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Bitcoin can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies as well as for fiat currencies on many different platforms. Nevertheless, its real convertibility may be limited by market liquidity. The main aim of this article is to characterize and compare big and small bitcoin markets in terms of liquidity. I examine four platforms with high trade volume: Kraken, Bitstamp, BitFlyer and BTCBOX, as well as small entities which enable bitcoin to be traded in Polish zloty: BitBay and BitMarket. I compare the number of trades and the time between trades on selected bitcoin markets, determine the volume distribution throughout the day and analyse the dynamics of Amihud's illiquidity measure – ILLIQ. I find that an exchange which is among the global leaders in terms of trading bitcoin in a particular traditional currency can be considered a smaller market in terms of trade volume in another traditional currency. Moreover, the results imply that BitBay and BitMarket can be perceived as local markets. They are mainly used for trading in Polish zloty, and are illiquid in terms of trading in the remaining traditional currencies. Home bias, the fact that they offer a possibility of trading in a less popular currency (in comparison to the world reserve currencies), and that have their interface in Polish, may give these platforms a competitive advantage.

Poland has been a member of the European Union since 1 May 2004 and adoption of the euro by Poland is integral part of our Treaty of Accession. From the legal point of view Poland is already the member of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) but because has not completed the third stage of the EMU, we still can use our own currency – polish zloty. On January 17, 2006 Polish Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska said in an interview that Poland will not adopt the euro before 2010, adding that 2011 was an achievable deadline. In October 2006, the Polish President Lech Kaczyński said in an interview with Spain,s El Mundo that euro entry" should be a subject submitted to a referendum, which would take place at the end of his legislature, which ends in 2010 (1). Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during the Economic forum in Krynica that Poland would adopt euro in 2011 a year before the European football championship organized together by Poland and Ukraine. In November 2008 Polish Government accepted so called road map to introduce euro by 2012. Firstly, Polish zloty should join the ERM 2 system which was planned in the middle of 2009. Secondly, after accomplishment convergence criteria in 2011, Poland is going to fix the permanent exchange rate between polish zloty and euro. Thirdly, introduction of Euro and withdrawal of polish zloty is previewed on 1 January 2012. The prices on polish market are going to be presented in two currencies (polish zloty and Euro) during six month. However, before Poland will join the euro zone , the Polish Constitution has to be amended to give the European Central Bank the right to print and distribute euro as a national currency. In connection with the world financial crises and suddenly devaluation of polish zloty most economist agree that government plan of euro introduction in Poland is too rushed and not realistic and adhesion of zloty into ERM 2 system should be delaying. ; peer-reviewed

During the financial crisis a notion that the Polish exchange rate is not determined effectively was very dominant, because of a contagion effect of the global financial crisis on the Polish economy. In addition, many foreign exchange market analysts explained developments in the Polish exchange market trough a hypothesis that the Polish zloty exchange rate follows other exchange rates. This contradicts market efficiency as this would lead to profitable arbitrage possibility based on past information on other currency prices and possibly gives a rationale for government intervention. In contrast, a foreign exchange market that is efficient needs no government involvement and its participants cannot earn abnormal gains from foreign exchange transactions. Therefore, the aim of the article is to examine the efficiency of the Poland's foreign exchange market. In order to test for market efficiency a cointegration analysis is used. The main argument builds on the semi-strong form of the market efficiency hypothesis. On an informational effective market a pair of prices cannot be cointegrated, because this would imply predictability of one asset price based on the past prices of the other asset. The main hypothesis of the article is verified using Unit Root tests and Johansen Cointegration Test on the pair of EURPLN and USDPLN exchange rates. It is shown that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected; therefore, the Polish foreign exchange market is efficient in the semi-strong sense.

This article investigates the significance of personifications depicted on national currencies of Eastern Europe in the 19th – 21st cent. Eastern Europe is considered as a region of high research potential due to its status of borderland space with active symbolic struggle on political, socioeconomic and cultural levels. Currency design is an ideological tool that defines collective cultural tradition and historical memory, while national narratives vary in their response to the conditions of their formation. Basing on the visual analysis of money that circulated on the territories of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, the author outlines main categories of human depictions used in the currency design of the states that emerged in the region during the mentioned period. In the 19th cent., most widespread were money of the Russian Empire featuring the emperors and state representation Mother Russia. After the October Revolution in 1917, new states emerged in the region, but no personifications were used in their currency design. Human depictions of that time featured either ordinary people correlating with socialist movements or notable persons denoting political and cultural authenticity of certain state. Another category of human depictions was allegorical feminine figures representing patriarchal values and reproductive resources. Most remarkable examples of this type are Polish coins depicting state representation Polonia (or queen Jadwiga) as well as Polish banknotes with Mother Poland and national heroine Emilia Plater, both issued during the dictatorship of Jósef Piłsudski. Contemporary issues of money use no state representations, preferring instead either notable people, mostly men among them, or introducing other means of cultural representations not related to human depictions. Thus state representations used in the designs of national currencies become less popular in the 21st cent. due to globalisation and de-materialisation of money.

This article investigates the significance of personifications depicted on national currencies of Eastern Europe in the 19th – 21st cent. Eastern Europe is considered as a region of high research potential due to its status of borderland space with active symbolic struggle on political, socioeconomic and cultural levels. Currency design is an ideological tool that defines collective cultural tradition and historical memory, while national narratives vary in their response to the conditions of their formation. Basing on the visual analysis of money that circulated on the territories of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, the author outlines main categories of human depictions used in the currency design of the states that emerged in the region during the mentioned period. In the 19th cent., most widespread were money of the Russian Empire featuring the emperors and state representation Mother Russia. After the October Revolution in 1917, new states emerged in the region, but no personifications were used in their currency design. Human depictions of that time featured either ordinary people correlating with socialist movements or notable persons denoting political and cultural authenticity of certain state. Another category of human depictions was allegorical feminine figures representing patriarchal values and reproductive resources. Most remarkable examples of this type are Polish coins depicting state representation Polonia (or queen Jadwiga) as well as Polish banknotes with Mother Poland and national heroine Emilia Plater, both issued during the dictatorship of Jósef Piłsudski. Contemporary issues of money use no state representations, preferring instead either notable people, mostly men among them, or introducing other means of cultural representations not related to human depictions. Thus state representations used in the designs of national currencies become less popular in the 21st cent. due to globalisation and de-materialisation of money.

The decision of the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) is unprecedented, especially considering the recent trend in the global economy toward economic integration. There is a multitude of research concerning the implications of economic integration; however, research in the field of disintegration is scarce. Brexit serves as an interesting case study to investigate the effects of economic disintegration. The implications for trade are especially fascinating as trade liberalization is one of the most important benefits of economic integration. Existing studies focus mainly on Brexit's impact on the UK's exports and imports, while less attention has been paid to Brexit's effects on the trade of other countries. The main objective of our research is to estimate Brexit's influence on Polish exports. We present several possible scenarios of future trade relations between the UK and the EU and assume that, at least in the nearest-future post-Brexit scenario, trade under the World Trade Organization rules is most likely. This will result in the imposition of tariffs on trade between the UK and the EU members, including Poland. In our research, we used the real exchange rate of the Polish zloty against the British pound as a proxy for the changes in price competitiveness of Polish exports due to the imposition of tariffs. We find that in the first year after Brexit, the dynamics of Polish exports to the UK will decrease due to the imposition of customs duties by 1.3 percentage points (pp) and by 0.1 pp when it comes to total Polish exports. This paper contributes to the discussion on the effects of disintegration on trade. We propose a new method for assessing changes in trade volume due to increase of trade barriers. ; 2 ; 1-11 ; 54

Poland belongs to a shrinking minority – despite the economic crisis – of the non-Eurozone countries in the EU. The unwillingness of politicians and citizens to introduce the euro, indicates the need for dissemination of professional knowledge and apolitical discussion about the euro. This should give a convincing explanation about the consequences of the instability of the exchange rate for Polish economy, the challenges of the pegged exchange rate, the reasons for the strong differences in the perception of the desired exchange rate level. It also should show that Polish economy is strongly dependent on the exchange rate, and make people aware of other possible solutions for the exchange rate regime and give an extensive analysis of their consequences – from self-stabilization of the exchange rate, through the membership in the ERM II, and finally the introduction of the euro. The aim of this paper is to present one of these alternatives – the membership in the exchange rate mechanism ERM II and to indicate the advantages of this solution. It would increase not only the stability of the economy, but also its credibility thanks to the European Central Bank's guarantee. It would give also the opportunity to test the competitiveness of Polish economy at the chosen central course to the euro, and finally would constitute a contribution to the public education about the role of the exchange rate in the economy being a part of the single market in the European Union and to the discussions about the other – perhaps better than the present one in Poland – exchange rate regime solutions.

According to the Polish Banking Supervision (KNF) statistics , banking mortgage loans total 22.4% of the overall assets of the Polish banking credit portfolio as of January 2015 data. Around 15% of those loans might have Loan To Property Value proportion (LTV) exceeding 100%. Rapid growth of mortgage loans in Poland was the result of growth of foreign currency mortgage loans. That was the typical situation for Central and Eastern European Countries. In the Polish banking sector, collective provisions typical for retail segment including IBNR (Identified but nor Reported Loss Provisions) provision applied under current IAS 39 seems to be too low to cover credit risk. Assuming conservative credit risk parameters in determining collective provisions might affect adversely the financial situation of the Polish banks. The financial results of the Polish banks might go down considerably. In addition, borrowers having loans denominated in foreign currency have won certain legal cases in Europe and in Poland. Therefore, the presence of the foreign currency denominated mortgage loans (FCML) in the Polish banking sector represents an element of the systemic risk and has to be solved. Growth of FCML weakens the abilities of central banks to control over credit creation and to steer monetary policy. On the other hand, compulsory conversion of the mortgage loans hitherto denominated in foreign currency into mortgage loans in Polish zloty by special law, might create considerable losses in the Polish banking sector and reduction of Capital Adequacy Ratio of the Polish banks. Therefore, direct replication of the Hungarian style legal solution of the foreign currency banking (compulsory loan currency conversion into PLN) loans might create problems in the Polish banking sector. Moreover, potential state aid devoted to some borrowers in Poland that have saved significant amount of money having cheaper foreign currency mortgage loans is controversial from the social justice point of view. Law should not treat favourable one group of borrowers at the expense of the another one. Any legal solutions to sort out the problem of foreign currency loans have to take these facts into consideration. Given that background, the paper present several ways to resolve the problem of the foreign currency loans in the Polish banking sector. Complex solution how to tackle FCML problem in the Polish banking sector is needed. Any realistic solution is going to be is linked with extra provisioning after thorough investigation of real nature of FCML borrowers in Poland (households) and their financial standing. Polish Banking Supervision (KNF) should play a leading role in initiating such survey leading to more credible credit risk parameters in IAS 39.

The subject of the article are currency reforms that were carried out after the Second World War in the Polish state. The first legal regulations from 1944 - 45 concerned the unification of the money circulation, which in practice meant the exchange of occupation money for the new currency. However, the repayment of financial claims made before the outbreak of the war was regulated by a decree of 1949. Another monetary reform concerned the new, socialist economic policy of the Polish state. The basis for it was the Act of October 28, 1950 on the change of the monetary system. After this reform, periodic changes in prices and wages were introduced, which were not based on strictly legislative solutions. In practice, these ordinances were in the nature of new monetary reforms. The Act of 1950 was repealed by the Act of 7 July 1994 on the denomination of the zloty.