain Standards Committee of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society, 4 June 2020?

[9] L. Xu, L. Chen, Z. Gao, L. Carranco, X. Fan, N. Shah, Nour Diallo, W. Shi, "Supporting Blockchain Based Cryptocurrency Mobile Payment With Smart Devices", IEEE Consumer Electronics Society, 7 February 2020, pp. 26-33

[10] Stablecoin Market Cap - Stacked chart of aggregate stablecoin market capitalization. [Online].Available: https://messari.io/. [Accessed: Oct. 10, 2020]

[11] R. Pandhi, "Blockchain Interoperability with Cross-chain Stablecoin Payments", Florida Institute of Technology, May 2020?

[12] T. Min, H. Wang, Y. Guo and W. Cai, "Blockchain Games: A Survey" University of Hong Kong, IEEE, 2020

[13] Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Interpretive Letter #1174, “OCC Chief Counsel’s Interpretation on National Bank and Federal Savings Association Authority to Use Independent Node Verification Networks and Stablecoins for Payment Activities” 4 January, 2021.