This paper studies the potential of a cryptocurrency to become a medium of exchange. We use evidence from a natural … experiment: In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender, and all economic … agents were required to accept bitcoin for all payments. The Salvadorean government also launched an app, "Chivo Wallet …

evidence from Bitcoin mining supports our model predictions. The economic insights inform many other blockchain protocols as …

We analyze the Bitcoin protocol for electronic peer-to-peer payments and the operations that support the "blockchain … reward to mining. The endogenous level of computational difficulty built into the Bitcoin protocol does not mitigate this … resource use highlighting the importance of identifying the benefits of competition for the operation of the blockchain …

majority of benefits of the underlying blockchain architecture but support accountability and regulatory compliance …

Cryptomining, the clearing of cryptocurrency transactions, uses large quantities of electricity. We document that … electricity market in Upstate NY and using the Bitcoin price as an exogenous shifter of the part of the supply curve faced by the …