Blockchains & smart contracts have made it easy for anyone to create a token with just a few lines of code. The book gives an intro to tokens and the underlying technology, the socio-economic implications, and selected use cases. It is written for a general audience, features many graphics, and could be a useful textbook for university students.

This is the second edition of the book Token Economy originally published in June 2019. The basic structure of this second edition is the same as the first edition, with slightly updated content of existing chapters and four additional chapters: "User-Centric Identities," "Privacy Tokens," "Lending Tokens," and How to Design a Token System and more focus on the Web3. //Part one outlines the fundamental building blocks of the Web3, including the role of cryptography and user-centric digital identities. Part two explains Web3 applications like smart contracts, DAOs & tokens. The last two parts of the book focus on tokens as the atomic unit of the Web3, explaining the properties and functions of money and outlining the emerging field of decentralized finance (DeFi) that might power a potential future digital barter economy. Use cases such as asset tokens, purpose driven tokens, BAT (Basic Attention Token), social media tokens (Steemit, Hive and Reddit), privacy tokens, and stable tokens are explored, including the role of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and Facebook's Libra.//Tokens - often referred to as cryptocurrencies - can represent anything from an asset to an access right, such as gold, diamonds, a fraction of a Picasso painting or an entry ticket to a concert. Tokens could also be used to reward social media contributions, incentivize the reduction of CO2 emissions, or even ones attention for watching an ad. While it has become easy to create a token, which is collectively managed by a public Web3 infrastructure like a blockchain network, the understanding of how to apply these tokens is still vague. This book attempts to summarize existing knowledge about blockchain networks and other distributed ledgers as the backbone of the Web3, and contextualize the socio-economic implications of the Web3 applications such as smart contracts, tokens, and DAOs to the concepts of money, economics, governance and decentralized finance (DeFi).//The industry keeps referring to “Blockchain” as different from “Bitcoin,” creating an artificial divide that is often misleading. There seems to be too little understanding about the fact that Bitcoin is a blockchain network, which is (a) globally managed by people who mostly do not know each other, and (b) enabled by the consensus protocol that (c) incentivizes all network actors for their contributions with a native token. The governance rules are tied to the minting of a native blockchain token. The Bitcoin token can, therefore, be seen as the currency of a distributed Internet tribe, called the Bitcoin network, where network actors are rewarded with Bitcoins, just as the Ether is the currency of the distributed Internet tribe Ethereum network, or Sia is the native currency of the Sia network. The Bitcoin network and other distributed ledgers all represent a collectively maintained public infrastructure and are the backbone of the next generation Internet, what the crypto community refers to as the Web3.

Blockchains are the distributed ledger technology that powers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But blockchains can be used for more than the transfer of tokens – they are a significant new economic infrastructure. This book offers the first scholarly analysis of the economic nature of blockchains and the shape of the blockchain economy. By applying the institutional economics of Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, this book shows how blockchains are poised to reshape the nature of firms, governments, markets, and civil society.

Explore the differences between ICOs, cryptocurrencies, and tokens (offerings), enabling the reader to understand the ICO landscape, how millions were raised in minutes, and where the future of the tokenized economy is heading. Take a real-time journey, cutting through the myths, understanding token choices available to everyone. Key FeaturesInterviews with key figures in TokenomicsUnbiased evaluation and comparison of the different offeringsConceptual analysis of the market’s reactionLeague table showing current exposureAn account of the theoretical and current legal foundations of alt coins and tokensA complete introduction to the phases of an initial coin offeringBook Description Tokenomics is the economy of this new world. This is a no-holds-barred, in-depth exploration of the way in which we can participate in the blockchain economy. The reader will learn the basics of bitcoin, blockchains, and tokenomics; what the very first ICO was; and how over a period of 5 years, various projects managed to raise the enormous sums of money they did. The book then provides insights from ICO experts and looks at what the future holds. By comparing the past, current, and future of this technology, the book will inform anyone, whatever motivates their interest. The crypto shift of blockchains, ICOs, and tokens is much more than just buying bitcoins, creating tokens, or raising millions in a minute in an ICO. It is a new paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized, from closed to open, and from opaqueness to transparency. ICOs and the creation of tokens during the craze of 2017 needed a lot of preparation, an understanding of cryptocurrencies and of emerging legal frameworks, but this has spurred a new movement to tokenize the world. The author gives an unbiased, authoritative picture of the current playing field, exploring the token opportunities and provides a unique insight into the developing world of this tokenized economy. This book will nourish hungry minds wanting to grow their knowledge in this fascinating area. What you will learnThe background of ICOs and how they came to beThe difference between a coin and a token, a utility and a security, and all the other acronyms you’re likely to ever encounterHow these ICOs raised enormous sums of moneyTokenomics: structuring the token with creativityWhy it’s important to play nicely with the regulatorsA sneak peak into the future of ICOs from leaders in the industryWho this book is for With the media hype about bitcoin, this book appeals to anyone, from those with a general interest in anything crypto, or those with some knowledge of the nuances between cryptocurrency, ICOs, IPOs and the Token economy.

In this book, leading practitioners and academics provide comprehensive coverage and novel insights into blockchains and the token economy. Real world case studies from a wide range of industries provide practical examples of blockchain-based tokens for real estate, logistics, insurance, recruitment, collectibles, reservations, metaverses, and more. The cases show how tokens provide an innovative way to create and transfer value without relying on traditional intermediaries. Readers will better understand the business and social benefits of tokenization, but also its challenges. Chapter 3 and Chapter 8 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Can there be reliable information that is also relevant to decision making? Information for Efficient Decision Making: Big Data, Blockchain and Relevance focuses on the consolidation of information to facilitate making decisions in firms, in order to make their operations efficient to reduce their costs and consequently, increase their profitability. The advent of blockchain has generated great interest as an alternative to centralized organizations, where the data is gathered through a centralized ledger keeping of activities of the firm. The decentralized ledger keeping is one of the main features of blockchain that has given rise to many issues of technology, development, implementation, privacy, acceptance, evaluation and so on. Blockchain concept is a follow-up to big data environment facilitated by enormous progress in computer hardware, storage capacities and technological prowess. This has resulted in the rapid acquiring of data not considered possible earlier. With shrewd modeling analytics and algorithms, the applications have grown to significant levels. This handbook discusses the progress in data collection, pros and cons of collecting information on decentralized publicly available ledgers and several applications.

The world of cryptocurrencies and blockchains was initially viewed as a niche space of little interest to mainstream business and finance sectors. With major banks now licensed to provide cryptocurrency custody solutions, and everyone from Facebook to governments using the underlying technology to create their own digital currencies, this has undoubtedly changed. The Cryptocurrency Revolution explains the most important takeaways from the continued growth of digital currencies and blockchain technology and explores the transformative possibilities of borderless payments, decentralized finance ('DeFi') and machine-to-machine transactions. Written in jargon-free and accessible language, this book examines the key value proposition of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and how decentralized technologies could enable banks and financial institutions to become more efficient. It looks at the potential impact of company-backed virtual currencies (such as Facebook's Libra) and how governments and regulators around the world are reacting to these innovations. With discussion of the principles of tokenomics and the difference between public and private blockchains, The Cryptocurrency Revolution is the essential guide for those wishing to understand the threats and opportunities of the changing world of payments and finance.