Κρυπτονομίσματα και χρηματοπιστωτικός κίνδυνος

Abstract

This dissertation was prepared in the context of the study of cryptocurrencies and their impact on the current economy. However, in order to be able to analyze the aspects concerning the technical part of cryptocurrencies but also the peculiarities that they present in their practical use, we must first know well the meaning of the currency as well as the reason why it was created and adopted by antiquity to the present day. For this reason, the work is structured in two major parts. In the first part, a brief definition of money as well as its basic properties is presented, wanting to prepare the reader for the study of its functions in modern everyday life. The following is a historical overview of money so that it is understandable how we ended up moving from spare parts trading to monetary economics, banknotes, plastic money and e-commerce as well as the rising Fintech and cryptocurrencies. Having already referred to the historical data concerning money and having understood the reasons for the emergence of modern financial instruments, an attempt is made to delve into the morphology of cryptocurrencies and the main ones both in terms of trading volume and the specifics they present. Another very important part that needs to be analyzed at this point, concerns the main participants in the cryptocurrency market who can be ordinary users, to participate in their mining process, to operate cryptocurrency exchanges, be providers of digital wallets or even create their own cryptocurrencies as well as provide them directly to the market. The next part of the work concerns the legal side of cryptocurrencies and the tax treatment they have from different countries worldwide. Having referred to their technical characteristics and functions as well as the institutional framework that regulates them, we enter the second part of thepaper which consists of a questionnaire and the commentary of the results that emerged. The above-mentioned questionnaire aims to investigate the familiarity of individuals with cryptocurrencies, focusing mainly on the reasons for their preference or not by traditional media. Finally, through the primary data extracted from this questionnaire, the corresponding graphs were created in order to make it easier to understand the results that were extracted. Along with the specific results, an attempt was made to comment on the findings based on the aspects of everyday life that may improve cryptocurrencies, the existence of insufficient or not knowledge on the part of individuals about technological developments and their predictions for the future of money and therefore cryptocurrencies.