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The price and cost of bitcoin

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  • Marthinsen, John E.
  • Gordon, Steven R.

Abstract

Explaining changes in bitcoin’s price and predicting its future have been the foci of many research studies. In contrast, far less attention has been paid to the relationship between bitcoin’s mining costs and its price. One popular notion is the cost of bitcoin creation provides a support level below which this cryptocurrency’s price should never fall because if it did, mining would become unprofitable and threaten the maintenance of bitcoin’s public ledger. Other research has used mining costs to explain or forecast bitcoin’s price movements. Competing econometric analyses have debunked this idea, showing that changes in mining costs follow changes in bitcoin’s price rather than preceding them, but the reason for this behavior remains unexplained in these analyses. This research aims to employ economic theory to explain why econometric studies have failed to predict bitcoin prices and why mining costs follow movements in bitcoin prices rather than precede them. We do so by explaining the chain of causality connecting a bitcoin’s price to its mining costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Marthinsen, John E. & Gordon, Steven R., 2022. "The price and cost of bitcoin," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 280-288.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:85:y:2022:i:c:p:280-288
    DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2022.04.003
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bitcoin; Mining costs; Value; Price; Causation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation

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