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The review examines the existing literature on blockchain-based small and medium enterprise (SME) finance and highlights its trend, themes, opportunities and challenges. Based on these factors, the authors create a framework for the existing literature on blockchain-based SME financing and lay down future research paths.

The review follows a systematic approach. It includes 53 articles encompassing multiple dimensions of blockchain-based SME finance, including peer-to-peer lending platforms, supply chain finance (SCF), decentralized lending protocols and tokenization of assets. The review critically evaluates these approaches' theoretical underpinnings, empirical evidence and practical implementations.

The review demonstrates that blockchain-based SME finance holds significant promise in addressing the credit gap by leveraging blockchain technology's decentralized and transparent nature. Benefits identified include reduced information asymmetry, improved access to financing, enhanced credit assessment processes and increased financial inclusion. However, the literature acknowledges several challenges and limitations, such as regulatory uncertainties, scalability issues, operational complexities and potential security risks.

The article contributes to the growing knowledge of blockchain-based SME finance by synthesizing and evaluating the existing literature. It also provides a framework for the existing literature in the area and future research paths. The study offers insights for researchers, policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand the potential of blockchain technology in filling the SME credit gap and fostering economic development through improved access to finance for SMEs.

Bitcoin is among the highest rated digital crypto-currency in financial investment markets. This technology relies on a backbone of distributed data architecture and peer-to-peer networking model called Blockchain. Unlike the current digital economy, which is governed centrally by financial institution or governments, Blockchain is fully autonomous without any third-party involvement. The exorbitant success of Bitcoin has attracted investors, scholars as well as organizations to peek into this lucrative technology for the possible application to other areas apart from crypto-currency. Blockchain can adopt Smart Contracts, which are digitally enabled contracts that can be executed and enforced fully or partially using pre-defined notions. The aim of this research is to investigate the synergy between Smart Contract and Blockchain to propose a digital framework for an academic paper publication model that has the capability to automate the entire process and challenge the existing system. It can also bring together all the stakeholders under the same system. The proposed model can further hold the stakeholders accountable for breach of contracts and/or reward them for executing the successes of terms pre-configured in the Smart Contract. The proposed model, called Digital Smart Publication or DSP (as referred in the document), is highly secure and ensures balance in distributing rewards to the involved stakeholders while keeping data integrity and security as paramount features.

This paper aims to analyse the virtual currency regulation especially in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Different member states had a bit differently incorporated regulation of AMLD5. Finland has gone the furthest in regulation and even issuers of virtual currency are under the Finnish regulation.

In one hand, the study approach is legal dogmatics, but in other hand it is comparative legal research. Both approaches can be found in this paper.

The EEA is going from a more fragmented regulatory landscape based on 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive to a more uniform regulatory approach provided by a legislative package that regulates crypto assets more broadly, coupled with an overhaul of the anti-money laundering rules, bringing them into a single European rulebook. Finland has taken a step further in this matter. Therefore, it would be reasonable for the AMLD5 scope to be expanded in this respect. It is a welcome development that the regulation will be unified and that investor protection will be better taken into account in the future as well.

This paper gives a picture of what kind of challenges is there in Fennoscandic in terms of money laundering regulation of virtual currencies. On the other hand, this paper brings into the discussion the rather clever solutions of Fennoscandic (especially Finland) regarding money laundering of virtual currencies.

This paper aims to focus on the need for an enhanced anti-money laundering (AML) regulation for decentralised finance (DeFi) to protect the integrity of global financial systems against illicit activities. Research highlights the requirement for a robust regulatory strategy for the fast-paced DeFi evolvement.

This study used doctrinal legal research by analysing legislation, which involved creating use cases to illustrate different aspects of potential illicit activities via the DeFi ecosystem. Various DeFi applications were assessed for the potential regulatory responses and outcomes.

This paper offers valuable insight into the regulatory challenges presented by DeFi. This study addresses the blind spots leveraged by criminals afforded by the DeFi’s decentralised nature. This paper offers a comprehensive examination of DeFi regulatory challenges based on use-case scenarios and provides recommendations for regulators on how to address them effectively.

This paper proposes measures for regulatory authorities to minimise money laundering risks through new channels such as decentralised exchanges, non-custodial wallets and cross-chain bridges. This study concludes with the future directions for DeFi regulation and AML compliance.

This paper provides a structured literature review of blockchain in accounting. The authors identify current trends, analyse and critique the key topics of research and discuss the future of this nascent field of inquiry.

This study’s analysis combined a structured literature review with citation analysis, topic modelling using a machine learning approach and a manual review of selected articles. The corpus comprised 153 academic papers from two ranked journal lists, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). From this, the authors analysed and critiqued the current and future research trends in the four most predominant topics of research in blockchain for accounting.

Blockchain is not yet a mainstream accounting topic, and most of the current literature is normative. The four most commonly discussed areas of blockchain include the changing role of accountants; new challenges for auditors; opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology application; and the regulation of cryptoassets. While blockchain will likely be disruptive to accounting and auditing, there will still be a need for these roles. With the sheer volume of information that blockchain records, both professions may shift out of the back-office toward higher-profile advisory roles where accountants try to align competitive intelligence with business strategy, and auditors are called on ex ante to verify transactions and even whole ecosystems.

The authors identify several challenges that will need to be examined in future research. Challenges include skilling up for a new paradigm, the logistical issues associated with managing and monitoring multiple parties all contributing to various public and private blockchains, and the pressing need for legal frameworks to regulate cryptoassets.

The possibilities that blockchain brings to information disclosure, fraud detection and overcoming the threat of shadow dealings in developing countries all contribute to the importance of further investigation into blockchain in accounting.

The authors’ structured literature review uniquely identifies critical research topics for developing future research directions related to blockchain in accounting.

The eNaira is the central bank digital currency of Nigeria. People who are interested in the eNaira and financial inclusion will seek information about eNaira and financial inclusion. Their interest in information about eNaira and financial inclusion will make it easier for them to adopt the eNaira and embrace other financial inclusion innovations such as FinTech and cryptocurrency. This paper investigates the determinants of interest in eNaira and financial inclusion information.

The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The study also used the GMM and 2SLS regression methods for robustness.

Using interest over time data, the findings of this study reveal that interest in financial technology (FinTech) and eNaira information are significant positive determinants of interest in financial inclusion information. Also, interest in financial inclusion is a significant positive determinant of interest in eNaira information. Furthermore, interest in FinTech information has a positive and significant correlation with interest in financial inclusion information. There is also a significant positive correlation between interest in central bank digital currency information and interest in FinTech information. The implication of the findings is that interest in information about new financial innovations, such as FinTech and eNaira, can stimulate interest in information about financial inclusion.

The literature has not examined the determinants of interest in eNaira and financial inclusion information yet.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and to categorize the tendencies of blockchain-based applications in the shipping industry and supply chain as well as the interrelations between them, including possible correlation of found categories with theoretical background and existing concepts. This study also explores whether blockchain can be adopted into existing maritime shipping and port document workflow management.

The current study builds a conceptual framework through a systematic project review carried along with scientific and grey literature, published in journals and conference proceedings during the past decade and giving information or proposals on an issue.

The results showed that reviewed projects can be compiled into three main conceptual areas: document workflow management, financial processes and device connectivity. However, having clear interlinkages, none of the reviewed projects consider all three areas at once. Concepts associated with maritime document workflow received broad support among the reviewed projects. In addition, reviewed projects unintentionally follow the similar goals that were laid down within port management scientific projects before the introduction of blockchain technology.

This study contributes to research by revealing a consistent framework for understanding the blockchain applications within maritime port environment, a less-studied part of blockchain implementation in the supply chain field. Moreover, this work is the first to find out conceptual intersections and correlations between existing projects, mapping current tendencies and potentially increasing knowledge about the field.

The paper aims to present a systematic literature review (SLR) showing the benefits, challenges and future research of blockchain technology (BT) for the supply chain (SC), also suggesting how the features of BT can change the organizational aspects of the SC.

An SLR has been conducted to detect papers that contained the word “Blockchain” in their titles, keywords or abstracts. Consequently, a second filter to analyze BT papers for the SC was applied.

This paper shows through 31 variables classified into positive, negative and future directions of technology for the SC. For instance, BT will reduce time consuming of operations management and payments using smart contracts. In addition, integrating BT with other technologies will allow product tracking and sustainable production management.

The selection of papers is limited to Scopus database and specifically to the Management Journal.

BT creates collaborative peer-to-peer and business-to-business markets. The technology automates several tasks such as order management, payment for goods, waste reduction and process control. Therefore, its use within the SCs will improve the productivity and profits of the participants.

This paper is focused on BT for the SC area with 60 articles analyzed. In addition, 13 variables on benefits, eight variables on challenges and 12 points on future research directions were analyzed. This work will help researchers and entrepreneurs to deepen about the changes that BT offers in SC.

This paper aims to establish a fundamental and comprehensive understanding of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by identifying and structuring common characteristics within a taxonomy. NFTs are hyped and increasingly marketed as essential building blocks of the Metaverse. However, the dynamic evolution of the NFT space has posed challenges for those seeking to develop a deep and comprehensive understanding of NFTs, their features and their capabilities.

Utilizing common guidelines for the creation of taxonomies, the authors developed (over 3 iterations), a multi-layer taxonomy based on workshops and interviews with 11 academic and 15 industry experts. Through an evaluation of 25 NFTs, the authors demonstrate the usefulness of the taxonomy.

The taxonomy has 4 layers, 14 dimensions and 42 characteristics, which describe NFTs in terms of reference object, token properties, token distribution and realizable value.

The authors' framework is the first to systematically cover the emerging NFT phenomenon. This framework is concise yet extendible and presents many avenues for future research in a plethora of disciplines. The characteristics identified in the authors' taxonomy are useful for NFT- and Metaverse-related research in finance, marketing, law and information systems. Additionally, the taxonomy can serve as an information source for policymakers as they consider NFT regulation.