BLOCKCHAIN, CRYPTOCURRENCY AND THE STATE OF FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN MOROCCO

Moghar Adil, Oukili Asraoui Fadi

Abstract


The immense potential of Blockchain and crypto-currencies is no longer a matter of doubt. These technologies have the power to revolutionize and change the landscape of many sectors, primarily finance. The advent of blockchain technologies provides a potential solution to the first three challenges of financial inclusion. In a few years, blockchain and its applications have the potential to become the "beating heart" of the global financial system as predicted by the WEF (World Economic Forum) in its report "The Future of Financial Infrastructure". All over the world, these technologies are currently considered as the new great technological revolution that could change our lifestyles and impact our economy as the internet did in the 80s and 90s and ideally give birth to a direct economy without intermediation. In Morocco, crypto-currencies are erasing borders and gaining popularity. However, the general opinion on this new innovation is not clear.

 

JEL: F65; G21; O32

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


financial inclusion, blockchain, cryptocurrency

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adhami, Saman, Giancarlo Giudici, and Stefano Martinazzi (2018). Why Do Businesses Go Crypto? An Empirical Analysis of Initial Coin Offerings. Journal of Economics and Business 100: 64–75.

Agarwal, Sumit, Wenlan Qian, Bernard Y. Yeung, and Xin Zou (2019). Mobile Wallet and Entrepreneurial Growth. American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 109: 48–53.

Antonopoulos, A. (2016). Why Dumb Networks Are Better. Medium. https://medium.com/@aantonop/why-dumb-networks-are-better-f0b94c271b76.

Banerjee, M. M. (2016). “We routinely borrow to survive”: Exploring the financial capability of income-poor people in India. Social Work, 61(4), 349–358.

Baruri, P. (2016). Blockchain-powered financial inclusion. Retrieved from http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/710961476811913780/Session-5C-Pani-Baruri-BlockchainFinancial Inclusion-Pani.pdf

Bordo, Michael D., and Andrew T. Levin (2019). Digital Cash: Principles and Practical Steps. NBER Working Paper #25455.

Buchak, Greg, Gregor Matvos, Tomasz Piskorski, and Amit Seru (2018). Fintech, regulatory arbitrage, and the rise of shadow banks. Journal of Financial Economics 130 (3): 453–483.

Chan, Wing H., Minh Le, and W. Wu. Yan (2019). Holding Bitcoin Longer: The Dynamic Hedging Abilities of Bitcoin. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 71: 107–113.

Chiu, Jonathan, and Thorsten V. Koeppl (2019). Blockchain-Based Settlement for Asset Trading. Review of Financial Studies 32: 1716–1753.

Conroy, John (2005). APEC and Financial Exclusion: Missed Opportunities for Collective Action? Asia-Pacific Development Journal 12 (1): 53–79.

Dabrowski, Marek, and Lukasz Janikowski (2018). Virtual Currencies and Central Banks Monetary Policy: Challenges Ahead. Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies.

Dyhrberg, Anne H. (2016). Hedging Capabilities of Bitcoin. Is It the Virtual Gold? Finance Research Letters 16: 139–144.

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1976). Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined. Institute of Economic Affairs.

Hirtenstein, A. (2018). Bloomberg. Brookstone Partners is planning a 900 megawatt wind farm in southern Morocco to power a data center and Bitcoin mining operation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-27/bitcoinmining-private-equity-build-wind-farm-in-morocco.

Howell, Sabrina, Marina Niessner, and David Yermack (2019). Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales. European Corporate Governance Institute Finance Working Paper 564: 1–71.

Jusdanis, A. (2017). Morocco’s Cryptocurrency ban will create serious “Technological Divide,” warn traders. Morocco World News. https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/

Kauflin, Jeff (2019). The 11 Biggest Fintech Companies in America 2019. Forbes. Lee, David K. C., and Gin Swee Teo. 2015. Emergence of FinTech and the LASIC Principles. Journal of Financial Perspectives 3 (3): 24–36.

Lacity, M. C. (2018a). Enterprise blockchains: Eight sources of business value and the obstacles in their way. Retrieved from https://walton.uark.edu/enterprise/downloads/blockchain/LacityBlockchainsExplained.pdf

Lacity, M. C. (2018). A manager’s guide to blockchains for business: From knowing what to knowing how, SB Publishing, Warwickshire, UK.

Larios-Hernandez, G. J. (2017). Blockchain entrepreneurship opportunity in the practices of the unbanked. Business Horizons, 60, 865–874.

Library of Congress (2020) https://www.loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/worldsurvey.php.

Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228640975_Bitcoin_A_Peer-to-Peer_Electronic_Cash_System

Nakamoto, Satoshi (2008). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Bitcoin. Accessed March 18, 2020. http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.

O’Neal, S. (2018). Ahead of traditional banking: How Africa employs blockchain for financial inclusion. Retrieved from https://cointelegraph.com/news/ahead-of-traditionalbanking-how-africa-employs-blockchain-for-financial-inclusion

Office des Changes (2017). Press release, Mise au point au sujet del’utilisation des monnaies es virtuelle. https://www.oc.gov.ma/fr/actualites/communique%3Fmise-au-point-au-sujet-de-l-utilisation-des-monnaies-virtuelles.

Palmer, Daniel (2019). China’s Central Bank Likely to Pilot Digital Currency in Cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou: Report. Coindesk. Accessed March 19, 2020. https://www.coindesk.com/chinas-central-bank-likely-to-pilot-digitalcurrency-in-cities-of-shenzhen-and-suzhou-report.

Raskin, Max (2013). U.S. Agencies to Say Bitcoins Offer Legitimate Benefits. Bloomberg News.

Raskin, Max, and David Yermack (2016). Digital Currencies, Decentralized Ledgers, and the Future of Central Banking. NBER Working Paper #22238.

Raskin, Max, Fahad Saleh, and David Yermack (2019). How Do Private Digital Currencies Affect Government Policy? NBER Working Paper #26219.

Risius, M., & Spohrer, K. (2017). A Blockchain Research Framework: What We (Don’t) Know, Where We Go from Here, and How We Will Get There Business & Information. Systems Engineering, 59, 385–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599017-0506-0.

Roussou, Ioanna, Emmanouil Stiakakis, and Angelo Sifaleras (2018). An Empirical Study on the Commercial Adoption of Digital Currencies. Springer Nature 17: 223–259.

Stulz, René M. (2019). FinTech, BigTech and the Future of Banks. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 31: 86–97

Swan, M. (2017). Anticipating the economic benefits of blockchain. Technology Innovation Management Review, 7(10), 6–13.

Varghese, G., & Viswanathan, L. (2018). Normative perspectives on financial inclusion: Facts beyond statistics. Journal of Public Affairs, 18, 1–5.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejefr.v6i2.1287

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2022 Moghar Adil, Oukili Asraoui Fadi

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2016 - 2023. European Journal of Economic and Financial Research (ISSN 2501-9430) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing GroupAll rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and  Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.