IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v35y2022i2p866-907..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decentralizing Money: Bitcoin Prices and Blockchain Security

Author

Listed:
  • Emiliano S Pagnotta

Abstract

We address the determination of bitcoin prices and decentralized security. Users forecast the transactional and resale values of holdings, pricing the risk of systemic attacks. Miners contribute resources to protect against attackers and compete for block rewards. Bitcoin’s design leads to multiple equilibria: the same blockchain technology is consistent with sharply different price and security levels. Bitcoin’s monetary policy can lead to welfare losses and deviations from quantity theory. Price-security feedback amplifies fundamental shocks’ volatility impact and leads to boom and busts unconnected to fundamentals. We characterize how viability versus fiat currency depends on bitcoin’s relative acceptability and inflation protection.

Suggested Citation

  • Emiliano S Pagnotta, 2022. "Decentralizing Money: Bitcoin Prices and Blockchain Security," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(2), pages 866-907.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:35:y:2022:i:2:p:866-907.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhaa149
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schilling, Linda & Uhlig, Harald, 2019. "Some simple bitcoin economics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-26.
    2. Gur Huberman & Jacob D. Leshno & Ciamac Moallemi, 2019. "An Economist's Perspective on the Bitcoin Payment System," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 93-96, May.
    3. Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright, 2005. "Money in Search Equilibrium, in Competitive Equilibrium, and in Competitive Search Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 175-202, January.
    4. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Sanches, Daniel, 2019. "Can currency competition work?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-15.
    5. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1996. "Models of currency crises with self-fulfilling features," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 1037-1047, April.
    6. Vladimir Asriyan & William Fuchs & Brett Green, 2019. "Liquidity Sentiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3813-3848, November.
    7. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 293-319.
    8. Ricardo Lagos & Randall Wright, 2005. "A Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 463-484, June.
    9. Bruno Biais & Christophe Bisière & Matthieu Bouvard & Catherine Casamatta, 2019. "The Blockchain Folk Theorem," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1662-1715.
    10. Lagos, Ricardo & Wright, Randall, 2003. "Dynamics, cycles, and sunspot equilibria in 'genuinely dynamic, fundamentally disaggregative' models of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 156-171, April.
    11. Budish, Eric B., 2018. "The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain," Working Papers 279, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    12. Lin William Cong & Ye Li & Neng Wang, 2021. "Tokenomics: Dynamic Adoption and Valuation [The demand of liquid assets with uncertain lumpy expenditures]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(3), pages 1105-1155.
    13. John Kareken & Neil Wallace, 1981. "On the Indeterminacy of Equilibrium Exchange Rates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 96(2), pages 207-222.
    14. Itay Goldstein & Emre Ozdenoren & Kathy Yuan, 2011. "Learning and Complementarities in Speculative Attacks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 263-292.
    15. Easley, David & O'Hara, Maureen & Basu, Soumya, 2019. "From mining to markets: The evolution of bitcoin transaction fees," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 91-109.
    16. Jonathan Chiu & Thorsten V. Koeppl, 2017. "The Economics Of Cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin And Beyond," Working Paper 1389, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    17. Ricardo Lagos & Guillaume Rocheteau & Randall Wright, 2017. "Liquidity: A New Monetarist Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 371-440, June.
    18. Korniotis, George & Bhambhwani, Siddharth & Delikouras, Stefanos, 2019. "Blockchain Characteristics and the Cross-Section of Cryptocurrency Returns," CEPR Discussion Papers 13724, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Eric Budish, 2018. "The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain," NBER Working Papers 24717, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Benjamin Lester & Andrew Postlewaite & Randall Wright, 2012. "Information, Liquidity, Asset Prices, and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1209-1238.
    21. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100409, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    22. Zhu, Tao, 2008. "An overlapping-generations model with search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 318-331, September.
    23. David Yermack, 2017. "Corporate Governance and Blockchains," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 7-31.
    24. Sean Foley & Jonathan R Karlsen & Tālis J Putniņš, 2019. "Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(5), pages 1798-1853.
    25. Azariadis, Costas, 1981. "Self-fulfilling prophecies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 380-396, December.
    26. Max Raskin & David Yermack, 2016. "Digital Currencies, Decentralized Ledgers, and the Future of Central Banking," NBER Working Papers 22238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Simplice A. Asongu & Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2023. "Female unemployment, mobile money innovations and doing business by females," Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-26, December.
    2. Aggelos Kiayias & Philip Lazos & Jan Christoph Schlegel, 2023. "Would Friedman Burn your Tokens?," Papers 2306.17025, arXiv.org.
    3. Simplice A. Asongu & Peter Agyemang-Mintah & Joseph Nnanna & Yolande E. Ngoungou, 2024. "Mobile money innovations, income inequality and gender inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, December.
    4. Joseph Abadi & Markus Brunnermeier, 2018. "Blockchain Economics," NBER Working Papers 25407, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jacob D. Leshno & Elaine Shi & Rafael Pass, 2024. "On the Viability of Open-Source Financial Rails: Economic Security of Permissionless Consensus," Papers 2409.08951, arXiv.org.
    6. Rodney Garratt & Maarten RC van Oordt, 2024. "Crypto Exchange Tokens," BIS Working Papers 1201, Bank for International Settlements.
    7. Asongu, Simplice A. & Ngoungou, Yolande E. & Nnanna, Joseph, 2023. "Mobile money innovations and health performance in sub-Saharan Africa," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    8. Feng, Wenjun & Zhang, Zhengjun, 2023. "Risk-weighted cryptocurrency indices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    9. Aloosh, Arash & Ouzan, Samuel & Shahzad, Syed Jawad Hussain, 2022. "Bubbles across Meme Stocks and Cryptocurrencies," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    10. Gousia Habib & Sparsh Sharma & Sara Ibrahim & Imtiaz Ahmad & Shaima Qureshi & Malik Ishfaq, 2022. "Blockchain Technology: Benefits, Challenges, Applications, and Integration of Blockchain Technology with Cloud Computing," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-22, November.
    11. Pourpourides, Panayiotis, 2023. "Long-Term Nexus of Macroeconomic and Financial Fundamentals with Cryptocurrencies," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2023/23, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    12. Verdier, Marianne, 2024. "Digital payments and bank competition," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    13. Barros, Fernando & Bertolai, Jefferson & Carrijo, Matheus, 2023. "Cryptocurrency is accounting coordination: Selfish mining and double spending in a simple mining game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 25-50.
    14. Kong, Xiaolin & Ma, Chaoqun & Ren, Yi-Shuai & Baltas, Konstantinos & Narayan, Seema, 2024. "A comparative analysis of the price explosiveness in Bitcoin and forked coins," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    15. Ms. Natasha X Che & Alexander Copestake & Davide Furceri & Tammaro Terracciano, 2023. "The Crypto Cycle and US Monetary Policy," IMF Working Papers 2023/163, International Monetary Fund.
    16. Asongu, Simplice A. & le Roux, Sara, 2023. "The role of mobile money innovations in transforming unemployed women to self-employed women in sub-Saharan Africa," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    17. Yu, Haoyang & Sun, Yutong & Liu, Yulin & Zhang, Luyao, 2023. "Bitcoin Gold, Litecoin Silver: An Introduction to Cryptocurrency’s Valuation and Trading Strategy," OSF Preprints t2fku, Center for Open Science.
    18. Kim, Daehan & Ryu, Doojin & Webb, Robert I., 2023. "Determination of equilibrium transaction fees in the Bitcoin network: A rank-order contest," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    19. Baur, Dirk G. & Karlsen, Jonathan R. & Smales, Lee A. & Trench, Allan, 2024. "Digging deeper - Is bitcoin digital gold? A mining perspective," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    20. Aggelos Kiayias & Philip Lazos & Paolo Penna, 2024. "Single-token vs Two-token Blockchain Tokenomics," Papers 2403.15429, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    21. Conlon, Thomas & Corbet, Shaen & McGee, Richard J., 2024. "The Bitcoin volume-volatility relationship: A high frequency analysis of futures and spot exchanges," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    22. Chen, Meichen & Qin, Cong & Zhang, Xiaoyu, 2022. "Cryptocurrency price discrepancies under uncertainty: Evidence from COVID-19 and lockdown nexus," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    23. Michael Sockin & Wei Xiong, 2023. "Decentralization through Tokenization," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(1), pages 247-299, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruno Biais & Christophe Bisière & Matthieu Bouvard & Catherine Casamatta & Albert J. Menkveld, 2023. "Equilibrium Bitcoin Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(2), pages 967-1014, April.
    2. Ye Li & Simon Mayer & Simon Mayer, 2021. "Money Creation in Decentralized Finance: A Dynamic Model of Stablecoin and Crypto Shadow Banking," CESifo Working Paper Series 9260, CESifo.
    3. Choi, Michael & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2022. "Money mining and price dynamics: The case of divisible currencies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    4. Hanna Halaburda & Guillaume Haeringer & Joshua Gans & Neil Gandal, 2022. "The Microeconomics of Cryptocurrencies," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 971-1013, September.
    5. Brunnermeier, Markus & Abadi, Joseph, 2018. "Blockchain Economics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13420, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Matteo Benetton & Giovanni Compiani, 2024. "Investors’ Beliefs and Cryptocurrency Prices," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 197-236.
    7. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2021. "Blockchain analysis of the Bitcoin market," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118897, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar, 2021. "Blockchain Analysis of the Bitcoin Market," NBER Working Papers 29396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Bertrand Crettez & Lisa Morhaim, 2022. "General equilibrium cryptocurrency pricing in an OLG model," Post-Print hal-04103599, HAL.
    10. Benigno, Pierpaolo & Schilling, Linda M. & Uhlig, Harald, 2022. "Cryptocurrencies, currency competition, and the impossible trinity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    11. Saketh Aleti & Bruce Mizrach, 2021. "Bitcoin spot and futures market microstructure," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(2), pages 194-225, February.
    12. Kang, Kee-Youn, 2019. "Cryptocurrency, Delivery Lag, and Double Spending History," MPRA Paper 93598, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Aysan, Ahmet Faruk & Caporin, Massimiliano & Cepni, Oguzhan, 2024. "Not all words are equal: Sentiment and jumps in the cryptocurrency market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    14. Julien Prat & Benjamin Walter, 2021. "An Equilibrium Model of the Market for Bitcoin Mining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(8), pages 2415-2452.
    15. Prateek Saxena, 2020. "Comments on “Cellular Structure for a Digital Fiat Currency” — Cellular DFC Design: Technological Perspectives," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Bernard Yeung (ed.), DIGITAL CURRENCY ECONOMICS AND POLICY, chapter 11, pages 103-109, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. Zhixiu Yu, 2023. "On the Coexistence of Cryptocurrency and Fiat Money," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 147-180, July.
    17. Kee-Youn Kang, 2023. "Cryptocurrency and double spending history: transactions with zero confirmation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 453-491, February.
    18. Luciano Somoza & Antoine Didisheim, 2022. "The End of the Crypto-Diversification Myth," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 22-53, Swiss Finance Institute.
    19. Dong, Bingbing & Jiang, Lei & Liu, Jinyu & Zhu, Yifeng, 2022. "Liquidity in the cryptocurrency market and commonalities across anomalies," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    20. Max Raskin & Fahad Saleh & David Yermack, 2020. "How do Private Digital Currencies Affect Government Policy?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Bernard Yeung (ed.), DIGITAL CURRENCY ECONOMICS AND POLICY, chapter 12, pages 111-115, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:oup:rfinst:v:35:y:2022:i:2:p:866-907.. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.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.