Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have captured the attention of world leaders. The current conversation is dominated by high-level motivations like the efficiency benefits of a cashless society. This discourse neglects the potential use of CBDC data for new analytics capabilities. This thesis makes three main contributions to that end. First, it identifies and explores the inherent challenges of analyzing blockchain data (as a proxy for future CDBC data), making future design recommendations where possible. Second, it develops a novel technique to extract useful sector-based macro-economic data from pseudonymous transaction data, using the Ethereum blockchain as a case study. This also enables a novel breakdown of the Ethereum ecosystem by actor type. Third, it unearths evidence new insights about the public blockchain ecosystem, for example that Ethereum users are becoming more sophisticated over time and that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) may have caused the 2018 cryptocurrency bubble.
We study how financial frictions amplify labor supply shocks in a macroeconomic model with occasionally binding financing constraints. Workers supply labor to entrepreneurs who borrow to purchase factors of production. Borrowing capacity is restricted by the value of capital, generating a pecuniary externality when financing constraints bind. Additionally, there is a distributive externality operating through wages. The planner's allocation can be decentralized with two instruments: a credit tax/subsidy and a labor tax/subsidy. Labor shocks, such as the COVID-19 shock, amplify the policy responses, which critically depend on whether financing constraints bind or not.
Cryptocurrencies are a new phenomenon in the global economy, which are attracting the interest of society, which is increasing their popularity. This new kind of digital market for goods and services is constantly growing and growing. The main objective of this science paper is to analyze how far this phenomenon is perspective for the development of the world economy and what is the effect after the introduction of digital money into the daily life of economic entities. The scientific report will present both the analysis of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment and trade, as well as analyzes of their applicability at supranational level, tracing the effects of the applicability of cryptocurrencies globally.
Are cryptocurrencies indeed currencies? Anecdotal evidence on the volatility of cryptocurrency prices suggest that these “currencies” are not a good store of value, and similarly the time delays in validating and publishing crypto-based transactions suggest that they are not a good medium of exchange either. Due to the context it is defined in, it seems to not follow social conventions of fiat currencies. In this thesis, we undertake a systematic evaluation of how much do cryptocurrency prices behave like fiat currency prices, focusing on the predominant cryptocurrency — Bitcoin. We test the usefulness of various time series and structural models to predict future changes in Bitcoin prices and conclude that when predicting out of sample, its price is as unpredictable as fiat currency prices. Since cryptocurrencies generally have no central authority and hence receive no regulation, we explore its country-dependent characteristics, and find that the overall conclusions apply. We also examine if nominal interest rate differentials denominated in fiat currencies versus Bitcoin predict exchange rate movements, and find that in addition to the persistent violation in short-run, interest parity suggest that Bitcoin price has not been rising fast enough. We conclude that we have to refine the definition of monetary parameters on cryptocurrencies to better capture its properties, but as far as our examination indicates, the price of the predominant cryptocurrencies behaves similarly to most fiat currencies. In our point of view, Bitcoin is a currency.<br>
T Diana Cristina Bueno, Julio Cesar de (Org.) Aguiar
The purpouse of this paper is analyse if the called bitcoin can be defined as currency.Therefore, first is analysed the bitcoin tecnology, specially its structuring from the encryption development by blockchain. The main characteristics of this technological structure are studied, wich allowed its fast diffusion, with the sufficient confidence and security in the transactions, at low cost, without the intervention of third parties, be it the State or the banking system.Later, the study turns to the concept of money, from the economic point of view, under the focus of the main theories developed. At this point, a special analysis is made from the studies of the Austrian school of economics, especially by Luwig von Mises and his regression theorem, developed to explain the origin of the currency. Once these parameters have been established, bitcoin attributes are analyzed, having this paper concluded that its volatility and lack of liquidity prevent, for the moment, its characterization as currency. It should be noted that this paper serves as a starting point for future work on the legal effects of bitcoin, in particular in criminal law. However, it is necessary to define the nature of bitcoin.
In the first chapter, To Pool or Not to Pool? Security Design in OTC Markets with Vincent Glode and Christian C. Opp, we study security issuers' decision whether to pool assets when facing counterparties endowed with market power, as is common in over-the-counter markets. Unlike in competitive markets, pooling assets may be suboptimal in the presence of market power --- both privately and socially --- in particular, when the potential gains from trade are large. In these cases, pooling assets reduces the elasticity of trade volume in the relevant part of the payoff distribution, exacerbating inefficient rationing associated with the exercise of market power. Our results shed light on recently observed time-variation in the prevalence of pooling in financial markets. In the second chapter, Selling to Investor Network: Allocations in the Primary Corporate Bond Market, I develop a model of the primary market for corporate bonds, in which an issuer optimally chooses an issuance price and allocations to investors based on their trading connections in the secondary over-the-counter market. Expected secondary market liquidity, which depends on the structure of the trading network in this market, determines investors' demands in the primary market and, in turn, the issuer's revenues. I show that trading by less connected investors has a relatively high negative impact on expected secondary market liquidity and disproportionately reduces the demands of all investors in the primary market. As a result, the issuer can increase her profits by restricting allocations of new bonds only to more connected investors. This explains the commonly observed exclusion of small institutional investors from the primary market, which is often coupled with seemingly underpriced bonds. In the third chapter, Initial Coin Offerings as a Commitment to Competition with Itay Goldstein and Deeksha Gupta, we model Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) of utility tokens, which are increasingly used to finance the development of online platforms where buyers and sellers can meet to exchange services or goods. Utility tokens serve as the sole medium of exchange on a platform and can be traded in a secondary market. We show that such a financing mechanism allows an entrepreneur to give up monopolistic rents associated with the control of the platform and make a credible commitment to long-run competitive prices. The entrepreneur optimally chooses to have an ICO, rather than operate as a monopolist, only if future consumers of the platform participate in financing. ICOs, therefore, endogenously require crowd-funding to be viable.
This chapter studies the challenges a cryptocurrency faces to become a common means of exchange. In particular, the paper discusses the scalability constraint that limits the number of transactions a cryptocurrency may be able to verify per unit of time, the network effect in goods that function as money that increases the cost of new currencies to gain market share, and the implications of the fixed monetary rule present in most cryptocurrencies that departs from an elastic optimal monetary policy. Potential solutions for each case are also discussed.
Sameti Morteza, Mohammad Djawadi, Emadzadeh Mostafa
Theories of money and credit can be divided into two general categories: commodity theory of money and credit theory of money. Both categories
theoretically question the acceptance of cryptocurrencies as money. The present study aimed to provide a new interpretation of the Theory of
Money and Credit in relation to both theories mentioned above. First, the functions of public trust was taken as a commodity, which is consistent
with Karl Mengers views and the subjective theory of value. Based on this approach, the definitions of the credit theory of money will be acceptable
with a new interpretation. This new interpretation also involves an extension of Hayek's definition of money, which is consistent with Mises'
definition of money. Then, the concept of intertemporal preferences, with an emphasis on the barter root of money based on Mises regression
theorem, was used to show that cryptocurrencies can be accepted as money as far as they serve as private currency and suit the computability of
dynamics of Underlying Economic Realities with intertemporal preferences. Therefore, the main criterion for defining money is how it affects
intertemporal preferences
We show that recent technological innovations have significantly improved the efficiency of Bitcoin as a means of payment. We study three particular innovations: the Lightning Network, a means of netting payments off the blockchain; SegWit, an improvement to the way data are stored on the blockchain; and Bitcoin Cash, a new cryptocurrency forked from Bitcoin. We find a robust and significant association between adoption of the Lightning Network and reduced blockchain congestion. This improvement cannot be explained by other factors, such as changes in speculative demand for Bitcoin. We show that the Lightning Network has become increasingly centralised, with payments channelled through relatively few intermediaries. Finally, we argue that improved functioning of Bitcoin is positive for welfare, and may reduce the environmental footprint of Bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin is the currency of the blockchain, which promises cost reductions for businesses. This paper develops models to value bitcoin, bitcoin futures, and bitcoin options. It provides the theoretical basis for bitcoin pricing. Optimal bitcoin prices are derived at the intersection of an aberrancy utility function, a hyperbolic cosine utility function, and a Bessel utility function with price distributions. Rational investors value bitcoin on the basis of blockchain applications, while irrational investors' value bitcoin based on personal recommendations.
Gianmaria Del Monte, Diego Pennino, Maurizio Pizzonia
Public blockchains should be able to scale with respect to the number of nodes and to the transactions workload. The blockchain scalability trilemma has been informally conjectured. This is related to scalability, security and decentralization, stating that any improvement in one of these aspects should negatively impact on at least one of the other two. In fact, despite the large research and experimental effort, all known approaches turn out to be tradeoffs. We theoretically describe a new blockchain architecture that scales to arbitrarily high workload provided that a corresponding proportional increment of nodes is provisioned. We show that, under reasonable assumptions, our approach does not require tradeoffs on security or decentralization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first result that disprove the trilemma considering the scalability of all architectural elements of a blockchain and not only the consensus protocol. While our result is currently only theoretic, we believe that our approach may stimulate significant practical contributions.
F. N. M. de Sousa Filho, J. N. Silva, Mário Augusto Bertella, Edgardo Brigatti
In this paper, we explore some stylized facts of the Bitcoin market using the BTC-USD exchange rate time series of historical intraday data from 2013 to 2020. Bitcoin presents some very peculiar idiosyncrasies, like the absence of macroeconomic fundamentals or connections with underlying assets or benchmarks, an asymmetry between demand and supply and the presence of inefficiency in the form of strong arbitrage opportunity. Nevertheless, all these elements seem to be marginal in the definition of the structural statistical properties of this virtual financial asset, which result to be analogous to general individual stocks or indices. In contrast, we find some clear differences, compared to fiat money exchange rates time series, in the values of the linear autocorrelation and, more surprisingly, in the presence of the leverage effect. We also explore the dynamics of correlations, monitoring the shifts in the evolution of the Bitcoin market. This analysis is able to distinguish between two different regimes: a stochastic process with weaker memory signatures and closer to Gaussianity between the Mt. Gox incident and the late 2015, and a dynamics with relevant correlations and strong deviations from Gaussianity before and after this interval.
Ariah Klages‐Mundt, Dominik Harz, Lewis Gudgeon, Junyou Liu · 5 authors
Stablecoins are one of the most widely capitalized type of cryptocurrency. However, their risks vary significantly according to their design and are often poorly understood. We seek to provide a sound foundation for stablecoin theory, with a risk-based functional characterization of the economic structure of stablecoins. First, we match existing economic models to the disparate set of custodial systems. Next, we characterize the unique risks that emerge in non-custodial stablecoins and develop a model framework that unifies existing models from economics and computer science. We further discuss how this modeling framework is applicable to a wide array of cryptoeconomic systems, including cross-chain protocols, collateralized lending, and decentralized exchanges. These unique risks yield unanswered research questions that will form the crux of research in decentralized finance going forward.
This paper compares mathematical models for automated market makers including logarithmic market scoring rule (LMSR), liquidity sensitive LMSR (LS-LMSR), constant product/mean/sum, and others. It is shown that though LMSR may not be a good model for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications, LS-LMSR has several advantages over constant product/mean based automated market makers. However, LS-LMSR requires complicated computation (i.e., logarithm and exponentiation) and the cost function curve is concave. In certain DeFi applications, it is preferred to have computationally efficient cost functions with convex curves to conform with the principle of supply and demand. This paper proposes and analyzes constant circle/ellipse based cost functions for automated market makers. The proposed cost functions are computationally efficient (only requires multiplication and square root calculation) and have several advantages over widely deployed constant product cost functions. For example, the proposed market makers are more robust against front-runner (slippage) attacks.
Hanna Hałaburda, Guillaume Haeringer, Joshua S. Gans, Neil Gandal
This chapter focuses on how bitcoin performs the functions of money. A better understanding of where cryptocurrencies fall short of fiat money might allow for a better design and might possibly decrease price volatility. The medium of exchange function means a generally accepted form of payment. The Haitian gourde, for example, is fiat money in Haiti. General acceptance of various forms of fiat money is limited. To function as a medium of exchange, a currency needs a low transaction cost. Transaction costs have both domestic and international dimensions. Cryptocurrency is faster and sometimes cheaper for international and long-distance domestic transactions, whereas fiat money is cheaper for local domestic transactions. The Lightning Network technology reduces transaction costs for parties that can pool bitcoin transactions without converting into and out of fiat currency each time. Bitcoin provides users with other valuable features, such as financial privacy. Fiat money in the form of physical cash offers excellent privacy.
Bitcoin users can offer fees to the miners who record transactions on the blockchain. We document the blockchain rarely runs at capacity, even though there appears to be excess demand and higher fee orders are not always prioritized. We show this is inconsistent with competitive mining, but is consistent with miners exercising market power. If users believe that only high fee transactions will be executed expeditiously then we show how strategic capacity management can be used to increase fee revenue. Using a novel data set, we present evidence consistent with strategic capacity management. We show that mining pools facilitate collusion, and estimate that they have extracted least 300 million USD a year in excess fees by making processing capacity artificially scarce.