My Final Project.docx

A Project On A STUDY ON CRYPTOCURRENCY-BITCOIN

Submitted To Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Award of the Degree of Bachelor of Bussiness Administration

Submitted By Amaya.M.Bais Under The Guidance Of Mr.Hitesh Raicha

Department of Commerce, Management & Computers 2018-2019 Hislop College, Nagpur

INDEX

SERIAL NO.

PARTICULARS

1.

Chapter 1-Executive Summary

2.

Chapter 2-Introduction to Topic

3.

Chapter 3-Research Methodology

4.

Chapter 4-Analysis and Findings of the study

5.

Chapter 5-Conclusions and Recommendations of the study.

6.

Chapter 6-Bibliography

7.

Chapter 7-Appendices

PAGE NO.

CERTIFICATE

I hereby declare that, the project report entitled “A study on CryptocurrencyBitcoin” submitted by Amaya.M.Bais to Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur for the award of Bachelor Of Business Administration Degree in the faculty of commerce is a bonafide and original research work carried out under my guidance and supervision. The research is sufficiently high standard to warrant its submission to the university of the said degree. No part of this project has been submitted for any degree or diploma, or published in any other form. The assistance and the help to the researchers during the course of the investigation in the form of basic source material and information have been duly acknowledged.

Place: - Nagpur Date: -

Dr(.Mrs.)Jigisha Naidu

Guide:

Director

Internal Examiner:

External Examiner

DECLARATION

. I hereby declare that A STUDY ON CRYPTOCURRENCY-BITCOIN submitted by AMAYA.M.BAIS is a result of my own research work under the guidance of Mr.HITESH RAICHA for the partial fulfillment of Bachelor Of Business Administration and that the same has not been previously submitted to any degree/diploma.

Place:- Nagpur Date:-

Signature of the Student

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The project work has been undertaken as a part of curriculum of final year degree in Bachelor of Business Administration. The purpose of doing this is to impart integrated approach to our education. It gives us an opportunity to apply our concepts vis-à-vis the subject we undertake to study. It is said that success is the symbol of diligence, inspiration and innovation. Success only smiles on those who strive hard for it. So I would like to ascribe my success to the hard work of my guide Mr. HITESH RAICHA whose endeavor for perfection, personal attention, enthusiasm and foresight has contributed in a big way in completing this project with considerable ease within the stipulated time. At last my sincere thanks to the members of Department Of Commerce, Management & Computers, friends and all those who helped me directly or indirectly in the completion of this project work for all my inspiration and strength in completing this work

Amaya.M.Bais

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Even as authorities tightened the noose and prices plummeted, “how to invest in bitcoin” remained one of the most searched terms on Google India in 2018. This sums up the perils and promises of trading in cryptoassets in the country. The year 2018 was a decisive one for India’s cryptocurrency ecosystem. From a central bank diktat prohibiting banks from dealing in cryptocoins, to the country’s biggest exchange, Zebpay, downing its shutters, investors and traders believe they’ve seen it all in the past year.

In December 2017, the price of bitcoin was at an all-time high of nearly $20,000, and investors in India were making a beeline for cryptocoins. This year, however, prices plummeted and currently a bitcoin is priced at around $4,000. Traders also rue that confusion reigned supreme on the regulatory front, in the absence of a clear government stance. India is still working on draft regulations for virtual currencies and a panel headed by India’s economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg was expected to submit its findings to a panel this month.Now, all eyes are on prime minister Narendra Modi’s government, which is expected to draft a clear policy on bitcoin and its ilk soon. At its peak in late 2017, major crypto exchanges were adding between 300,000 and 400,000 users every month. However, now the number has trickled down to just a few thousand, thanks to an unfavourable policy environment, say industry experts. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had first warned against digital currencies as early as 2013, but it tightened regulatory norms earlier this year. In April, the regulator instructed all banks in the country to wind down business operations with cryptocurrency exchanges and traders within three months. This meant no more trading in rupees on cryptobourses. The exchanges refused to give up, though, and approached the supreme court. While the final hearing in this case commenced on Sept. 11, the case hasn’t moved ahead much thanks to several adjournments and delays. The next hearing is on Jan. 15, 2019. In order to stay afloat, exchanges have experimented with peer-to-peer (P2P) and crypto-tocrypto trading. This allows traders and the exchanges to circumvent the RBI ban as transactions are not routed through the exchanges’ bank accounts.“Before the banking ban, no one had thought that the P2P model could be successful in India as it was, in its earlier form, riddled with problems. However, investors took to it really easily and it has been working very well,” said Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX, a cryptocurrency exchange in India. Not all exchanges weathered the storm, though. In September, Zebpay decided to move to Malta after shutting down its India operations. “The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customers’, ability to transact business meaningfully,” the cryptobourse said in a blog after announcing its decision to shift its headquarters. There is a threat of more such firms shifting overseas, “if there is no clarity on the regulations, or if the stance continues to be unfavourable,” said Shetty. The absence of a well-Since last December, the government has become more vocal about its displeasure with cryptocurrencies, even likening it to a ponzi scheme. In the 2018 annual budget in February, finance minister Arun Jaitley reiterated that he will not make cryptocoins a part of the formal payments system.defined government policy has left the ecosystem in a state of limbo. Since last December, the government has become more vocal about its displeasure with cryptocurrencies, even likening it to a ponzi scheme. In the 2018 annual budget in February, finance minister Arun Jaitley reiterated that he will not make cryptocoins a part of the formal payments system.

Then, in October, the government said it was looking to “ban (the) use of private cryptocurrencies in India.” Meanwhile, the Garg committee’s recommendations are awaited. In an affidavit filed in the supreme court last month, the government said the panel’s draft report will be submitted to an inter-ministerial group this month. Court documents suggest that the government is still in the process of choosing between regulation and a ban, which leaves some hope for the industry. Due to the confusion, the ecosystem has stagnated because businesses have put their plans on hold,” said Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder and CEO of Unocoin, a cryptocurrency exchange. Vishwanath is, however, hopeful that there will be more clarity on the regulatory stance in 2019 so that the ecosystem can become stronger. Besides, the government has indicated its keenness to develop blockchain technology in India. Since cryptocurrencies and blockchain are intertwined, the industry is optimistic. “In 2019, we are going to see an increasing number of blockchain products and services with real use cases. And this is going to lead to a bull run in the virtual currency market,” said Shubham Yadav, co-founder of Coindelta, another Indian cryptocurrency exchange. The year 2017 was a bull market for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, while in 2018 they were in the throes of a bear hug. As we approach 2019, the industry is hoping that once again the tide will turn. “This year has been a wild ride. Lot of new investors came into the scene after watching the parabolic move in bitcoin last year and are now scared,” said a cryptocurrency enthusiast who identifies himself by the pseudonym Gabru and runs groups with over 4,000 members on the instant messaging platform Telegram. “People who have been in crypto for longer know that this is just another market cycle like the past ones, when Bitcoin went down 80-90% (in previous bear markets) but still few years later was able to break all-time highs. I think this time is no different.”

INTRODUCTION

Cryptocurrency is an electronic money created with technology controlling its creation and protecting transactions, while hiding the identities of its users. Crypto- is short for “cryptography”, and cryptography is computer technology used for security, hiding information, identities and more. Currency simply means “money currently in use”. Cryptocurrencies are a digital cash designed to be quicker, cheaper and more reliable than our regular government issued money. Instead of trusting a government to create your money and banks to store, send and receive it, users transact directly with each other and store their money themselves. Because people can send money directly without a middleman, transactions are usually very affordable and fast. To prevent fraud and manipulation, every user of a cryptocurrency can simultaneously record and verify their own transactions and the transactions of everyone else. The digital transaction recordings are known as a “ledger” and this ledger is publicly available to anyone. With this public ledger, transactions become efficient, permanent, secure and transparent. With public records, cryptocurrencies don’t require you trust a bank to hold your money. They don’t require you trust the person you are doing business with to actually pay you. Instead, you can actually see the money being sent, received, verified, and recorded by thousands of people. This system requires no trust. This unique positive quality is known as “trustless. The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin.

THE HISTORY OF CRYPTOCURRENCY:

The first decentralized digital cryptocurrency can be traced back to “bit gold” (not to be confused with Bitgold), which was worked on by Nick Szabo between 1998 and 2005 but was never implemented. Although bit gold is considered the first precursor to bitcoin, cryptocurrency pioneer David Chaum’s company DigiCash (a company founded in 1989 which attempted to innovate digital currency), Wei Dai’s b-money (a conceptual system published in 1998 which Satoshi cites it in the Bitcoin white paper), and “e-gold” (a centralized digital currency that started in 1996) are all notable early mentions. With that history noted, modern digital currency starts in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto (an anonymous person and/or group) released their paper detailing what would become Bitcoin.

Bitcoin became the first decentralized digital coin when it was created in 2008. It then went public in 2009

As of 2018, Bitcoin is the most commonly known and used cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, other coins including Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), and more are notable mentions. Given the popularity of Bitcoin as well as its history, the term “altcoin” is sometimes used to describe alternative cryptocurrencies to bitcoin (especially coins with small market caps). As of January 2015, there were over 500 different types of cryptocurrencies – or altcoins – for trade in online markets. However, only 10 of them had market capitalizations over $10 million. As of September 2017, there were over 1,100 cryptocurrencies and the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies reached an all-time high surpassing $60 billion! Then, by December 2017, the total market cap reached $600 billion (a multiple of 10 in only two months). In other words, although the future is uncertain, cryptocurrency seems to be more than just a fad. Today cryptocurrency is shaping up to be a growing market that (despite the pros and cons) is likely here for the long haul.

INTRODUCTION TO BITCOIN: Bitcoin is a digital,decentralized,partially anonymous currency,not backed by any government or other legal entity,and not redeemable for gold or other commodity.Its proponents argue that Bitcoin has many properties that could make it an ideal currency for mainstream consumers and merchants for example,bitcoins are highly liquid ,have low transaction cost,can be used to send payments quickly across the internet and can be used to make micropayments.This new currency could also hold the key to allowing organizations such as Wikileaks,hated by government,to receive donations and conduct business anonymously. Amszingly,as of October 2011,a bitcoin (currency ticker BTC)IS WORTH ABOUT TWO U.S Dollors (USD),there are about $20 million of bitcoins in existence,there are probably around 20,000 Bitcoins are traded everyday.

Most of the currencies in the world,including the reserve currencies are flat currencies.The term flat currencies refers to the currencies that are issued by a government,and the government promises to pay the holder of such currencies an equivalent amount in gold.Ifneeded.Thus,these currencies usually hav a central regulatory body which issues them ,and are consequently called’centralized’.in fact,at the end of the day they have a central regulatory body which issues them and are consequently called ‘centralized’. In fact,at the end of the day ,they have the value they have ,because somebody said so.The modern state can make anything it chooses as acceptable currency,without any further backing of any kind,even without a connection with gold. Nitcoins are the most sought after cryptocurrency in the market.However there are several other currencies which have gained momentum ever since the concept has been introduced. Below are some other of cryptocurrencies that exist: 1. Ethereum-Ethereum is the second most famous name in the virtual currency market. It somewhat similar to the concept of bitcoins however it possesses some additional attributes. It is purely a block chain based platform. What makes it special is the Ethereal Virtual Machine. The block chain in ethereal is used not to store data of the transaction but to make sure smooth run of a decentralized application. 2.Ripple-Ripple is more in the nature of a payment protocol created and developed by a company named ripple, which is based on the concept of Real time Gross Settlement. It was initially released in year 2012. 3. NEM – Similar to bitcoinNEm is also a peer-to-peer block chain platform launched in the year 2015.It uses the unique proof-of –importance algorithm, a way to validate transactions and achieve the distributed consensus. 4. Litecoin- Initially introduced in the year 2011, litecoin is mostly identical to bitcoin.What make it stand out is the use of segregated witness and the lightning network. Some other crypto currencies are bbcoins and doge coins which have not gained much significance due to their technical shortcomings and inability to standout. Terms related to Bitcoin • Bitcoin – Bitcoin is the name of the project started by Satoshi Nakamoto to create the world’s first decentralized crypto-currency. A Bitcoin is the name of a single unit of the Bitcoin currency, abbreviated as BTC. • Address – An address is a key pair, including public and private key, used by user to access their bitcoins. • Transaction – A Transaction is a single operation of moving Bitcoins from one set of one or more Addresses to another set of one or more Addresses. A Transaction is similar to a bank transfer.

• Block – A Block is a package of information containing most notably all Transactions created since the previous Block, as well as reference to that preceding Block. • Block Chain – A Block Chain is a collection of linked Blocks from the most current one to the Genesis Block. • Network – The Bitcoin Network is a collective name for all applications connected together that exchange information about Bitcoin Blocks, Transactions and connected Clients. • Wallet – A Wallet is a set of Addresses created by the Client and saved locally in a file. • Miner – A Miner is a computer machine and accompanying application dedicated to creating new Blockish significance due to their technical shortcomings and inability to standout.

History of bitcoin Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptographyto control its creation and management, rather than relying on central authorities.[1] The presumed pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto integrated many existing ideas from the cypherpunk community when creating bitcoin. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant currency both on and offline – from the mid 2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.[

PRE-HISTORY Prior to the release of bitcoin there were a number of digital cash technologies starting with the issuer based ecash protocols of David Chaum and Stefan Brands.[3][4][5] Adam Backdeveloped hashcash, a proof-of-work scheme for spam control. The first proposals for distributed digital scarcity based cryptocurrencies were Wei Dai's b-money[6] and Nick Szabo's bit gold.[7][8] Hal Finney developed reusable proof of work (RPOW) using hashcash as its proof of work algorithm.[9] In the bit gold proposal which proposed a collectible market based mechanism for inflation control, Nick Szabo also investigated some additional aspects including a Byzantine fault-tolerant agreement protocol based on quorum addresses to store and transfer the chained proof-of-work solutions, which was vulnerable to Sybil attacks, though

CREATION OF BITCOIN: On 18 August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered.[10] Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System[11] was posted to a cryptography mailing list.[12] This paper detailed methods of using a peer-to-peer network to generate what was described as "a system for

electronic transactions without relying on trust".[13][14][15] On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin(block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins.[13][16] Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.[17] The text refers to a headline in The Times published on 3 January 2009.[18] This note has been interpreted as both a timestamp of the genesis date and a derisive comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.[19]:18 The first open source bitcoin client was released on 9 January 2009, hosted at SourceForge.[20][21] One of the first supporters, adopters, contributor to bitcoin and receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was programmer Hal Finney. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software the day it was released, and received 10 bitcoins from Nakamoto in the world's first bitcoin transaction on 12 January 2009.[22][23] Other early supporters were Wei Dai, creator of bitcoin predecessor b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bitcoin predecessor bit gold.[13] In the early days, Nakamoto is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins.[24] Before disappearing from any involvement in bitcoin, Nakamoto in a sense handed over the reins to developer Gavin Andresen, who then became the bitcoin lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation, the 'anarchic' bitcoin community's closest thing to an official public face.[25] The value of the first bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the bitcoin forum with one notable transaction of 10,000 BTC used to indirectly purchase two pizzas delivered by Papa John's.[13] On 6 August 2010, a major vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or blockchain, which let users bypass bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of bitcoins.[26][27] On 15 August, the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction, and sent to two addresses on the network. Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked to an updated version of the bitcoin protocol.[28] This was the only major security flaw found and exploited in bitcoin's history

SATOSHI NAKAMOTO "Satoshi Nakamoto" is presumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who designed the original bitcoin protocol in 2008 and launched the network in 2009. Nakamoto was responsible for creating the majority of the official bitcoin software and was active in making modifications and posting technical information on the bitcoin forum.[13] There has been much speculation as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto with suspects including Dai, Szabo, and Finney – and accompanying denials.[29][30] The possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto was a computer collective in the European financial sector has also been discussed.[31] Investigations into the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto were attempted by The New Yorker and Fast Company. The New Yorker's investigation brought up at least two possible candidates: Michael Clear and Vili Lehdonvirta. Fast Company's investigation brought up circumstantial evidence linking an encryption patent application filed by Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry on 15 August 2008, and the bitcoin.org domain name which was registered 72 hours later. The patent application (#20100042841) contained networking and encryption technologies similar to bitcoin's, and textual analysis revealed that the phrase "... computationally impractical to reverse" appeared in both the patent application and bitcoin's whitepaper.[11] All three inventors explicitly denied being Satoshi Nakamoto.[32][33] In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki is Satoshi Nakamoto.[34] Later in 2013 the Israeli researchers Dorit Ron and Adi Shamirpointed to Silk Road-linked Ross William Ulbricht as the possible person behind the cover. The two researchers based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions.[35] These allegations were contested[36] and Ron and Shamir later retracted their claim.[37] Nakamoto's involvement with bitcoin does not appear to extend past mid-2010.[13] In April 2011, Nakamoto communicated with a bitcoin contributor, saying that he had "moved on to other things".[17] Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's 500-plus bitcoin forum posts; the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Because this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time, and the hours of 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. GMT are midnight to 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (North American Eastern Standard Time). Other clues suggested that Nakamoto was British: A newspaper headline he had encoded in the genesis block came from the UKpublished newspaper The Times, and both his forum posts and his comments in the bitcoin source code used British English spellings, such as "optimise" and "colour".[13] An Internet search by an anonymous blogger of texts similar in writing to the bitcoin whitepaper suggests Nick Szabo's "bit gold" articles as having a similar author.[29] Nick denied being Satoshi, and stated his official opinion on Satoshi and bitcoin in a May 2011 article.[38] In a March 2014 article in Newsweek, journalist Leah McGrath Goodman doxed Dorian S. Nakamoto of Temple City, California, saying that Satoshi Nakamoto is the man's birth name. Her methods and conclusion drew widespread criticism.[39][40] In June 2016, the London Review of Books published a piece by Andrew O'Hagan about Nakamoto.[41] The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto still remains a matter of disput

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

MEANING OF RESEARCH Research is an academic activity and as such the term should be used in a technical sense. According to Clifford Woody research comprises defining and redefining problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested solutions; collecting, organizing and evaluating data; making deductions and reaching conclusions; and at last carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis. D. Steiner and M. Stephenson in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences define research as “the manipulation of things, concepts or symbols for the purpose of generalizing to extend, correct or verify knowledge, whether that knowledge aids in construction of theory or in the practice of an art.” Research is, thus, an original contribution to the existing stock of knowledge making for its advancement. It is the per suit of truth with the help of study, observation, comparison and experiment. In short, the search for knowledge through objective and systematic method of finding solution to a problem is research. The systematic approach concerning generalization and the formulation of a theory is also research. As such the term ‘research’ refers to the systematic method consisting of enunciating the problem, formulating a hypothesis, collecting the facts or data, analyzing the facts and reaching certain conclusions either in the form of solutions(s) towards the concerned problem or in certain generalizations for some theoretical formulation

IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH  To those students who are to write a master’s or Ph.D. thesis, research may mean careerism or a way to attain a high position in the social structure.  To professionals in research methodology, research may mean a source of livelihood.  To philosophers and thinkers, research may mean the outlet for new ideas and insights.

 To literary men and women, research may mean the development of new styles and creative work.  To analysts and intellectuals, research may mean the generalizations of new theories.

RESERACH PROCESS Before embarking on the details of research methodology and techniques, it seems appropriate to present a brief overview of the research process. Research process consists of series of actions or steps necessary to effectively carry out research and the desired sequencing of these steps. At times, the first step determines the nature of the last step to be undertaken. If subsequent procedures have not been taken into account in the early stages, serious difficulties may arise which may even prevent the completion of the study. One should remember that the various steps involved in a research process are not mutually exclusive; nor are they separate and distinct. They do not necessarily follow each other in any specific order and the researcher has to be constantly anticipating at each step in the research process the requirements of the subsequent steps. However, the following order concerning various steps provides a useful procedural guideline regarding the research process:

• • • • • • • • • • •

Formulating the research problem; Extensive literature survey; Developing the hypothesis; Preparing the research design; Determining sample design; Collecting the data; Execution of the project; Analysis of data; Hypothesis testing. Generalizations and interpretation, and Preparation of the report or presentation of the results, i.e. formal write-up of conclusions reached.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM:

The author Henry Miller once said, “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.” And confusion seems to run rampant in many articles that are critical of blockchain, while the real problem is with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. There are key differences between Bitcoin and blockchain. Blockchain is a digitized, distributed and secure ledger that guarantees immutable transactions and solves the trust problem when two parties exchange value. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin rely on blockchain to conduct transactions. Yet blockchain transcends cryptocurrencies and offers many solutions that are likely to disrupt numerous industries with some profound implications. In a simple metaphoric comparison, blockchain is like an engine that can be used in airplanes, vehicles, elevators, escalators, washers and dryers. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is like the first Ford Model T car that was manufactured in 1908. This fundamental difference helps in understanding the polymorphic value of blockchain and the problems with bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies. One area of confusion about blockchain is the perceived negative environmental impact, but this is a problem specific to bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies. It is caused by the limitations of the decade-old design of bitcoin and due to Bitcoin’s mining process that requires a “proof of work” to validate transactions. Proof of work is a mathematical algorithm that is essential to validate transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain and consumes huge computational power and energy close to what Denmark consumes annually. Other cryptocurrencies operate differently. Ether, for example, uses the proof-of-stake concept, which is energy efficient, while the cryptocurrency ripple does not require mining. Another misconstrued problem is blockchain's slow performance, which is, again, a Bitcoin issue. Bitcoin’s network requires an average of 10 minutes to create a block, and it's estimated that it can only manage seven transactions per second (TPS). Ethereum does better (20 TPS), and the IBM blockchain (1,000 TPS) and Ripple (1,500 TPS) are even more impressive.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

• • •

The project can be used as a source of information. It gives the idea about the effects of bitcoin and its associates before and after its innovation. Through this project we can examine the current position of bitcoin in the Indian which will help the internal and external investors for investing strategically. This report will also provide the figures working capital and the loss which is being recovered post innovation of bitcoin..

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY: The main objectives of the study are as follows:  Understanding the concept of Bitcoin.  Analysing the position of Bitcoin in India  Studying the regulatory concerns regarding the Bitcoin.  Understanding the intellectual property issues.  Analysing the Security, privacy and Data Protection issues.  Understanding and analyzing the other risks and vulnerability in Bitcoin transactions.  Studying the regulatory considerations and setting up of Bitcoin related business in India.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS:

DATA COLLECTION Data for the purpose of research has been collected from secondary sources. The has then been analyzed in order to find out reasons of merger and its effects in Indian Banking System.

Primary Data It refers to the data that the investigator collects from the very first time. This type of data has not been collected earlier by this or any other investigator before. A primary Data will provide the investigator with the most reliable first hand information about the respondents. The investigators would have a clear idea about the technology uses, the statistical units employed, the research methodology and the size of sample technique.

Methods of Primary Data Collection:  Direct Personal Interview  Indirect Oral Interview  Mailed Questionnaire

 Schedules

Secondary Data It refers to the data that the investigator collects from another source. Past Investigators or agents collect data required for the study. The investigator is the first researcher or statistical to collect the data. Moreover, the investigator does not have a clear idea about the intricacies of the data. Methods Of Secondary Data Collection     

Internet Business Journals Libraries Social Books The data is being collected section wise and all the data that are being collected are of secondary data mode. By the help of internet and the Annual Report which is being published by the SBI.  However some findings and opinions are being collected from various articles written by economists or bankers to strengthen the facts and the research report.  Each and every financial data regarding the working capital, the effect on share holders post merger and the loss recovered by the Bank post merger are being collected from the annual report of SBI Annual Report 20172018  .For the comparative study of the working capital and the loss that is being recovered this current financial year as compared to previous year the SBI Annual Report 2016-2017 has also been referred where the bank has given its post merger assumptions regarding the deposits and advances and the treasury pool of the bank.

MEANING OF DATA ANALYSIS Data Analysis is the process of systematically applying statistical and/or logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data. According to Shamoo and Resnik (2003) various analytic procedures “provide a way of drawing inductive inferences from data and distinguishing the signal (the phenomenon of interest) from the noise (statistical fluctuations) present in the data”. While data analysis in qualitative research can include statistical procedures, many times analysis becomes an ongoing iterative process where data is continuously collected and analyzed almost simultaneously. Indeed, researchers generally analyze for patterns in observations through the entire data collection phase (Savenye, Robinson, 2004). The form of the analysis is determined by the specific qualitative approach taken (field study,

ethnography content analysis, oral history, biography, unobtrusive research) and the form of the data (field notes, documents, audiotape, and videotape).

ANALYSING THE CURRENT POSITION OF BITCOIN IN INDIA: Despite being down 80 percent from its all-time high, a fairly large number of investors are still cautious and shorting bitcoin in a low price range. Bitcoin shorts achieved a 3-week high earlier this week, demonstrating a lack of confidence of investors in the cryptocurrency market in the near-term performance of bitcoin.

1-Month Price Chart of Bitcoin (Source: Coinmarketcap.com) But, according to a trader known to the cryptocurrency industry as “Galaxy,” bitcoin at $3,000 may be a rare opportunity that does not come again in the future. WHY $3,000 FOR BITCOIN IS RARE According to Galaxy, since its inception, bitcoin has established a trend of reaching a new all-time high, enduring a steep decline in price, initiating an accumulation, and recovering to a new high.

Based on that trend, the trader said that investors will likely never see Bitcoin at $3,000 once again after April and the dominant cryptocurrency is en route to recovering in 1 to 2 months. He said: Although prices may appear to be random (to some), they actually create repeating patterns and trends. Observing this pattern makes April the last month of cheap BTC. And now, of course it will be cheap multiple times in the future, but never $3,000 cheap. There are several traders and technical analyst who foresee bitcoin replicating its price movement in November wherein it experienced three months of stability and fell by nearly 50 percent in the following month.

If bitcoin fails to cleanly break into the $4,000 region and surpass key resistance levels at $4,200 and $4,300, analysts have said that a retest of lows at $3,300 and $3,122 is a possibility. “Unless we break new local highs ($4,300), trend is still bearish. Expecting at least a dump back down to the green support level, maybe lower,” a trader said. However, the trend in which bitcoin experiences an extended period of stability and then plunges in price right after by a large margin was portrayed once in November.

In contrast, the trend in which bitcoin hits a new all-time high, endures an 85 percent correction, initiates an accumulation phase, and recovery has been around for 10 years of bitcoin’s existence.

WILL INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS FUEL BITCOIN MOMENTUM? Last month, Blocktower chief investment officer Ari Paul said that while he has been too optimistic about the rate of institutional adoption in the cryptocurrency market, he expects institutions to arrive in Q3 of 2019. Paul stated: I’ve been too optimistic about the pace of institutional adoption in the past. It’s coming, but I can’t estimate which quarter (Whether that’s this year or 2022) that we’ll see a big spike. As a humble guess, something like Q3 2019. Less than a month after Paul’s statement, the first two public pension funds in the U.S. invested in Morgan Creek Digital’s cryptocurrency fund, officially marking the entrance of institutional investors into the cryptocurrency sector. Although uncertain, depending on the pace of institutional adoption, the inflow of capital from institutions over the upcoming quarters could fuel the momentum of the asset if it begins its accumulation phase in 1 or 2 months as some traders predict.

REGULATORY CONCERNS REGARDING THE BITCOIN IN INDIA:

Although the RBI advises caution on its use, bitcoin is not illegal in India. Cryptocurrency exchanges operate freely and hence we can say that bitcoin is legal Topics crypto-money mint-india-wire rbisebigovernmentfinance ministryincome taxusers Income tax department surveyed the major bitcoin exchanges in India. The survey reports said, this was done to collect information about transactions and check whether there was a risk of tax evasion. This week, it was reported that the income tax department is set to issue notices to about 5,00,000 high net worth individuals trading on the exchange across India. This comes at a time when there are still no clear regulations on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin exchanges. Although the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advises caution on its use, bitcoin is not illegal in India. Cryptocurrency exchanges operate freely and hence we can say that bitcoin is legal. So, if it is a legal entity, why is there silence on its regulation? Also, who is responsible for regulating it? The RBI has so far issued three notifications pertaining to bitcoin and other virtual currencies (VC). In all these, starting December 2013, the RBI has cautioned users, holders and traders on the risk of these currencies and clarified that it has not given any licence or authorisation to any entity or company to operate such schemes or deals . In a December 2013 notification, the RBI said, “The creation, trading or usage of VCs including Bitcoins, as a medium for payment are not authorised by any central bank or monetary authority. No regulatory approvals, registration or authorisation is stated to have been obtained by the entities concerned for carrying on such activities." Other than cautioning the public, the RBI hasn’t taken any regulatory stance on virtual currencies yet. After repeated cautionary circulars from the apex bank, in April 2017 the government set up an inter-disciplinary committee—chaired by special secretary (economic affairs)—to examine the existing framework of virtual currencies. The committee was supposed to submit its report within 3 months. The committee was set up to take stock of the present status of virtual currencies both in India and globally, examine the existing global regulatory and legal structures governing virtual currencies, suggest measures for dealing with such virtual

currencies including issues relating to consumer protection, money laundering and examine any other matter related to virtual currencies that may be relevant. In December 2017, finance minister Arun Jaitley told the media that the government doesn’t consider bitcoin as a legal tender and it is working on recommendations for such currencies. Meanwhile, Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on 20 December said that if bitcoin is considered as a commodity derivative then Sebi might regulate it. In countries such as the US, the Sebi-equivalent regulatory body is looking into cryptocurrenices. Experts say, considering cryptocurrencies are looked at as a commodity, Sebi should look at regulating them. Though there are still no clear regulations or proper jurisdiction, the income-tax department is clear that tax has to be paid on all cryptocurrency transactions. Though there is no mention of cryptocurrencies in the Act, income tax will still have to be paid on any gains accruing from cryptocurrency transactions.

UPDATES PROGRESS ON CRYPTO REGULATION: The Indian government has reportedly provided an update on its progress toward the country’s regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. The government provided its latest stance in areas such as the national cryptocurrency and licensing of crypto businesses. It is pursuing crypto regulations “with due caution,” according to reports.

The Indian Ministry of Finance has reportedly answered some questions regarding cryptocurrencies asked by Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s bicameral parliament. A document circulating on social media details five questions as well as their answers by Shri Pon Radhakrishnan, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance. According to the document, the questions were to be answered on Dec. 28. One of the questions concerns the composition of the panel established to draft crypto regulations, its recommendations, and “the timeline for the expected release of the regulation,” the document reads. The minister explained that the government has constituted an inter-ministerial committee “under the chairmanship of Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, with representatives

from concerned departments to study all aspects of cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets including bitcoin.” The committee includes representation from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India, and the Central Board of Direct Taxes. The answer to this question reads: This document surfaced after the media reported on the panel recommending a ban on crypto transactions and another report claiming that there were recommendations to legalize cryptocurrencies with strong riders. Both cited anonymous sources. National Crypto and Licensing

In response to the question of legality, the minister wrote, “The government has not recognised cryptocurrencies as legal tender. The issue of permitting trading in cryptocurrencies is currently under examination by an interministerial committee.” The government also denied keeping track of the value of cryptocurrencies traded by Indian nationals within the country. Regarding licensing or authorizing any entities or businesses to deal with bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, the minister confirmed: No decision on licensing and authorising any entity or company to operate such schemes or deal with bitcoins or any virtual currency has been made as yet. Lastly, the minister also revealed that the committee “is examining all issues, including the pros and cons of the introduction of an official digital currency in India.”

INTELLACTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES:

India has witnessed a huge surge in the applications for intellectual property rights and their subsequent approvals in the last five years. According to statistics from Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), trademarks, copyrights and patent registrations have seen growth of 236 per cent, 233 per cent and 41 per cent respectively since 2016. Intellectual property (IP) refers to the intangible creation of human intellect in the form of patent, trade mark, copyright, trade secret. Growth in intellectual property in a country is indicative of technological progress and improved economic activity. In the year 2017-18 (data available till 31st Dec 2017) applications for 35,511 patents, 8,521 designs, 1,95,705 trade marks and 18,584 copyrights were filed with the patent office out of which 8,940 patents, 7,406 designs, 2,18,383 trademarks (includes previous year's pending applications) and 15,017 copyrights were granted registration.

The Indian government under the Make in India initiative has recognized intellectual property as one of the crucial factors in its vision for long-term development. The government is providing incentives for startups in the form of concessions in the application fees up to 80 per cent, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Government has also provided option of e-filing which saves the hassles of physically visiting the patent office to file an application. Moreover the government is also offering a 10 per cent discount on e-filing of patents. Since implementation of such measures, the number of applications for intellectual property has risen drastically. When used commercially, IP rights provide competitive advantage to its holder as it prevents unauthorised usage. SMEs can safeguard their know-how from bigger players in the market by registering their intellectual property.

IP rights would generate more profit for its holders in form of license fees, if such registered intellectual rights are used by other businesses with the IP right holder's permission.

IP rights is a very important asset for startups in raising funding as startups can convince sponsors about the viability of their business idea based on their patents and copyrights. It helps startups highlight a competitive edge over the existing businesses.

SECURITY,PRIVACY AND DATA PROTECTION ISSUES:

Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency that records all transactions in a distributed append-only public ledger called blockchain. The security of Bitcoin heavily relies on the incentivecompatible proof-of-work (PoW) based distributed consensus protocol, which is run by network nodes called miners. In exchange for the incentive, the miners are expected to honestly maintain the blockchain. Since its launch in 2009, Bitcoin economy has grown at an enormous rate, and it is now worth about 170 billions of dollars. This exponential growth in the market value of Bitcoin motivates adversaries to exploit weaknesses for profit, and researchers to discover new vulnerabilities in the system, propose countermeasures, and predict upcoming trends. B ITCOIN uses peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, and it operates without any trusted third party authority that may appear as a bank, a Chartered Accountant (CA), a notary, or any other centralized service [1]. In particular, an owner has full control over its bitcoins, and she could spend them anytime and anywhere without involving any centralized authority. Bitcoin design is open-source and nobody owns or control.Moreover, it is a cryptographically secure electronic payment system, and it enables transactions involving virtual currency in the form of digital tokens called Bitcoin coins (BTC or simply bitcoins)s it.

Since its deployment in 2009, Bitcoin has attracted a lots of attention from both academia and industry. With a market capitalization of 170 billion and more than 375,000 aggregate number of confirmed transactions per day (December 2017), Bitcoin is the most successful cryptocurrency to date. Given the amount of money at stake, Bitcoin is an obvious target for adversaries. Indeed, numerous attacks have been described targeting different aspects of the system, including double spending [2], netsplit [3], transaction malleability [4], networking attacks [5], or attacks targeting mining [6] [7] [8] and mining pools [9]. In [10], authors claim that “Bitcoin works in practice and not in theory” due to the lack of security research to find

out theoretical foundation for Bitcoin protocols. Until today, the incomplete existence of a robust theoretical base forces the security research community for dismissing the use of bitcoins. Existing security solutions for Bitcoin lacks the required measures that could ensure an adequate level of security for its users. We believe that security solutions should cover all the major protocols running critical functions in Bitcoin, such as blockchain, consensus, key management, and networking protocols. Although, the online communities have already started to use bitcoins with the belief that Bitcoin will soon take over the online trading business. For instance, “Wiki leaks” request its users to donate using the bitcoins. The request quote is “Bitcoin is a secure and anonymous digital currency, bitcoins cannot be easily tracked back to you, and are safer, and are the faster alternative to other donation methods”. Wiki leaks also support the use of Litecoin, another cryptocurrency, for the same reason [11]. Recently, Bitcoin technology is grabbing lots of attention from government bodies due to its increasing use by the malicious users to undermine legal controls. In [12], authors call bitcoins “Enigmatic and Controversial Digital Cryptocurrency” due to mysterious concepts underneath the Bitcoin system and severe opposition from the government. According to [13], the current bitcoin exchange rate is approximately USD 13k (as of December 2017) from around 1000 dollars at the start of 2016. The major technologies such as blockchain and consensus protocols that makes the Bitcoin a huge success will now also being envisioned in various next-generation applications, including smart trading in smart grids [14], Internet of Things (IoT) [15] [16], vehicular networks [17], healthcare data management [18], and smart cities [19], to name a few. As the length of popularity largely depends on the amount of security built on the system which surpasses all its other benefits, we aim to investigate the associated security and privacy issues in Bitcoin and its underlying techniques.

TRANSACTION AND PROOF OF WORK:

Bitcoin use transactions to move coins from one user wallet to another. In particular, the coins are represented in the form of transactions, more specifically, a chain of transactions. As depicted in Figure 1, the key fields in a transaction includes Bitcoin version, hash of the transaction, Locktime1 , one or more inputs, and one or more outputs. Every input in a transaction belongs to a particular user, and it consists of the following: (i) (ii) (iii)

hash pointer to a previous transaction which serves as the identifier of the transaction that includes the output we now want to utilise as an input, an index to specific unspent previous transaction output (UTXO) that we want to spend in the current transaction unlocking script (also referred to as scriptSig) which satisfies the conditions associated with the use of UTXO. While a transaction output consists of the number of bitcoins that are being transferred, locking script length, and locking script (also referred to as scriptPubKey) which imposes a condition that must be met before the UTXO can be spent. To authorize a transaction input, the corresponding user of the

(iv)

(v) (vi)

input provides the public key and the cryptographic signature generated using her private key. Multiple inputs are often listed in a transaction. All of the transaction’s input values are added up, and the total (excluding transaction fee, if any) is completely used by the outputs of the transaction. In particular, when the output of a previous transaction is used as the input in a new transaction, it must be spent in its entirety. Sometimes the coin value of the output is higher than what the user wishes to pay. In this case, the sender generates a new Bitcoin address, and sends the difference back to this address. For instance, Bob has 50 coins from one of its previous transaction’s output, and he wants to transfer 5 coins to Alice using that output as an input in a new transaction. For this purpose, Bob has to create a new transaction with one input (i.e., output from its previous transaction) and two or more outputs. In the outputs, one output will show that 5 coins are transferred to Alice, and other output(s) will show transfer of the remaining coins to one (or more) wallet(s) owned by Bob. With this approach, the Bitcoin achieves two 1 It indicates the earliest time or blockchain length when this transaction may be spent to the blockchain. goals: it implements the idea of change, and one can easily identify the unspent coins or balance of a user by only looking the outputs from its previous transactions. An output in a transaction specifies the number of coins being transferred along with the Bitcoin address of the new owner. These inputs and outputs are managed using a Forth-like scripting language which dictates the essential conditions to claim the coins. The dominant script in today’s market is the “Pay-to-PubKeyHash” (P2PKH) which requires only one signature from the owner to authorize a payment. While the other script is called “PaytoScriptHash” (P2SH) [22], which is typically used as multisignature addresses, but it also enables a variety of transaction types and supports future developments. Unlike central bank in which all the transactions are verified, processed, and recorded in a centralized private ledger, in Bitcoin every user acts as a bank and keep a copy of this ledger. In Bitcoin, the role of the distributed ledger is played by the so-called blockchain. However, storing multiple copies of the blockchain in the network adds new vulnerabilities in the system such as keeping the global view of the blockchain consistent. For instance, a user (say Alice) could generate two different transactions simultaneously using the same set of coins to two different receivers (say, Bob and Carol). This type of malicious behavior by a user is termed as double spending. If both the receiver processes the transaction independently based on their local view of the blockchain, and the transaction verification is successful, this leaves the blockchain into an inconsistent state. The main requirements to avoid the above problem is two-folded: (i) distribute the transaction verification process to ensure the correctness of the transaction, and

(ii)

everyone in the network should know quickly about a successfully processed transaction to ensure the consistent state of the blockchain. To fulfill the To fulfthe aforementioned requirements, Bitcoin uses the concept of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and a probabilistic distributed consensus protocol.aforementioned requirements, Bitcoin uses the concept of Proof-ofWork (PoW) and a probabilistic distributed consensus protocol.

The distributed transaction verification process ensures that a majority of miners will verify the legitimacy of a transaction before it is added in the blockchain. In this way, whenever the blockchain goes into an inconsistent state, all the nodes update their local copy of blockchain with the state on which a majority of miners agree, in this way the correct state of the blockchain is obtained by election. However, this scheme is vulnerable to the sybil attacks [23]. With sybil attack, a miner creates multiple virtual nodes in the network and these nodes could disrupt the election process by injecting false information in the network such as voting positive for a faulty transaction.Bitcoin counters the sybil attacks by making use of PoW based consensus model, in which to verify a transaction the miners have to perform some sort of computational task to prove that they are not virtual entities.

The PoW consists of a complex cryptographic math puzzle, similar to Adam Back’s Hashcash [24]. In particular, PoW involves scanning for a value (called nonce) that when hashed, such as with SHA256, the resulting hash begins with a number of zeros. The average work required is exponential to the number of zeros in the correct hash however, the verification process consists of a single step, i.e., by executing a single hash. In this way, PoW imposes a high level of computational cost on the transaction verification process, and the verification will be dependent on the computing power of a miner instead of the number of (possibly virtual) identities. The main idea is that it is much harder to fake the computing resources than it is to perform a sybil attack in the network. In practice, the miners do not mine individual transactions instead, they collect pending transactions to form a block. The miners mine a block by calculating the hash of that block along with a varying nonce. The nonce is varied until the resultant hash value becomes lower or equal to a given target value. The target is a 256-bit number that all miners share. Calculating the desired hash value is computationally difficult. For hashing, Bitcoin uses SHA-256 hash function [25]. Unless the cryptographic hash function finds the required hash value, the only option is to try different nonces until a solution (a hash value lower than the target) is discovered. Consequently, the difficulty of the puzzle depends on the target value, i.e., lower the target, the fewer solutions exist, hence more difficult the hash calculation becomes. Once a miner calculates the correct hash value for a block, it immediately broadcast the block in the network along with the calculated hash value and nonce, and it alsoappends

the block in its private blockchain. The rest of the miners when receiving a mined block can quickly verify its correctness by comparing the hash value given in the received block with the target value. The miners will also update their local blockchain by adding the newly mined block.

Once a block is successfully added in the blockchain (i.e., a majority of miners consider the block valid), the miner who first solved the PoW will be rewarded (as of May 2017, 12.5 BTCs) with a set of newly generated coins. This reward halves every 210,000 blocks. In particular, these mining rewards are not really received from anyone because there is no central authority that would be able to do this. In Bitcoin, rewards are part of the block generation process, in which a miner inserts a reward generating transaction (or a coinbase transaction) for its own Bitcoin address, and it is always the first transaction appearing in every block. If the mined block is validated and accepted by the peers, then this inserted transaction becomes valid and the miner receives the rewarded bitcoins. Apart from the mining reward, for every successful addition of a transaction in the blockchain, the miner will also receive an amount called transaction fee, which is equivalent to the amount remaining when the value of all outputs in a transaction is subtracted from all its inputs [26]. As the mining reward keep on decreasing with time and the number of transactions is rapidly increasing in the network, the transaction fee takes a major role for how fast a transaction is to be included in the blockchain. The Bitcoin never mandates transaction fee and it is only specified by the owner(s) of a transaction, and it is different for each transaction. A transaction with low transaction fee could suffer from the starvation problem, i.e., denied service for a long time, if the miners are busy processing the transactions with a higher transaction fee.

All the miners race to calculate the correct hash value for a block by performing the PoW, so that they can collect the corresponding reward. The chance of being the first to solve the puzzle is higher for the miners who own or control more number of computing resources. By this rule, a miner with higher computing resources can always increase her chances to win the reward. To enforce reasonable waiting time for the block validation and generation, the target value is adjusted after every 2,016 blocks. This adjustment of the target also helps in keeping per block verification time to approximately 10 minutes. It further effects the new bitcoins generation rate in the Bitcoin because keeping the block verification time near to 10 minutes implies that only 12.5 new coins can be added in the network per 10 minutes. In [27], authors propose an equation to calculate the new target value for the Bitcoin. The new target is given by the following Equation. T = Tprev ∗ Tactual 2016 ∗ 10min .

(1) Here, Tprev is the old target value, and Tactual is the time period that the Bitcoin network took to generate the last 2,016 blocks.

Blockchain and Mining The blockchain is a public append-only link-list based data structure which stores the entire network’s transaction history in terms of blocks. In each block, the transactions are stored using Merkle Tree [28], and a relatively secure time-stamp and a hash of the previous block is also stored. Figure 2 shows the working methodology that is being in use for creating and maintaining the Bitcoin’s blockchain. To successfully add a new block in the blockchain, the miners need to verify (mine) a block by solving a computationally difficult PoW puzzle. One can traverse the blockchain in order to determine the ownership of each bitcoin because the blocks are stored in an ordered form. Also, tempering within a block is not possible as it would change the hash of the block. In particular, if a transaction in a block is tampered with, the hash value of that block changes, this, in turn, changes the subsequent blocks because each block contains the hash of the previous block. The blockchain constantly grows in length due to the continuous mining process in the network. The process of adding a new block is as follows: (i) once a miner determines a valid hash value (i.e., a hash equal or lower than target) for a block, it adds the block in her local blockchain and broadcast the solution, and (ii) upon receiving a solution for a valid block, the miners will quickly check for its validity, if the solution is correct the miners update their local copy of blockchain else discard the block.

Due to the distributed nature of the block validation process, it is possible that two valid solutions are found approximately at the same time or distribution of a verified block is delayed due to network latency, this results in valid blockchain forks of equal length. The forks are undesirable as the miners need to keep a global state of the blockchain, consisting of the totally ordered set of transactions. However, when multiple forks exist, the miners are free to choose a fork and continue to mine on top of it. Now that the network is having multiple forks and miners are extending different but valid versions of the blockchain based on their local view, a time will come due to the random nature of PoW where miners operating on one fork will broadcast a valid block before the others. Due to this, a longer version of the blockchain now exists in the network, and all the miners will start adding their following blocks on top of this longer blockchain. The aforementioned behavior of blockchain is shown in Figure 3.

The presence of blockchain forks in Bitcoin could be exploited by a malicious miner to gain profits or to disturb the normal functioning of the Bitcoin. In particular, a resourceful miner (or mining pool) could force a blockchain fork in the network by privately mining on it. Once the malicious miner sees that the length of the public blockchain is catching up fast with her private chain, the miner broadcast her blockchain in the network, and due to its longer length, all the other miners will start mining on top of it. In this process, all the mined (i.e., valid) blocks on the other parallel blockchain get discarded which makes the efforts of the genuine miners useless. In Section III, we will discuss an array of attacks on Bitcoin that exploits the forking nature of Bitcoin blockchain. In general, the security in Bitcoin is on the assumption that the honest players control a majority of the computing resources. The main driving factor for miners to honestly verify a block is the reward (i.e., 12.5 BTCs) that they receive upon every successful block addition in the blockchain. As mentioned before that to verify a block, the miners need to solve the associated hard crypto-puzzle. The probability of solving the crypto-puzzle is proportional to a number of computing resources used. As per [29], a single home miner which uses a dedicated Application-Specific Integrated Fig. 4. Bitcoin transaction processing steps Circuit (ASIC) for mining will unlikely verify a single block in years. For this reason, miners mine in the form of the so-called mining pools. All miners that are associated with a pool works collectively to mine a particular block under the control of a pool manager. Upon successful mining, the manager distributes the reward among all the associated miners proportional to the resources expended by each miner. A detailed discussion of different pooled mining approaches and their reward systems is given in [30] [31].

For the better understanding how a transaction is being processed in the Bitcoin, please refer to Figure 4. Assume that Bob wants to transfer 5 bitcoins to Alice. In order to pay to Alice, Bob needs a device such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop that runs the Bitcoin full or lightweight clientside software, and two pieces of information which include Bob0 s private

key and Alice0 s Bitcoin address. Any user in the network can send money to a Bitcoin address, but only a unique signature generated using the private key can release bitcoins from the account. Bob uses a cryptographic key to digitally sign off on the transaction, proving that he owns those coins. When Bob broadcast a transaction in the network, an alert is sent to all the miners in the network informing them about this new transaction. The miners check that the digital signatures are correct, and Bob has enough bitcoins to complete the transactions. Additionally, miners race to bundle all the pending transactions (including bob0 s) in the network and mine the resulting block by varying the nonce. In particular, the miners create a hash of the block, and if the hash does not begin with a particular number of zeros, the hash function is rerun using a new random number (i.e., the nonce). The required hash value must have a certain but arbitrary number of zeros at the beginning. It is unpredictable which nonce will generate the required hash with a correct number of zeros, so the miners have to keep trying by using different nonces to find the desired hash value. When the miner finds a hash value with the correct number of zeros (i.e., the discovered value is lower than target value), the discovery is announced in the network, and both the Bob and the Alice will also receive a confirmation about the successful transaction. Other miners communicate their acceptance, and they turn their attention to discover the next block in the network. However, a successful transaction could be discarded or deemed invalid at latter period of time, if it is unable to stay in the blockchain due to reasons, such as existence of multiple forks, majority of miners does not agree to consider the block containing this transaction as a valid block, a double spending attack is detected, to name a few.

The Bitcoin protocol rewards the winning miner with the set of newly minted bitcoins as incentive, and the hashed block is published in the public ledger. Once Bob0 s transaction has been added in the blockchain, he and Alice each receive the first confirmation stating that the Bitcoin has been signed over to Alice. In terms of transaction time, it depends on the current network load and the transaction fee included in the transaction by Bob, but at the minimum, it would be around 10 minutes. However, receiving the first confirmation does not mean that the transaction is processed successfully, and it cannot be invalidated at a latter point in time. In particular, it has been recommended by the Bitcoin community that after a block is mined it should receive enough consecutive block confirmations (currently 6 confirmations) before it is considered as a valid transaction.

Consensus Protocol Bitcoin blockchain is a decentralized system, thus it does not require authorization from any trusted third party (TTP) to process the transactions. In particular, the nodes communicate over a network and collaboratively construct the blockchain without relying on a central authority. However, individual nodes might crash, behave maliciously, act against the common goal, or the network communication may become interrupted. For delivering a continuous service, the nodes, therefore, run a fault-tolerant consensus protocol to ensure that

they all agree on the order in which entries are appended to the blockchain. To add a new block in the blockchain, every miner must follow a set of rules specified in the consensus protocol. Bitcoin achieves the distributed consensus by using PoW based consensus algorithm. This algorithm imposes the following major rules: (i) input and output values are rational, (ii) transactions only spend unspent outputs, (iii) all inputs being spent have valid signatures, (iv) no coinbase2 transaction outputs were spent within 100 blocks of their creation, and (v) no transactions spend inputs with a locktime before the block in which they are confirmed. Generally, a blockchain based system such as Bitcoin is considered as secure and robust as its consensus model. In the PoW based consensus algorithm, the participants require no authentication to join the network, which makes the Bitcoin consensus model extremely scalable in terms of supporting thousands of network nodes. However, PoW based consensus is vulnerable to “51%” attacks, in which an adversary has control over 51% of the mining power (i.e. hashrate) in the network, hence it can write its own blocks or fork the blockchain that at a later point converges with the main blockchain. This behavior of adversary helps her to perform several other types of attacks in the Bitcoin, which includes double spending, eclipse, and denial-ofservice. In particular, 51% attack drives away the honest miners from the mining process, thus weakens the consensus protocol which poses a threat to Bitcoin security and robustness. One way to achieve the 51% attack in Bitcoin system is to incentivize (or bribe) the honest miners to join the attackers’ coalition.

Along with the various security attacks (please refer to tables I and II), the effectiveness of a consensus protocol also depends on the performance and stability of the network. For instance, an increase in the latency between the validation of a block and its receipt by all other miners increases the possibility of a temporary blockchain fork. Although, due to the PoW model eventual consistency in the blockchain will be reached despite the temporary forks however, it results in longer transaction confirmation times. Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 transactions per section (tps) due to the Bitcoin protocol restricting block sizes to 1MB. This is very slow when considered the high processing speed of MasterCard or VISAs, i.e., millions of tps. Therefore, it is important for Bitcoin to have a broadcast network which is not only decentralized but it also provides low latency, and it is difficult to deliberately censor or delay messages. The PoW based consensus algorithm also wastes a lot of energy in hash computations during the mining process. However, it facilitates high scalability in terms of nodes participating in the network and operates completely in a decentralized fashion. Bitcoin consensus algorithm has been its most widely debated component in the Bitcoin research community. This is because the consensus algorithm rises: (i) open questions about the Bitcoin stability [10]; (ii) concerns about the performance and scalability of the protocol [32]; and (iii) concerns for 2A coinbase transaction is a unique type of bitcoin transaction that can only be created by a miner. computational resource wastage [33]. In particular, the PoW consensus model used by Bitcoin blockchain is very inefficient in terms of power

consumption and the overall generation time of new blocks. Hence, to overcome or limit some of the aforementioned disadvantages of PoW, various other consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) [34], Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET), Proof of Authority (PoA), Practical byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) [35], Federated Byzantine Fault Tolerance (FBFT), Proof of Storage [36] [37], to name a few are designed. The most obvious difference between these consensus protocols and PoW is that each of these alternative protocols the consensus is driven at the expense of internal resources (e.g., coins or reputation) instead of external resources (e.g., electricity). This creates an entirely different set of incentives for (and trust in) network nodes (i.e., miners), which drastically changes the network security model.

Networking Infrastructure Bitcoin uses an unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) network based on unencrypted persistent TCP connections as its foundational communication structure. In general, unstructured overlays are easily constructed and robust against highly dynamic network topologies, i.e., against frequently joining and leaving peers. These type of networks are best suited for Bitcoin as the aim is to distribute information as fast as possible to reach consensus on the blockchain. However, experimenting with the Bitcoin network/protocol poses a challenge. By now, there are a few possibilities to approach this task. One way is to connect to the mainnet, i.e., the live Bitcoin network, or the testnet. Another way is to use the simulation environments such as Shadow [42] event discrete simulator, which aims at simulating largescale Bitcoin networks, while keeping full control over all components. Bitcoin nodes maintain a list of IP addresses of potential peers, and the list is bootstrapped via a DNS server, and additional addresses are exchanged between peers. Each peer aims to maintain a minimum of 8 unencrypted TCP connections in the overlay, i.e, the peer actively tries to establish additional connections if the current number of connections is lower than 8. The number of eight connections can be significantly exceeded if incoming connections are accepted by a Bitcoin peer upto a maximum of 125 connections at a time. By default, peers listen on port 8333 for inbound connections. When peers establish a new connection, they perform an application layer handshake, consisting of version and verack messages. The messages include a timestamp for time synchronization, IP addresses, and the protocol version. A node selects its peers in a random fashion and it selects a new set of peers after a fixed amount of time. This is done to minimize the possibility and effects of netsplit attack, in which an attacker creates an inconsistent view of the network (and the blockchain) at the attacked node. Since Bitcoin version 0.7, IPv6 is supported. In order to detect when peers have left, Bitcoin uses a softstate approach. If 30 minutes have been passed since messages were last exchanged between

neighbors, peers will transmit a hello message to keep the connection alive. Miners continually listen to new block announcements which are sent via INV messages containing the hash of the mined block. If a miner discovers that it does not hold a newly announced block, it transmits a GET DAT A message to one of its neighbor. The neighbor then respond by sending the requested information in a BLOCK message. In case the requested block do not arrive within 20 minutes, the miner trigger the disconnection of that particular neighbor and request the same information from another neighbor. The propagation of transactions occur in a sequence given as INV , GET DAT A, and T X messages, in which nodes announce, request, and share transactions that have not yet been included in the blockchain.

In order to form the distributed consensus, newly discovered transactions and blocks are propagated (through flooding) in the whole network. Miners store new transactions for the mining purposes, but after some time remove them if they do not make it on the blockchain. It is the responsibility of the transaction originator that the transaction is received by all the peers in the network. To this end, the originator might need to rebroadcast the transaction if it did not get into the blockchain in first attempt. This is to ensure that the transaction gets considered in the next block. An adversary could introduce delay in the propagation of both, new transactions and mined block, for the purpose of launching the double spend and netsplit attacks. As shown in [43], the propagation time can even be further extended under reasonable circumstances. Authors in [5] presents a taxonomy of routing attacks and their impact on Bitcoin, considering both small-scale attacks, targeting individual nodes, and largescale attacks, targeting the network as a whole. By isolating parts of the network or delaying block propagation, adversaries could cause significant amount of mining power to be wasted, leading to revenue losses and exposing the network to a wide range of exploits such as double spending. The use of an unstructured P2P network in Bitcoin enables the required rapid distribution of information in every part of the network.

The security of Bitcoin heavily depends on the global consistent state of blockchain which relies on the efficiency of its PoW based consensus protocol. The variations in the propagation mechanisms could adversely affect the consensus protocol. The presence of inconsistent blockchain states, if exploited correctly could lead to a successful double spending. To this end, it is essential that the Bitcoin network should remains scalable in terms of network bandwidth, network size, and storage requirements because this will facilitate the increase in number of honest miners in the network, which will strengthen the consensus protocol. In Bitcoin, full nodes download and verify all blocks starting from the genesis block because it is the most secure way. Full nodes participate in the P2P network and help to propagate information, although its not mandatory to do so. Alternatively, the thin clients use the simplified payment verification (SPV) to perform Bitcoin transactions. The SPV is a method used by Bitcoin thin client for verifying if particular transactions are included in a block without downloading the entire block. However, the use of SPV costs the thin clients because it introduces weaknesses such as Denial of Service (DoS) and privacy leakage for the

thin client. In particular, the general scalability issues of unstructured overlays combined with the issues induced by the Bitcoin protocol itself remains in the system. Many of the results suggest that scalability remains an open problem [44] and it is hard to keep the fully decentralized network in future

Securing Bitcoin wallet A wallet contains private keys, one for each account [104]. These private keys are encrypted using the master key which is a random key, and it is encrypted using AES-256-CBC with a key derived from a passphrase using SHA-512 and OpenSSLs EVP BytesToKey [117]. Private key combined with the public key generates a digital signature which is used to transact from peer-to-peer. Bitcoin uses ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) algorithm for encryption, and it is modified in [101] for secret sharing and threshold cryptography.

Securing Bitcoin Networks In this section, we will discuss various existing countermeasures proposed for securing the Bitcoin’s core protocols and its peer-to-peer networking infrastructure functionalities 6TrustZone is a technology that is used as an extension of processors and system architectures to increase their security. against an array of security threats some of which we have discussed in Section III-D. 1) DDoS Attacks: In [90], authors propose a game theoretic approach for analyzing the DDoS attacks. The game assumes that the pools are in competition with each other because the larger pools are always weighted more than the smaller pools. The game exists between the pools, and each pool tries to increase their computational cost over others, and then it imposes a DDoS attack on the other pools. In this way, authors draw an equilibrium condition between the players and concludes that the larger pools will have more incentives against the smaller pools. In [9], authors propose a “miner’s dilemma”, again a game theoretical approach to model the behavior of miners similar to repetitive prisoner’s dilemma. There exist a game between the pools. The longest chain dominates over the smaller chains and grabs the rewards by behaving selfishly in the network. Game theory concludes that by performing attacks, the pools actually lose the bitcoins that they are supposed to get when compared it with the case without attacking each other. In particular, this kind of game theory problems is called “Tragedy of Commons”, where the peers turn out to be rational, selfish and harm other peers for their benefits.

PRIVACY AND ANONYMITY IN BITCOIN The traditional banking system achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to transactions information to the entities involved and the trusted third party. While in Bitcoin, the public blockchain reveals all the transaction data to any user connected to the network. However, the privacy can still be maintained upto certain level by breaking the flow of information somewhere in the Bitcoin transaction processing chain. Bitcoin achieves it by keeping public keys anonymous, i.e., the public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. To further enhance the user privacy, it is advised to use a new key pair for each transaction to keep them from being linked to a particular user. However, linking is still possible in multi-input transactions, which necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner. Also, if the owner of a key is revealed, there is a risk that linking could reveal other transactions belonging to the same user. In particular, Bitcoin offers a partial unlinkability (i.e., pseudonymity), and thus it is possible to link a number of transactions to an individual user by tracing the flow of money through a robust blockchain analysis procedure. Bitcoin technology upholds itself when it comes to the privacy, but the only privacy that exists in Bitcoin comes from pseudonymous addresses (public keys or their hashes) which are fragile and easily compromised through different techniques such as Bitcoin address reuse, “taint” analysis and tracking payments via blockchain analysis methods, IP address monitoring nodes, webspidering, to name a few. Once broken, this privacy is difficult and sometimes costly to recover. In [93] authors highlight the fact that the Bitcoin does not have any directory to maintain the log and other transaction-related information. However, an adversary can associate the offline data such as emails and shipping addresses with the online information, and it can get the private information about the peers. In this section, we discuss the various security threats to privacy and anonymity of the Bitcoin users and the corresponding state-ofthe-art solutions that are proposed to enhance the same.

THE RISKS AND VULNERABILITY IN BITCOIN TRANSACTION: High energy consumption: Bitcoin’s blockchain uses PoW model to achieve distributed consensus in the network. Although, the use of PoW makes the mining process more resistant to various security threats such as sybil and double spending, it consumes a ridiculous amount of energy and computing resources [47]. In particular, processing a bitcoin transaction consumes more than 5000 times as much energy as using a Visa credit card, hence innovative technologies that reduce this energy consumption are required to ensure a sustainable future for Bitcoin. Furthermore, due to the continuous increase in network load and energy consumption, the time required for transaction processing is increasing. • Wallets can be lost: Since there is no trusted third party if a uses lost the private key associated with her wallet due to a hard drive crash or a virus corrupts data or lost the device carrying the key, all the bitcoins in the wallet has been considered lost for forever. There is nothing that can be done to recover the bitcoins, and these will be forever orphaned in the system. This can bankrupt a wealthy Bitcoin investor within seconds.

• (Facilitate) Criminal activity: The considerable amount of anonymity provided by the Bitcoin system helps the would-be cyber criminals to perform various illicit activities such as ransomware [48], tax evasion, underground market, and money laundering. the risk is the exposure to the level of danger associated with Bitcoin technology; in fact, the same can be applied to any such digital cryptocurrency. The major risks that threaten the wide usability of the Bitcoin payment systems are as follow. • Social risks: it includes bubble formation (i.e., risk of socio-economic relationship such as what people talk and gossip), cool factor (i.e., entering the networking without knowing the ill effects), construction of chain (i.e., risk related with the blockchain formation like hashing and mining rewards), and new coins release (i.e., on what basis the new coins to be generated, is there a need etc.). • Legal risks: Bitcoin technology opposes rules and regulations, and hence it finds opposition from the government. This risk also includes law enforcement towards handling financial, operational, customer protection and security breaches that arise due to Bitcoin system. • Economic risks: deflation, volatility and timing issues in finding a block which might lead the users to migrate towards other currencies that offer faster services. • Technological risks: this includes the following, network equipment, and its loss, network with which the peers are connected and its associated parameters, threat vulnerabilities on the system, hash functions with its associated robustness factor, and software associated risks that Bitcoin system demands.

BITCOIN RELATED BUSSINESS IN INDIA: An Indian minister has reportedly revealed that a state government is working to protect businesses operating without a regulatory framework in India. They include cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto-accepting merchants. The move follows the arrests of the founders of a crypto exchange after they tried to set up an ATM-like kiosk at a local mall. India’s Social Welfare Minister Priyank Kharge has reportedly revealed that the Karnataka state government “is working on setting up an Innovation Authority” with the aim “to protect consumer-friendly technology businesses that are operating in regulatory grey areas,” the Economic Times reported. “Technologies are fast changing and our policies are only trying to catch up,” he told the news outlet on Monday. “Instead of banning a people-friendly business on the grounds that the regulations do not allow it, the Innovation Authority would intervene to come up with a quick policy framework.” The minister elaborated:

For example, bitcoins are traded in restaurants in Bengaluru, and we will need to interact with the government and get a regulatory clarity instead of banning those technologies for which regulations are not yet in place. Confusion Over Unocoin’s Kiosk Cementing his point about the need for innovation-friendly policies, Kharge referred to the recent arrests of Unocoin founders, the publication conveyed.

Unocoin, one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is based in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. Following the crypto banking ban by the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the company placed a machine in a local mall in October to handle fiat deposits and withdrawals for its customers. This machine was originally marketed as a Unocoin ATM but the company soon rebranded it to a kiosk.

The Bengaluru cyber crime department soon seized the machine and arrested the company’s founders, CFO Harish BV and CEO Sathvik Vishwanath. “The detaining was on the accusation that we as a company were not having necessary approvals to set up an ATM,” Unocoin explained in a statement on Tuesday. According to the exchange, the police took the stance of “The ATM kiosk installed by Unocoin at Kemp Fort Mall has not taken any permission from the state government and is dealing in cryptoasset outside the remit of the law.” The company argued: Since this is a private kiosk, there isn’t any need for procuring any license or an approval of any sort from authorities. Kiosk machines of Unocoin do not fit RBI’s definition of ATM which connects to the banking network.

Police Questioned Legality of Cryptocurrency

Unocoin clarified that “The situation finally came under control once the police authorities understood our initiative in its original intent.” The exchange added that the authorities were also “made aware that we haven’t violated any law in setting up the kiosk and thereby the whole fiasco came to a speedy conclusion albeit some formal legal proceedings.” Regarding the kiosk, Vishwanath told news.Bitcoin.com that so far the police “have understood” that it is not an ATM. However, he noted: Because they have started a legal proceeding, it will take its own sweet time and course before the issue gets cleared. Prior to his arrest, the Times of India quoted Vishwanath explaining that cryptocurrency is not illegal in India. He emphasized that the statement by the country’s finance minister “was clear: cryptocurrencies are not legal tender in India. He did not say that they are not legal in India. There’s a huge difference.” Their [police’s] main concern is around the legality of crypto assets itself, and it is difficult to make the police understand the regulatory stance of our country as the topic is quite new to

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CONCLUSIONS AND RECCOMENDATIONS

CONCLUSIONS:

 Bitcoin has already evinced a popular digital currency in the market. However, the fame of Bitcoin has attracted antagonists to use Bitcoin network for their selfish motives and benefits. Today we have approximately 1146 different cryptocurrencies in action, out of which many are a recent introduction to the market. From all these fiatcurrencies, the outstanding popularity and high market capital of bitcoins make it attractive for adversaries to launch various security threats.  Even though the construction of the Bitcoin protocols with proof-of-work and consensus to protect the user actions are the robust features in Bitcoin, these itself becoming a point of manipulation for cyber thieves. Starting from packet sniffing to the double spending, the Bitcoin is dreaded with various attacks. Though literature provides solutions against few of these attacks, the robust and effective security solutions that can ensure proper functioning of Bitcoin in the future are still absent.

 Together with security, the distributed nature of Bitcoin blockchain has lead glitches in the privacy and anonymity requirements of the users. the security and privacy issues in different fields of Bitcoin. Once presenting the major components of Bitcoin, its basic characteristics and related concepts, in brief, our survey mainly focuses on the security and privacy aspects that can be found at various stages in the Bitcoin system, starting from transaction creation to its successful addition in the blockchain. We studied and emphasize the issue of user privacy and anonymity in this rapidly growing e-commerce industry. With the set of future research directions and open questions that we have raised, we hope that our work will motivate fledgling researchers towards tackling the security and privacy issues of Bitcoin systems.

RECCOMENDATIONS

 Ending the speculation on virtual currencies such as cryptocurrencies and bitcoins, a government panel should suggest that the government should consider framing a new law for regulating that space.

 Several announcements by the Indian government have been mistaken by some as cryptocurrencies being banned or made illegal. For example, in his February budget speech, the finance minister said that the Indian government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender. Some media outlets subsequently misinterpreted his words as meaning cryptocurrencies are illegal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bibliography is defined as a list of the books and articles that has been used by someone when writing a book or articles.

Web-sites:

 https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf  https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-is-cheap-until-april-well-never-seeprice-at-3000-again-trader

 https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate