Regulations, Potentials and Risks of Cryptocurrencies

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,0, Boston University, language: English, abstract: It is the objective of this paper to elaborate on what Cryptocurrencies are and which potentials they bear. At first, an overview of the current Cryptocurrency market is given before the current financial system is explained, in order to understand the different nature of Cryptocurrencies. This is followed by the analysis of regulations of virtual coins in the United States, Europe, and China. Moreover, four main potentials of Cryptocurrencies will be examined before general risks will be explained. To end, a conclusion and an outlook of the Cryptocurrency environment is given.Cryptocurrencies are a phenomenon which has recently conquered the financial market. While Digitization processes are continuously disrupting the sector, Cryptocurrencies are the latest evolvement. During their presence of the last ten years, they remained generally uncontrolled and unregulated by financial authorities. They do not have any company or government issuing them and rather serve as an independent, peer-to-peer medium of exchange. They are virtual tokens which are stored and distributed on a so-called Distributed Ledger, the Blockchain, on which every participant of the network obtains the latest version in an encrypted format.The market of Cryptocurrencies has witnessed high fluctuations and the appearance of new currencies, reaching its ultimate peak at the beginning of 2018. Since traditional measures do not work and these coins, since they are privately created and do not have an underlying asset, it is hard for financial authorities to regulate or even predict the movement of Cryptocurrencies. However, various potentials exist, which may change the financial system by the regulated implementation and acceptance of virtual coins.