Friday, July 10, 2020

Blockchain economics, by Catalini and Gans; and Halaburda, Haeringer, Gans and Gandal


Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain
By Christian Catalini and Joshua S. Gans
Communications of the ACM, July 2020, Vol. 63 No. 7, Pages 80-90

"we rely on economic theory to explain how two key costs affected by blockchain technology—the cost of verification of state, and the cost of networking—change the types of transactions that can be supported in the economy. These costs have implications for the design and efficiency of digital platforms, and open opportunities for new approaches to data ownership, privacy, and licensing; monetization of digital content; auctions and reputation systems."
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The Microeconomics of Cryptocurrencies
Hanna Halaburda, Guillaume Haeringer, Joshua S. Gans, Neil Gandal
NBER Working Paper No. 27477  July 2020

Abstract: Since its launch in 2009 much has been written about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchains. While the discussions initially took place mostly on blogs and other popular media, we now are witnessing the emergence of a growing body of rigorous academic research on these topics. By the nature of the phenomenon analyzed, this research spans many academic disciplines including macroeconomics, law and economics and computer science. This survey focuses on the microeconomics of cryptocurrencies themselves. What drives their supply, demand, trading price and competition amongst them. This literature has been emerging over the past decade and the purpose of this paper is to summarize its main findings so as to establish a base upon which future research can be conducted.

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