IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/qualqt/v55y2021i5d10.1007_s11135-020-01062-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Challenging practical features of Bitcoin by the main altcoins

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Spurr

    (University of Leicester)

  • Marcel Ausloos

    (University of Leicester
    Bucharest University of Economic Studies
    GRAPES)

Abstract

We study the fundamental differences that separate: Litecoin; Bitcoin Gold; Bitcoin Cash; Ethereum; and Zcash from Bitcoin, and draw some analysis to how these features are appreciated by the market, to ultimately make an inference as to how future successful cryptocurrencies may be invented and behave. We use Google Trend data, as well as price, volume and market capitalization data sourced from coinmarketcap.com to support this analysis. We find that Litecoin’s shorter block times offer benefits in commerce, but drawbacks in the mining process through orphaned blocks. Zcash holds a niche use for anonymous transactions, benefitting areas of the world lacking in economic freedom. Bitcoin Cash suffers from centralization in the mining process, while the greater decentralization of Bitcoin Gold has generally left it to stagnate. Ether’s greater functionality offers the greatest threat to Bitcoin’s dominance in the market. A coin that incorporates several of these features can be technically better than Bitcoin, but the first-to-market advantage of Bitcoin should keep its dominant position in the market.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Spurr & Marcel Ausloos, 2021. "Challenging practical features of Bitcoin by the main altcoins," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(5), pages 1541-1559, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:55:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s11135-020-01062-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11135-020-01062-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-020-01062-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11135-020-01062-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. De Filippi, Primavera & Loveluck, Benjamin, 2016. "The invisible politics of Bitcoin: governance crisis of a decentralised infrastructure," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 5(3), pages 1-28.
    2. Ammous, Saifedean, 2018. "Can cryptocurrencies fulfil the functions of money?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 38-51.
    3. Gurjeet Dhesi & Marcel Ausloos, 2016. "Modelling and Measuring the Irrational behaviour of Agents in Financial Markets: Discovering the Psychological Soliton," Papers 1601.01553, arXiv.org.
    4. Urquhart, Andrew, 2018. "What causes the attention of Bitcoin?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 40-44.
    5. Yhlas Sovbetov, 2018. "Factors Influencing Cryptocurrency Prices: Evidence from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Litcoin, and Monero," Journal of Economics and Financial Analysis, Tripal Publishing House, vol. 2(2), pages 1-27.
    6. Sha Wang & Jean-Philippe Vergne, 2017. "Buzz Factor or Innovation Potential: What Explains Cryptocurrencies’ Returns?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-17, January.
    7. Neil Gandal & Hanna Halaburda, 2016. "Can We Predict the Winner in a Market with Network Effects? Competition in Cryptocurrency Market," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-21, July.
    8. Stanisław Drożdż & Ludovico Minati & Paweł Oświȩcimka & Marek Stanuszek & Marcin Wa̧torek, 2019. "Signatures of the Crypto-Currency Market Decoupling from the Forex," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-18, July.
    9. Stjepan Beguv{s}i'c & Zvonko Kostanjv{c}ar & H. Eugene Stanley & Boris Podobnik, 2018. "Scaling properties of extreme price fluctuations in Bitcoin markets," Papers 1803.08405, arXiv.org.
    10. Jyotir Moy Chatterjee & Le Hoang Son & Srijani Ghatak & Raghvendra Kumar & Manju Khari, 2018. "BitCoin exclusively informational money: a valuable review from 2010 to 2017," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(5), pages 2037-2054, September.
    11. Ausloos, Marcel, 2016. "Modelling and measuring the irrational behaviour of agents in financial markets: Discovering the psychological solitonAuthor-Name: Dhesi, Gurjeet," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 119-125.
    12. Stanis{l}aw Dro.zd.z & Ludovico Minati & Pawe{l} O'swik{e}cimka & Marek Stanuszek & Marcin Wk{a}torek, 2019. "Signatures of crypto-currency market decoupling from the Forex," Papers 1906.07834, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2019.
    13. Pieters, Gina & Vivanco, Sofia, 2017. "Financial regulations and price inconsistencies across Bitcoin markets," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-14.
    14. Roy Cerqueti & Massimiliano Giacalone & Raffaele Mattera, 2020. "Skewed non-Gaussian GARCH models for cryptocurrencies volatility modelling," Papers 2004.11674, arXiv.org.
    15. Rainer Böhme & Nicolas Christin & Benjamin Edelman & Tyler Moore, 2015. "Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 213-238, Spring.
    16. Begušić, Stjepan & Kostanjčar, Zvonko & Eugene Stanley, H. & Podobnik, Boris, 2018. "Scaling properties of extreme price fluctuations in Bitcoin markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 510(C), pages 400-406.
    17. Manavi, Seyed Alireza & Jafari, Gholamreza & Rouhani, Shahin & Ausloos, Marcel, 2020. "Demythifying the belief in cryptocurrencies decentralized aspects. A study of cryptocurrencies time cross-correlations with common currencies, commodities and financial indices," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    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. Goodell, John W. & Kumar, Satish & Li, Xiao & Pattnaik, Debidutta & Sharma, Anuj, 2022. "Foundations and research clusters in investor attention: Evidence from bibliometric and topic modelling analysis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 511-529.
    2. Yerushalmi, Erez & Paladini, Stefania, 2023. "Blockchain in Financial Intermediation and Beyond: What are the Main Barriers for Widespread Adoption?," CAFE Working Papers 22, Centre for Accountancy, Finance and Economics (CAFE), Birmingham City Business School, Birmingham City University.

    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. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    2. Manavi, Seyed Alireza & Jafari, Gholamreza & Rouhani, Shahin & Ausloos, Marcel, 2020. "Demythifying the belief in cryptocurrencies decentralized aspects. A study of cryptocurrencies time cross-correlations with common currencies, commodities and financial indices," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    3. Laura Alessandretti & Abeer ElBahrawy & Luca Maria Aiello & Andrea Baronchelli, 2018. "Anticipating cryptocurrency prices using machine learning," Papers 1805.08550, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2018.
    4. Laura Alessandretti & Abeer ElBahrawy & Luca Maria Aiello & Andrea Baronchelli, 2018. "Anticipating Cryptocurrency Prices Using Machine Learning," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2018, pages 1-16, November.
    5. Andrea Flori, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies In Finance: Review And Applications," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(05), pages 1-22, August.
    6. Stanis{l}aw Dro.zd.z & Jaros{l}aw Kwapie'n & Marcin Wk{a}torek, 2023. "What is mature and what is still emerging in the cryptocurrency market?," Papers 2305.05751, arXiv.org.
    7. 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.
    8. Stefano Martinazzi & Daniele Regoli & Andrea Flori, 2020. "A Tale of Two Layers: The Mutual Relationship between Bitcoin and Lightning Network," Risks, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Jaros{l}aw Kwapie'n & Marcin Wk{a}torek & Stanis{l}aw Dro.zd.z, 2021. "Cryptocurrency Market Consolidation in 2020--2021," Papers 2112.06552, arXiv.org.
    10. Nick James, 2021. "Evolutionary correlation, regime switching, spectral dynamics and optimal trading strategies for cryptocurrencies and equities," Papers 2112.15321, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2022.
    11. Christie Smith & Aaron Kumar, 2018. "Crypto‐Currencies – An Introduction To Not‐So‐Funny Moneys," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(5), pages 1531-1559, December.
    12. White, Reilly & Marinakis, Yorgos & Islam, Nazrul & Walsh, Steven, 2020. "Is Bitcoin a currency, a technology-based product, or something else?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    13. Aniruddha Dutta & Saket Kumar & Meheli Basu, 2020. "A Gated Recurrent Unit Approach to Bitcoin Price Prediction," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-16, February.
    14. Pawan Kumar Singh & Alok Kumar Pandey & S. C. Bose, 2023. "A new grey system approach to forecast closing price of Bitcoin, Bionic, Cardano, Dogecoin, Ethereum, XRP Cryptocurrencies," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 2429-2446, June.
    15. Nick James & Kevin Chin, 2021. "On the systemic nature of global inflation, its association with equity markets and financial portfolio implications," Papers 2111.11022, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    16. Apopo, Natalay & Phiri, Andrew, 2019. "On the (in)efficiency of cryptocurrencies: Have they taken daily or weekly random walks?," MPRA Paper 94712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. James, Nick & Menzies, Max & Gottwald, Georg A., 2022. "On financial market correlation structures and diversification benefits across and within equity sectors," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 604(C).
    18. Fang, Wen & Tian, Shaolin & Wang, Jun, 2018. "Multiscale fluctuations and complexity synchronization of Bitcoin in China and US markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 512(C), pages 109-120.
    19. da Cunha, C.R. & da Silva, R., 2020. "Relevant stylized facts about bitcoin: Fluctuations, first return probability, and natural phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 550(C).
    20. Nick James & Max Menzies, 2023. "Collective dynamics, diversification and optimal portfolio construction for cryptocurrencies," Papers 2304.08902, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.

    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:spr:qualqt:v:55:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s11135-020-01062-x. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.