Analysis of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer network for international payments

The payment system is due for an overhaul. The antiquated infrastructure that runs the funds transfer network belongs to the pre-Internet era. As a result, international payments are expensive, slow, cumbersome, and not as secure as they could be. This thesis argues that the cryptocurrency Bitcoin is the answer to the problems facing millions of consumers, merchants, and remitters worldwide. The analysis is based on two frameworks. The first one is used to measure how well Bitcoin's attributes meet the needs of the users of the payment system. The second one is used to decide if the payments industry is likely to have one or more dominant platform leaders.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Böhme, Sascha

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael A. Cusumano.

• Engineering Systems Division.
• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90710

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/90710