IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/new/wpaper/1504.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Decision to Produce Altcoins: Miners' Arbitrage in Cryptocurrency Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Hayes

    (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research)

Abstract

Bitcoin has become the de facto 'gold' standard among cryptocurrencies as it is the most widely accepted in commerce, has the largest mining network, and greatest volume of transactions. Because of this, miners of other SHA-256 cryptocurrencies will tend to convert those altcoins into bitcoin in order to transact in a meaningful way with the real economy. The result is that bitcoin mining regulates that of all other SHA-256 blockchains. Specifically, what matters is the expected number of bitcoins produced per day given a unit of hashing (mining) power, whatever the equivalence in the coin being mined. If mining for a different coin would yield a greater return in bitcoins at the margin (per day) for a miner, an apparent arbitrage opportunity will exist to direct mining effort at that cryptocurrency and subsequently exchange those for bitcoin. These opportunities, once taken, quickly eliminate the profitable arbitrage and appear to operate in a fairly efficient and predictable manner. A model is developed in this paper to formalize this process where cryptocurrency miners seeking to maximize production in terms of bitcoins earned in a day will exploit any such opportunities. If no such opportunities exist, they will simply revert to mining bitcoins directly. There are some important implications to this process, such as a tendency for cryptocurrencies to fall in price relative to bitcoin over time, and for changes in bitcoin mining difficulty to indirectly influence the market prices of altcoins. Finally, it seems that those undertaking this process of miners' arbitrage do so at the expense of speculators and noise traders who make decisions regarding buy and sell trades without the use of fundamental data. These participants generally have poor timing, follow trends, and over-react to good and bad news. Altcoins are produced by miners and subsequently offered for sale in the market in order to obtain bitcoins; meanwhile noise traders serve as the only bid-side to the market, on average.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Hayes, 2015. "The Decision to Produce Altcoins: Miners' Arbitrage in Cryptocurrency Markets," Working Papers 1504, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:new:wpaper:1504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/econ/2015/NSSR_WP_042015.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam Hayes, 2014. "What Factors Give Cryptocurrencies Their Value: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers 1406, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2015.
    2. Neil Gandal & Hanna Halaburda, 2014. "Competition in the Cryptocurrency Market," Working Papers 14-17, NET Institute.
    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. Fantazzini, Dean & Nigmatullin, Erik & Sukhanovskaya, Vera & Ivliev, Sergey, 2016. "Everything you always wanted to know about bitcoin modelling but were afraid to ask. I," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 44, pages 5-24.
    2. Mark Mizraki, 2015. "Conversation with Mark Mizruchi:“There is Very Little Organizational Theory Left in Sociology Departments”," Journal of Economic Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 16(3), pages 14-25.
    3. Pavković Ana & Anđelinović Mihovil & Pavković Ivan, 2019. "Achieving Portfolio Diversification through Cryptocurrencies in European Markets," Business Systems Research, Sciendo, vol. 10(2), pages 85-107, September.
    4. Sondes Mbarek & Donia Trabelsi & Michel Berne, 2020. "Are virtual currencies virtuous? Ethical and environmental issues," Post-Print hal-02434877, HAL.
    5. Adam Hayes, 2015. "A Cost of Production Model for Bitcoin," Working Papers 1505, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    6. Fantazzini, Dean & Nigmatullin, Erik & Sukhanovskaya, Vera & Ivliev, Sergey, 2017. "Everything you always wanted to know about bitcoin modelling but were afraid to ask. Part 2," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 45, pages 5-28.
    7. Lars Steinert & Christian Herff, 2018. "Predicting altcoin returns using social media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-12, December.

    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. Pieters, Gina & Vivanco, Sofia, 2017. "Financial regulations and price inconsistencies across Bitcoin markets," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-14.
    2. Bouri, Elie & Gupta, Rangan & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Roubaud, David, 2017. "Does Bitcoin hedge global uncertainty? Evidence from wavelet-based quantile-in-quantile regressions," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 87-95.
    3. Henry, Christopher S. & Huynh, Kim P. & Nicholls, Gradon, 2018. "Bitcoin awareness and usage in Canada," Journal of Digital Banking, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 2(4), pages 311-337, May.
    4. Pedro Bação & António Portugal Duarte & Helder Sebastião & Srdjan Redzepagic, 2018. "Information Transmission Between Cryptocurrencies: Does Bitcoin Rule the Cryptocurrency World?," Scientific Annals of Economics and Business (continues Analele Stiintifice), Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 65(2), pages 97-117, June.
    5. Aiman Hairudin & Imtiaz Mohammad Sifat & Azhar Mohamad & Yusniliyana Yusof, 2022. "Cryptocurrencies: A survey on acceptance, governance and market dynamics," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 4633-4659, October.
    6. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Plastun, Alex, 2019. "The day of the week effect in the cryptocurrency market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    7. Mayer, Fabian & Bofinger, Peter, 2023. "Cryptocurrency competition: An empirical test of Hayek's vision of private monies," W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers 103, University of Würzburg, Department of Economics.
    8. Gil-Alana, Luis Alberiko & Abakah, Emmanuel Joel Aikins & Rojo, María Fátima Romero, 2020. "Cryptocurrencies and stock market indices. Are they related?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    9. Chengyi Tu & Paolo DOdorico & Samir Suweis, 2018. "Critical slowing down associated with critical transition and risk of collapse in cryptocurrency," Papers 1806.08386, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2019.
    10. Huberman, Gur & Leshno, Jacob D. & Moallemi, Ciamac, 2017. "Monopoly without a monopolist: An economic analysis of the bitcoin payment system," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 27/2017, Bank of Finland.
    11. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Alex Plastun, 2020. "Momentum effects in the cryptocurrency market after one-day abnormal returns," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 34(3), pages 251-266, September.
    12. Kang, Kee-Youn, 2019. "Cryptocurrency, Delivery Lag, and Double Spending History," MPRA Paper 93598, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Selmi, Refk & Mensi, Walid & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Bouoiyour, Jamal, 2018. "Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 787-801.
    14. Serhat KARAOÐLAN & Tayfun ARAR & Onur BÝLGÝN, 2018. "Türkiye’de Kripto Para Farkýndalýðý ve Kripto Para Kabul Eden Ýþletmelerin Motivasyonlarý," Isletme ve Iktisat Calismalari Dergisi, Econjournals, vol. 6(2), pages 15-28.
    15. Kosc, Krzysztof & Sakowski, Paweł & Ślepaczuk, Robert, 2019. "Momentum and contrarian effects on the cryptocurrency market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 691-701.
    16. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2017_027 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Asgari Chenaghlu, Meysam & Jamali, Shahram & Nikzad Khasmakhi, Narjes, 2016. "A novel keyed parallel hashing scheme based on a new chaotic system," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 216-225.
    18. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Gil-Alana, Luis & Plastun, Alex, 2018. "Persistence in the cryptocurrency market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 141-148.
    19. Andrada-Félix, Julián & Fernandez-Perez, Adrian & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simón, 2020. "Distant or close cousins: Connectedness between cryptocurrencies and traditional currencies volatilities," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    20. Sumit Ranjan & Parthajit Kayal & Malvika Saraf, 2023. "Bitcoin Price Prediction: A Machine Learning Sample Dimension Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1617-1636, April.
    21. Ed Saiedi & Anders Broström & Felipe Ruiz, 2021. "Global drivers of cryptocurrency infrastructure adoption," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 353-406, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bitcoin; cryptocurrency; altcoins; arbitrage; equilibrium models; currency exchanges;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • L17 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Open Source Products and Markets
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:new:wpaper:1504. 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: Mark Setterfield (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/denewus.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.