In December 2020, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover stopped processing payments for Pornhub, a website based in Canada that allows users around the world to upload and view pornographic videos. Cut off from traditional payment processors, Pornhub had to rely on cryptocurrencies. I consider the...

Do Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies play a useful social role, or do they represent a social waste? Bitcoin is a decentralized recordkeeping system, with updating of the record of transactions in the blockchain

The article analyzes how conventionalists, pioneers and criminals choose between a national currency (e.g. a central bank digital currency) and a global currency (e.g. a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin) that both have specific characteristics in an economy. Conventionalists favor what is...

Most digital platforms are inherently versatile partly because their software code can be modified, but primarily because they are designed as open-ended modular stacks whose affordances increase with the variety of functionalities provided by the upper layers, without needing to rewire or...

This paper explores the development of digital currencies—currencies which are creatures of the Internet, self-authenticating, and usable worldwide by members of the general public to engage in the same types of direct, one-to-one transactions that daily occur using government-issued...

Can Bitcoin remain tamper proof in the long run? We use block-level data from the Bitcoin blockchain to estimate the impact of congestion and the USD price on fee rates. The introduction and adoption of the Segwit protocol allows us to identify an aggregate demand curve for bitcoin transactions....

We use block level data from the Bitcoin blockchain to estimate the impact of congestion and the USD price on average fee rates. The introduction and adoption of the Segwit protocol allows us to identify an aggregate demand curve for bitcoin transactions. We find that Segwit has reduced fee...

Just as network effects can dramatically increase value through positive feedback, value can be lost as networks shrink due to competition or incompatibility. In the instance of cryptocurrency as a network and with Metcalfe's Law as the methodology, we illustrate by numerical example that...

We maintain that the crypto-currency bitcoin is a practical application of what is termed “memory” in the monetary economics literature. After reviewing the theoretical literature on money and memory, we offer a brief overview of the bitcoin protocol and argue that, like memory, bitcoin...

We analyse the drivers of Bitcoin transactions against 44 fiat currencies in the largest peer-to-peer crypto exchanges. Momentum and volatility in the cryptoasset market, as well as volatility and liquidity in global financial markets do matter for Bitcoin trading. There is suggestive evidence...