Industry WIKI

A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loans, along with the assets of the acquiring company. The use of debt, which normally has a lower cost of capital than equity, serves to reduce the o

Liberty Reserve was a Costa Rica-based centralized digital currency service that billed itself as the "oldest, safest and most popular payment processor, serving millions all around a world". Liberty Reserve was conceived as a "PayPal for the unbanked," allowing the 2.5 billion people without bank accounts or credit histories to participate in the modern economy. The site had over one mi

A linked exchange rate system is a type of exchange rate regime that pegs the exchange rate of one currency to another. It is the exchange rate system implemented in Hong Kong to stabilise the exchange rate between the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) and the United States dollar (USD). The Macao pataca (MOP) is similarly linked to the Hong Kong dollar.

Liquidation or winding-up is the process in law by which a company is brought to an end and its assets and property distributed to claimants. When a company has been liquidated, it is sometimes said to be wound-up or dissolved, although dissolution technically refers only to the final stage of liquidation.

This is a list of banking crises. A banking crisis is a financial crisis that affects banking activity. Banking crises include bank runs, which affect single banks; banking panics, which affect many banks; and systemic banking crises, in which a country experiences many defaults and financial institutions and corporations face great difficulties repaying contracts. A banking crisis is ma

A listed investment company (LIC) is an Australian closed-end collective investment scheme similar to investment trusts in the UK and closed-end funds in the United States. Instead of regularly issuing new shares or canceling shares as investors join and leave the fund, investors buy and sell to each other on the ASX. They are traded like other securities on the Australian stock exchange

Litecoin (abbreviation: LTC) is a cryptocurrency and open-source software project created by Charlie Lee and released in 2011. Its software was derived from Bitcoin's codebase. Litecoin uses a scrypt-based proof-of-work system, targets a block interval of 2.5 minutes, and has a maximum supply of 84 million litecoins.

LME Copper is a group of spot, forward, and futures contracts, trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME), for delivery of Copper (Grade A), which can be used for price Hedging, physical delivery of sales or purchases, investment, and speculation.

A loan shark is a person who offers loans at interest rates that are extremely high or illegal, has strict terms of collection, and generally operates outside the law, often using the threat of violence or other illegal, aggressive, and extortionate actions when seeking to enforce the satisfaction of the debt. As a consistent or repeated illegal business operation or "racket", loan shark

The loan-to-value (LTV) ratio is a financial concept used by lenders to express the ratio of a loan to the value of an asset purchased.

The London Gold Pool was the pooling of gold reserves by a group of eight central banks in the United States and seven European countries that agreed on 1 November 1961 to cooperate in maintaining the Bretton Woods System of fixed-rate convertible currencies and defending a gold price of US$35 per troy ounce by interventions in the London gold market.

Macromarketing is an interdisciplinary field that studies marketing as a provisioning technology of society. It focuses on marketing-society interactions including such topics as marketing systems, aggregate consumer behavior, market regulation, social responsibility, justice and ethics in markets, and sustainable marketing. By comparison, "micromarketing" deals with how firms decide wha

Macroprudential regulation is the approach to financial regulation that aims to mitigate risk to the financial system as a whole (or "systemic risk"). After the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a growing consensus among policymakers and economic researchers about the need to re-orient the regulatory framework towards a macroprudential perspective.

Mark-to-market (MTM or M2M) or fair value accounting is accounting for the "fair value" of an asset or liability based on the current market price, or the price for similar assets and liabilities, or based on another objectively assessed "fair" value. Fair value accounting has been a part of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in the United States since the early 1990s. Fail

A market basket or commodity bundle is a fixed list of items, in given proportions. Its most common use is to track the progress of inflation in an economy or specific market. That is, to measure the changes in the value of money over time. A market basket is also used with the theory of purchasing price parity to measure the value of money in different places.

In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is a market's feature whereby an individual or firm can quickly purchase or sell an asset without causing a drastic change in the asset's price. Liquidity involves the trade-off between the price at which an asset can be sold, and how quickly it can be sold. In a liquid market, the trade-off is mild: one can sell quickly without havi

A market trend is a perceived tendency of the financial markets to move in a particular direction over time. Analysts classify these trends as secular for long time-frames, primary for medium time-frames, and secondary for short time-frames. Traders attempt to identify market trends using technical analysis, a framework which characterizes market trends as predictable price tendencies wi

MazaCoin (Maza, MZC) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2014 by developer Payu Harris. It was created with the goal of providing a digital currency for the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota.

A meme coin (also spelled memecoin) is a cryptocurrency that originated from an internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic.

Metal prices are the prices of metal as a commodity that are traded in bulk at a predefined purity or grade. Metal can be split into three major categories, precious metals, industrial metals and other metals. Iron ore

Metallism is the economic principle that the value of money derives from the purchasing power of the commodity upon which it is based. The currency in a metallist monetary system may be made from the commodity itself (commodity money) or it may use tokens (such as national banknotes) redeemable in that commodity. Georg Friedrich Knapp (1842–1926) coined the term "metallism" to describe

Microcap stock fraud is a form of securities fraud involving stocks of "microcap" companies, generally defined in the United States as those with a market capitalization of under $250 million. Its prevalence has been estimated to run into the billions of dollars a year. Many microcap stocks are penny stocks, which the SEC defines as a security that trades at less than $5 per share, is no

The Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge (MECC) is a Microsoft Excel esports competition.

Midpoint (Midpoint Holdings Ltd) is a UK headquartered, Toronto and Frankfurt listed company providing international payments and peer-to-peer foreign exchange (bureau de change) services to individual and corporate customers. Midpoint is the world’s first dedicated peer-to-peer international foreign currency matching platform. The company's patented matching technology was the first app

Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan, which serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the headquarters of the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and Rockefeller

Military payment certificates, or MPC, was a form of currency used to pay United States (US) military personnel in certain foreign countries in the mid and late twentieth century. They were used in one area or another from a few months after the end of World War II until a few months after the end of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War – from 1946 until 1973. The certificates were made

Milla de Oro (English for Golden Mile) is the main financial district of Puerto Rico, containing the largest agglomeration of corporate investment, banking, and financial institutions in the Caribbean. Located in the Hato Rey business center of San Juan, the capital municipality of the archipelago and island, it is concentrated in the sections of Juan Ponce de León Avenue and Luis Muñoz

In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a mining pool is the pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. A "share" is awarded to members of the mining pool who present a valid partial proof-of-work. Mining in pools began when the diffi

A Minsky moment is a sudden, major collapse of asset values which marks the end of the growth phase of a cycle in credit markets or business activity.

Mitigation banking is a market-based system of debits and credits (used primarily in the United States as part of its "no net loss" policy) that involves restoration, creation, or enhancement of wetlands to compensate for unavoidable impacts to a wetland in another location. It involves a system of mitigation banks, sites where projects to restore, create, or enhance wetlands can be carr

MobileCoin, also known as Sentz, is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency developed by MobileCoin Inc., which was founded in 2017 by Josh Goldbard and Shane Glynn.

Monero (; abbreviation: XMR) is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency which is private, untraceable, fungible, and decentralized.

Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of policy-makers in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It gained prominence in the 1970s, but was mostly abandoned as a direct guidance to monetary policy during the following decade because of the rise of inflation targeting through movements of the official interest rate.

Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the nature, role, and impact of money and monetary institutions. It provides a framework for analyzing money and its core functions—as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account—and examines how money can achieve widespread acceptance, including through its role as a public good.

Monetary hegemony is an economic and political concept in which a single state has decisive influence over the functions of the international monetary system. A monetary hegemon would need:

The monetary/fiscal policy debate, otherwise known as the Ando–Modigliani/Friedman–Meiselman debate (or AM/FM debate from the main instigators' initials, and for this reason sometimes jokingly called the "radio stations debate"), was the exchange of viewpoints about the comparative efficiency of monetary policies and fiscal policies that originated with a work co-authored by Milton Fried

A money order is a directive to pay a pre-specified amount of money from prepaid funds, making it a more trusted method of payment than a cheque.

Moneycorp is a British payment company that provides foreign exchange and global payment services to individual and corporate customers. The company was founded in London in 1979. Its clients include individuals, corporations, and other financial institution. It has a branches in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe, Asia and a number of other countries.

MoneyGram International, Inc. is an American interstate and international peer-to-peer payments and money transfer company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It has an operations center in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and regional and local offices around the world.

In the United States, a mortgage note (also known as a real estate lien note or borrower's note) is a promissory note secured by a specified mortgage loan.

In the mortgage industry of the United States, mortgage servicing rights (MSR) are the contractual rights to service a mortgage after the mortgage origination process is complete. Mortgage servicing is the management of the repayment of mortgage debt on behalf of the lender, including the collection and recording of mortgage payments. The legal entity that holds the mortgage servicing ri

The mosaic theory in finance involves the use of security analyst personnel to gather information about a company or corporation to evaluate and determine its financial stability. In addition to public information available to all investors, securities analysts also have access to non-public information which the vast majority of investors do not possess. Trading based on such non-public

Namecoin (Abbreviation: NMC; sign:

Nano (Abbreviation: XNO) is a cryptocurrency characterized by a directed acyclic graph data structure and distributed ledger, making it possible for Nano to work without intermediaries. To agree on what transactions to commit (i.e., achieving consensus), it uses a voting system with weight based on the amount of currency an account holds.

Natural Asset Companies, abbreviated as NACs, are designed to mobilize private investment for ecological conservation, nature-based solutions, and regenerative land management. Developed by the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), NACs integrate the economic value of nature, including ecosystem services, into a corporation with an equity capital structure.

NAV (Net Asset Value) lending is a form of fund-level financing where loans are secured by the value of a private equity fund’s investments rather than the uncalled capital commitments of limited partners (LPs). NAV-based credit facilities provide liquidity to private equity funds by allowing them to borrow against the underlying portfolio. These facilities differ from subscription line

NEAR is a public blockchain platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and provides smart-contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is NEAR. It was founded in 2018 by Illia Polosukhin and Alexander Skidanov, with mainnet launching in 2020.

Neo is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency and application platform used to run smart contracts and decentralized applications. The project, originally named Antshares, was founded in 2014 by Da HongFei and Erik Zhang and rebranded as Neo in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, it became popular in China despite the recently enacted prohibition on cryptocurrency in that country.

Nervos Network is a proof-of-work blockchain platform which consists of multiple blockchain layers that are designed for different functions. The native cryptocurrency of this layer is called CKB. Smart contracts and decentralized applications can be deployed on the Nervos blockchain. The Nervos Network was founded in 2018.

Neutrality of money is the idea that a change in the money supply affects only nominal variables in the economy such as prices, wages, and exchange rates, with no effect on real variables, like employment, real GDP, and real consumption. Neutrality of money is an important idea in classical economics and is related to the classical dichotomy. It implies that the central bank does not aff

In the United States, the term Nifty Fifty was an informal designation for a group of roughly fifty large-cap stocks on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1960s and 1970s that were widely regarded as solid buy and hold growth stocks, or "blue-chip" stocks. These fifty stocks are credited by historians with propelling the bull market of the early 1970s, while their subsequent crash and un

In economics, nominal rigidity, also referred to as price stickiness or wage stickiness, describes a situation in which a nominal price is slow to adjust or resistant to change. Complete nominal rigidity occurs when a price remains fixed in nominal terms for a relevant period of time. For example, the price of a good may be contractually set at $10 per unit for an entire year, regardles

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. They typically contain references to digital files such as artworks, photos, videos, and audio. Because NFTs are uniquely identifiable, they differ from cryptocurrencies (which are fungible, hence the name non-fungible token), and as a result they

NXT is an open source cryptocurrency and payment network launched in 2013 by anonymous software developer BCNext. It uses proof-of-stake to reach consensus for transactions—as such, there is a static money supply. Unlike Bitcoin, there is no mining.

The Office of Financial Research (OFR) is an independent bureau reporting to the United States Department of the Treasury. Created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the OFR monitors and collects data to identify risks across the financial system.

OneChicago was a US-based all-electronic futures exchange with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The exchange offered approximately 12,509 single-stock futures (SSF) products with names such as IBM, Apple and Google. All trading was cleared through Options Clearing Corporation (OCC). The OneChicago exchange closed in September 2020.

An order is an instruction to buy or sell on a trading venue such as a stock market, bond market, commodity market, financial derivative market or cryptocurrency exchange. These instructions can be simple or complicated, and can be sent to either a broker or directly to a trading venue via direct market access. There are some standard instructions for such orders.

An out-of-pocket expense, or out-of-pocket cost (OOP), is the direct payment of money that may or may not be later reimbursed from a third-party source. For example, when operating a vehicle, gasoline, parking fees and tolls are considered out-of-pocket expenses for a trip. Car insurance, oil changes, and interest are not, since the outlay of cash covers expenses accrued over a longer pe

The overnight policy rate is an overnight interest rate set by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) used for monetary policy direction. It is the target rate for the day-to-day liquidity operations of the BNM. The overnight policy rate (OPR) is the interest rate at which a depository institution lends immediately available funds (balances within the central bank) to another depository institution

The overnight rate is generally the interest rate that large banks use to borrow and lend from one another in the overnight market. In some countries (the United States, for example), the overnight rate may be the rate targeted by the central bank to influence monetary policy. In most countries, the central bank is also a participant on the overnight lending market, and will lend or borr

The Panic of 1792 was a financial credit crisis that occurred during the months of March and April 1792, precipitated by the expansion of credit by the newly formed Bank of the United States as well as by rampant speculation on the part of William Duer, Alexander Macomb, and other prominent bankers. Duer, Macomb, and their colleagues attempted to drive up prices of United States (U.S) de

Pari passu is a Latin phrase that literally means "with an equal step" or "on equal footing". It is sometimes translated as "ranking equally", "hand-in-hand", "with equal force", or "moving together", and by extension, "fairly", "without partiality".

Peercoin, also known as Peer-to-Peer Coin, or PPC, is a cryptocurrency utilizing both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work systems. It is notable as the first cryptocurrency to implement the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

In American economics, penny stocks are common shares of small public companies that trade for less than $5 per share.

Pet banks is a derogatory term for state banks selected by the U.S. Department of Treasury to receive surplus Treasury funds in 1833. Pet banks are sometimes confused with wildcat banks. Although the two are distinct types of institutions that arose concomitantly, some pet banks were known to also engage in practices of wildcat banking. They were chosen among the big U.S. banks when Pre

The petro (₽), or petromoneda, launched in February 2018, was a crypto token issued by the government of Venezuela.

Pix (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpiks]) is an instant payment platform created and managed by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). It enables free instant transfers between individuals in Brazilian real 24 hours a day without interruption, even outside banking hours and during holidays or weekends; payments made and received by legal entities may be subject to fees.

The Plaza Accord was a joint agreement signed on September 22, 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, between France, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to depreciate the U.S. dollar in relation to the French franc, the German Deutsche Mark, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling by intervening in currency markets. The U.S. dollar depreciated sig

The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), part of the FutureMAP project, was a proposed futures exchange developed, beginning in May 2001, by the Information Awareness Office (IAO) of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and based on an idea first proposed by Net Exchange, a San Diego, California, research firm specializing in the development of online prediction

Polkadot is a decentralized, nominated proof-of-stake blockchain with smart contract functionality. The cryptocurrency native to the blockchain is the DOT.

Polygon (formerly Matic Network) is a blockchain platform which aims to create a multi-chain blockchain system compatible with Ethereum. As with Ethereum, it uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism for processing transactions on-chain. Polygon's native token is POL, an ERC-20 token which allows for compatibility with other Ethereum cryptocurrencies. It is operated by Polygon Labs.

Polymarket is an American cryptocurrency-based prediction market which offers a platform where individuals can place bets on future outcomes, including sports matches, economic indicators, weather patterns, awards, political and legislative outcomes, and military conflicts. Participants can deposit cryptocurrency through the Polygon blockchain network and trade shares that represent the

The Pooled Income Fund (PIF) is a type of charitable mutual fund or charitable trust that pools the securities or cash separately donated by an individual, a family or a corporation to a charity, which is then invested to provide dividends for both the donor's beneficiary and charity. The donations are irrevocable and tax-deductible and must be from personal assets. Capital gains taxes d

A postal order or postal note is a type of money order usually intended for sending money through the mail. It is purchased at a post office and is payable to the named recipient at another post office. A fee for the service, known as poundage, is paid by the purchaser. In the United States, this is known as a postal money order. Postal orders are not legal tender, but a type of promiss

Predatory lending refers to unethical practices conducted by lending organizations during a loan origination process that are unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent. While there are no internationally agreed legal definitions for predatory lending, a 2006 audit report from the office of inspector general of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) broadly defines predatory lending a

Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded markets established for trading bets in the outcome of various events.

PredictIt is a United States-based online prediction market that offers exchanges on political and financial events. PredictIt is a project of the Prediction Market Research Consortium, a not-for-profit organization, for educational purposes and is supported by Aristotle, Inc. The company's office is located in Washington, D.C. Only United States citizens can bet on the site.

The general price level is a hypothetical measure of overall prices for some set of goods and services (the consumer basket), in an economy or monetary union during a given interval (generally one day), normalized relative to some base set. Typically, the general price level is approximated with a daily price index, normally the Daily CPI. The general price level can change more than on

Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. Instead, it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in managing and structuring the companies. Colloquially, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms rather than the companies in which they invest.

Proof of space (PoS) is a type of consensus algorithm achieved by demonstrating one's legitimate interest in a service (such as sending an email) by allocating a non-trivial amount of memory or disk space to solve a challenge presented by the service provider. The concept was formulated in 2013 by Dziembowski et al. and (with a different formulation) by Ateniese et al..

Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work (PoW) schemes. The first functioning use of PoS for cryptocurrency was Peercoin in 2012, although its scheme, on the surface, still r

Proof of work (also written as proof-of-work, and abbreviated PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the prover) proves to others (the verifiers) that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was first proposed by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork

The quantity theory of money (QTM) is a hypothesis within monetary economics which states that the general price level of goods and services is directly proportional to the amount of money in circulation (i.e., the money supply), and that the causality runs from money to prices. This implies that the theory potentially explains inflation. It originated in the 16th century and has been pr

The regulation of cryptocurrency constitutes regulatory, legal and political actions taken by various governments to regulate and oversee the development and adoption of bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Restrictions on cryptocurrency have been motivated by concerns regarding financial stability, consumer protection, national security, and enforcing laws against mon

A remortgage (known as refinancing in the United States) is the process of paying off one mortgage with the proceeds from a new mortgage using the same property as security. The term is mainly used commercially in the United Kingdom, though what it describes is not unique to any one country. Often the purpose of switching is to secure a more favorable interest rate from a different lende

Renminbi currency value is a debate affecting the Chinese currency unit, the renminbi (Chinese: 人民币 Code:CNY). The renminbi is classified as a managed floating exchange rate currency "with reference to a basket of currencies", which has drawn attention from nations which have freely floated currencies and has become a source of trade friction with Western nations.

A risk premium is a measure of excess return that is required by an individual to compensate being subjected to an increased level of risk. It is used widely in finance and economics, the general definition being the expected risky return less the risk-free return, as demonstrated by the formula below.

Royal Mint Gold was a digital gold currency and a cryptocurrency backed by gold reserves in the UK Royal Mint. The Royal Mint launched a digitized token called RMG, representing one gram of physical gold per token, in 2016. It began testing blockchain transactions in April 2017. The first test transaction was in August 2017. The rollout was originally scheduled to occur by the end of 20

A securities class action (SCA), or securities fraud class action, is a lawsuit filed by investors who bought or sold a company's publicly traded securities within a specific period of time (known as a “class period”) and suffered economic injury as a result of violations of the securities laws.

Security market is a component of the wider financial market where securities can be bought and sold between subjects of the economy, on the basis of demand and supply. Security markets encompasses stock markets, bond markets and derivatives markets where prices can be determined and participants both professional and non professional can meet.

Securities market participants in the United States include corporations and governments issuing securities, persons and corporations buying and selling a security, the broker-dealers and exchanges which facilitate such trading, banks which safe keep assets, and regulators who monitor the markets' activities. Investors buy and sell through broker-dealers and have their assets retained b

Securities Transaction Tax (STT) is a tax payable in India on the value of securities (excluding commodities and currency) transacted through a recognised stock exchange. As of 2016, it is 0.1% for delivery based equity trading.

A security agreement, in the law of the United States, is a contract that governs the relationship between the parties to a kind of financial transaction known as a secured transaction. In a secured transaction, the Grantor (typically a borrower but possibly a guarantor or surety) assigns, grants and pledges to the grantee (typically the lender) a security interest in personal property w

In law and finance, a security interest is a legal right that a secured party has over secured assets. Security interests most often arise where a debtor grants an interest over collateral to a creditor to secure the loan, such that the creditor will have enforceable rights in the event of the debtor's default or non-performance.

In law, set-off or netting is a legal technique applied between persons or businesses with mutual rights and liabilities, replacing gross positions with net positions. It permits the rights to be used to discharge the liabilities where cross claims exist between a plaintiff and a respondent, the result being that the gross claims of mutual debt produce a single net claim. The net claim i

Settlement is the "final step in the transfer of ownership involving the physical exchange of securities or payment". After settlement, the obligations of all the parties have been discharged and the transaction is considered complete.

A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as a stockholder) refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) who is registered by a corporation as the legal owner of shares of the corporations share capital. Both public companies and private corporation have shareholders. Shareholders may also be referred to as mem

In economics, a shock is an unexpected or unpredictable event that affects an economy, either positively or negatively. Technically, it is an unpredictable change in exogenous factors—that is, factors unexplained by an economic model—which may influence endogenous economic variables.

Silver Thursday refers to the sharp collapse in the United States silver and silver futures markets on Thursday, March 27, 1980. The crisis followed a rapid rise in silver prices and the accumulation of a large long position by members of the Hunt family, principally Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, with Lamar Hunt involved to a lesser extent. The term is used both for the tr

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.