IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedcec/00104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bitcoin’s Decentralized Decision Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Ben R. Craig
  • Joseph Kachovec

Abstract

With the introduction of bitcoin, the world got not just a new currency, it also got evidence that a decentralized control structure could work in practice for institutional governance. This Commentary discusses the advantages and disadvantages of centralized and decentralized control structures by examining the features of the bitcoin payment system. We show that while the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network \\"democratizes\\" payments, it is not obvious that the approach increases the equity or efficiency of markets or that the costs of the decentralized control structure won?t outweigh the benefits in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben R. Craig & Joseph Kachovec, 2019. "Bitcoin’s Decentralized Decision Structure," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue July.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcec:00104
    DOI: 10.26509/frbc-ec-201912
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-ec-201912
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26509/frbc-ec-201912?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luther, William J. & Stein Smith, Sean, 2020. "Is Bitcoin a decentralized payment mechanism?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(4), pages 433-444, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cryptocurrency;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedcec:00104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: 4D Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbclus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.