0000000000793799
AUTHOR
Josephine Dufitinema
On the Tail Risk of Cyberattacks in the Bitcoin Market
In the era of digitalization, cryptocurrencies have become an alternative asset for both retail and institutional investors. While the new emerging digital ecosystem based on blockchain technology has been praised for offering plenty of advantages such as decentralization, discretion or increased efficiency in terms of faster settlements among others, investors need to be aware of new types of risks such as hacking incidents. In the 2011-2018 period, about 1.7 million unit of Bitcoin have been stolen corresponding to losses accumulating more than $655 million highlighting the societal impact of this criminal activity. The novel aspect of our study is that it employs a recently proposed appr…
How Much Are We Willing To Lose in Cyberspace? On the Tail Risk of Scam in the Market for Initial Coin Offerings
From an entrepreneurial perspective, Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has become an alternative way for attaining funding for business projects using the new evolving digital financial market for tokens. Unfortunately, the majority of all ICOs are subject to scam which casts doubt on this new innovative tool for acquiring funding. Using a unique intensively hand-collected data set covering more than 5000 ICOs which have been launched in the August 2014–December 2019 period, we could identify 1014 ICOs exhibiting data on raised funding whereof 576 turned out to be scams projects. The cumulative losses due to scam in the ICO market correspond to $10.12 billion which is 66% of our identified overal…