1、With the support of: Dr Garrick Hileman a significant geographical dispersion of exchanges is observed. 52% of small exchanges hold a formal government license compared to only 35% of large exchanges. On average, security headcount corresponds to 13% of total employees and 17% of budget is spent on
2、security. WALLETS Between 5.8 million and 11.5 million wallets are estimated to be currently active. The lines between wallets and exchanges are increasingly blurred: 52% of wallets surveyed provide an integrated currency exchange feature, of which 80% offer a national-to-cryptocurrency exchange ser
3、vice. In contrast with exchanges, the majority of wallets do not control access to user keys. PAYMENTS While 79% of payment companies have existing relationships with banking institutions and payment networks, the difficulty of obtaining and maintaining these relationships is cited as this sectors b
4、iggest challenge. On average, national-to-cryptocurrency payments constitute two-thirds of total payment company transaction volume, whereas national-to-national currency transfers and cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency payments account for 27% and 6%, respectively. MINING 70% of large miners rate the
5、ir influence on protocol development as high or very high, compared to 51% of small miners. The cryptocurrency mining map shows that publicly known mining facilities are geographically dispersed, but a significant concentration can be observed in certain Chinese provinces. Executive Summary 11 Globa
6、l Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study METHODOLOGY The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance carried out four online surveys from September 2016 to January 2017 via secure web-based questionnaires. Each survey was directed at organizations and individuals operating in a specific sector of the crypto
7、currency industry as defined by our taxonomy (specifically exchanges, wallets, payment service providers, and miners). All surveys were written and distributed in English, and the exchanges survey as well as the mining survey were translated and distributed in Chinese with the generous help of . The
8、 research team collected data from cryptocurrency companies and organisations across 38 countries and five world regions. Over one hundred cryptocurrency companies and organisations as well as 30 individual miners participated in one or more of the four surveys. During the survey process, the resear
9、ch team communicated directly with individual organisations, explaining the studys objectives. For cases in which currently active major companies did not contribute to our study, the dataset was supplemented with additional research and web scraping using commonly applied methodologies. The collect
10、ed data was encrypted and safely stored, accessible only to the authors of this study. All individual company-specific data was anonymised and analysed in aggregate by industry sector, type of activity, organisation size, region and country. We estimate that our benchmarking study captured more than
11、 75% of the four cryptocurrency industry sectors covered in this report. REPORT STRUCTURE The remainder of this report is structured as follows: The Exchanges section presents an overview of the cryptocurrency exchange sector and the different types of exchange activities, with a particular focus on
12、 security. The Wallets section explores the different types and formats of wallets, as well as widely offered features including currency exchange services. The Payments section features a taxonomy of the four major payment activity types, and compares national and cross-border payment channels and
13、transaction sizes. The Mining section describes the mining value chain and features a map with publicly known mining facilities across the world; miners views on policy issues and operational challenges are also presented. Appendix A: Brief introduction to cryptocurrencies highlights the general con
14、cept of cryptocurrencies and presents their key properties and value propositions. Appendix B: The cryptocurrency industry offers a more detailed introduction to the emergence of the cryptocurrency industry. Appendix C: The geographical dispersion of cryptocurrency users discusses the geographical d
15、ispersion of cryptocurrency users and activity. References and Endnotes provide information on where outside information was gathered and further explanation of how some figures were calculated (e.g., employee figures by sector). METHODOLOGY AND STUDY STRUCTURE 144 cryptocurrency organisations and i
16、ndividual miners are included in the research study sample 12 GLOSSARY EXCHANGES WALLETS Order-book exchange: platform that uses a trading engine to match buy and sell orders from users Brokerage service: service that lets users conveniently acquire and/or sell cryptocurrencies at a given price Trad
17、ing platform: platform that provides a single interface for connecting to several other exchanges and/or offers leveraged trading and cryptocurrency derivatives Large exchange: exchange with more than 20 full-time employees and/or a non-negligible market share Custodial exchange/custodian: exchange
18、that takes custody of users cryptocurrency funds Incorporated wallet: registered corporation that provides software and/or hardware wallets. Custodial wallet/custodian: wallet provider that takes custody of users cryptocurrency holdings by controlling the private key(s). Self-hosted wallet: wallet t
19、hat lets users control private key(s), meaning that the wallet service does not have access to users cryptocurrency funds Large wallet: incorporated wallet that has more than 10 full-time employees Wallets with integrated currency exchange: wallets that provide currency exchange services within the
20、wallet interface using one of three exchange models: Centralised exchange/brokerage service model: wallet provider acts as central counterparty Integrated third-party exchange model: wallet provider partners with a third-party exchange to provide exchange services P2P exchange/marketplace model: wal
21、let provider offers a built-in P2P exchange that lets users exchange currencies between themselves Setting the Scene GEOGRAPHY Asia-Pacific: region that comprises East Asia, South Asia, South-East Asia and Oceania Africa and Middle East: region that comprises the African continent as well as the Mid
22、dle East Europe: region that comprises Western Europe, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe including Russia Latin America: region that comprises South America and Central America including Mexico North America: region composed of Canada and the United States 13 Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Stud
23、y PAYMENTS MINING TECHNICAL National currency-focused: services that use cryptocurrency primarily as a payment rail for fast and cost-efficient payments, which are generally denominated in national currencies B2B payment services: platforms that provide payments for businesses, often times across bo
24、rders Money transfer services: services that provide primarily international money transfers for individuals (e.g., traditional remittances, bill payment services) Cryptocurrency-focused: services that facilitate the use of cryptocurrencies; generally payments are denominated in cryptocurrency, but
25、can also be exchanged to national currencies Merchant services: services that process payments for cryptocurrency-accepting merchants, and provide additional merchant services (e.g., shopping cart integrations, point-of-sale terminals) General-purpose cryptocurrency platform: platforms that perform
26、a variety of cryptocurrency transfer services (e.g., instant payments to other users of the same platform using cryptocurrency and/or national currencies, payroll, bill payment services) Mining value chain: the cryptocurrency mining sector is composed of the following principal activities: Mining ha
27、rdware manufacturing: design and building of specialised mining equipment Self-mining: miners running their own equipment to find valid blocks Cloud mining services: services that rent out hashing power to customers Remote hosting services: services that host and maintain customer-owned mining equip
28、ment Mining pool: structure that combines computational resources from multiple miners to increase the frequency and likelihood of finding a valid block; rewards are shared among participants Small miners: registered companies active in the mining industry, but operating with limited scale; individu
29、al miners operating as sole proprietors Large miners: mining organisations that engage in medium-to-large scale mining operations and occupy a significant position in the industry Blockchain: record of all validated transactions grouped into blocks, each cryptographically linked to predecessor trans
30、actions down to the genesis block, thereby creating a chain of blocks Keys: term used to describe a pair of cryptographic keys that consists of a private (secret) key and a corresponding public key: the private key can be compared to a password needed to unlock cryptocurrency funds while the public
31、key (if converted to an address) can be compared to a public email address or bank account number Multi-signature: mechanism to split control over an address among multiple private keys such that a specific threshold of keys are needed to unlock funds stored in that particular address 14 SETTING THE
32、 SCENE SETTING THE SCENE 15 Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study Figure 1: The world of cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin CRYPTOCURRENCY OVERVIEW BITCOIN, ALTCOINS, AND INNOVATION Bitcoin began operating in January 2009 and is the first decentralised cryptocurrency, with the second cryptocurrency,
33、 Namecoin, not emerging until more than two years later in April 2011. Today, there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies with market value that are being traded, and thousands of cryptocurrencies that have existed at some point.1 The common element of these different cryptocurrency systems is the public
34、 ledger (blockchain) that is shared between network participants and the use of native tokens as a way to incentivise participants for running the network in the absence of a central authority. However, there are significant differences between some cryptocurrencies with regards to the level of inno
35、vation displayed (Figure 1). The majority of cryptocurrencies are largely clones of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and simply feature different parameter values (e.g., different block time, currency supply, and issuance scheme). These cryptocurrencies show little to no innovation and are often re
36、ferred to as altcoins. Examples include Dogecoin and Ethereum Classic.2 16 Setting the Scene Figure 2: The total cryptocurrency market capitalisation has increased more than 3x since early 2016, reaching nearly $25 billion in March 2017 In contrast, a number of cryptocurrencies have emerged that, wh
37、ile borrowing some concepts from Bitcoin, provide novel and innovative features that offer substantive differences. These can include the introduction of new consensus mechanisms (e.g., proof-of-stake) as well as decentralised computing platforms with smart contract capabilities that provide substan
38、tially different functionality and enable non- monetary use cases. These cryptocurrency and blockchain innovations can be grouped into two categories: new (public) blockchain systems that feature their own blockchain (e.g., Ethereum, Peercoin, Zcash), and dApps/Other that exist on additional layers
39、built on top of existing blockchain systems (e.g., Counterparty, Augur).4 The combined market capitalisation (i.e., market price multiplied by the number of existing currency units) of all cryptocurrencies has increased more than threefold since early 2016 and has reached $27 billion in April 2017 (
40、Figure 2). A relatively low, but not insignificant share of value is allocated to duplication (i.e., altcoins), while a growing share has been apportioned to innovative cryptocurrencies (cryptocurrency and blockchain innovations). BitcoinOther cryptocurrencies Data sourced from CoinDance3 17 Global
41、Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study ETHEREUM (ETH) Decentralised computing platform which features its own Turing-complete programming language. The blockchain records scripts or contracts that are run and executed by every participating node, and are activated through payments with the native cryptoc
42、urrency ether. Officially launched in 2015, Ethereum has attracted significant interest from many developers and institutional actors. As of April 2017, the following cryptocurrencies are the largest after bitcoin in terms of market capitalisation: DASH Privacy-focused cryptocurrency launched in ear
43、ly 2014 that has recently experienced a significant increase in market value since the beginning of 2017. In contrast to most other cryptocurrencies, block rewards are being equally shared between miners and masternodes, with 10% of revenues going to the treasury to fund development, community proje
44、cts and marketing. MONERO (XMR) Cryptocurrency system that aims to provide anonymous digital cash using ring signatures, confidential transactions and stealth addresses to obfuscate the origin, transaction amount and destination of transacted coins. Launched in 2014, it saw a substantial increase in
45、 market value in 2016. RIPPLE (XRP) Only cryptocurrency in this list that does not have a blockchain but instead uses a global consensus ledger. The Ripple protocol is used by institutional actors such as large banks and money service businesses. A function of the native token XRP is to serve as a b
46、ridge currency between national currency pairs that are rarely traded, and to prevent spam attacks. LITECOIN (LTC) Litecoin was launched in 2011 and is considered to be the silver to bitcoins gold due to its more plentiful total supply of 84 million LTC. It borrows the main concepts from bitcoin but
47、 has altered some key parameters (e.g., the mining algorithm is based on Scrypt instead of bitcoins SHA-265). 18 Figure 3: Bitcoin (BTC) has ceded significant market cap share to other cryptocurrencies, most notably ether (ETH) Although bitcoin remains the dominant cryptocurrency in terms of market
48、capitalisation, other cryptocurrencies are increasingly cutting into bitcoins historically dominant market cap share: while bitcoins market capitalisation accounted for 86% of the total cryptocurrency market in March 2015, it has dropped to 72% as of March 2017 (Figure 3). Ether (ETH), the native cr
49、yptocurrency of the Ethereum network, has established itself as the second-largest cryptocurrency. The combined other cryptocurrency category has doubled its share of the total market capitalisation from 3% in 2015 to 6% in 2017. Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies DASH and monero (XMR) have become increasingly popular and currently constitute a combined 4% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalisation. Figure 4 shows that both DASH and monero have experienced the most significant growth in terms of price in recent months.
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