IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/iprjir/214063.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

After the (virtual) gold rush: is Bitcoin more than a speculative bubble?

Author

Listed:
  • Lambrecht, Maxime
  • Larue, Louis

Abstract

How promising is Bitcoin as a currency? This paper discusses four claims on the advantages of Bitcoin: a more stable currency than state-backed ones; a secure and efficient payment system; a credible alternative to the central management of money; and a better protection of transaction privacy. We discuss these arguments by relating them to their philosophical roots in libertarian and neoliberal theories, and assess whether Bitcoin can effectively meet these expectations. We conclude that despite its advocates' enthusiasm, there are good reasons to doubt that Bitcoin can fulfill its promises and act as a functioning currency, rather than as a mere speculative asset.

Suggested Citation

  • Lambrecht, Maxime & Larue, Louis, 2018. "After the (virtual) gold rush: is Bitcoin more than a speculative bubble?," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 7(4), pages 1-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iprjir:214063
    DOI: 10.14763/2018.4.1353
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214063/1/IntPolRev-2018-4-1353.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.14763/2018.4.1353?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolas Houy, 2014. "The economics of Bitcoin transaction fees," Working Papers halshs-00951358, HAL.
    2. David Yermack, 2013. "Is Bitcoin a Real Currency? An economic appraisal," NBER Working Papers 19747, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. James Angel & Douglas McCabe, 2015. "The Ethics of Payments: Paper, Plastic, or Bitcoin?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 603-611, December.
    4. Michael D. Bordo & Andrew T. Levin, 2017. "Central Bank Digital Currency and the Future of Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 23711, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1963. "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie63-1, March.
    6. Alan S. Blinder, 2010. "How Central Should the Central Bank Be?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 123-133, March.
    7. Cheah, Eng-Tuck & Fry, John, 2015. "Speculative bubbles in Bitcoin markets? An empirical investigation into the fundamental value of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 32-36.
    8. Ingham, Geoffrey, 2004. "The nature of money," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 5(2), pages 18-28.
    9. Urquhart, Andrew, 2016. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 80-82.
    10. 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.
    11. Dwyer, Gerald P., 2015. "The economics of Bitcoin and similar private digital currencies," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 81-91.
    12. Alan S. Blinder, 2010. "How Central Should the Central Bank Be?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 123-133, March.
    13. Goodhart, C. A. E., 2011. "The changing role of central banks," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(2), pages 135-154, August.
    14. Paul Laat, 2007. "Governance of open source software: state of the art," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 11(2), pages 165-177, May.
    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. Louis Larue & Camille Meyer & Marek Hudon & Joakim Sandberg, 2022. "The Ethics of Alternative Currencies," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/341622, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    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. Theodore Pelagidis & Eleftheria Kostika, 2022. "Investigating the role of central banks in the interconnection between financial markets and cryptoassets," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 49(3), pages 481-507, September.
    2. Parthajit Kayal & Purnima Rohilla, 2021. "Bitcoin in the economics and finance literature: a survey," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Anoop S Kumar & Taufeeq Ajaz, 2019. "Co-movement in crypto-currency markets: evidences from wavelet analysis," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 5(1), pages 1-17, December.
    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. 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.
    7. Eross, Andrea & McGroarty, Frank & Urquhart, Andrew & Wolfe, Simon, 2019. "The intraday dynamics of bitcoin," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 71-81.
    8. Greg W. Hunter & Craig Kerr, 2019. "Virtual Money Illusion and the Fundamental Value of Non-Fiat Anonymous Digital Payment Methods," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 25(2), pages 151-164, May.
    9. Aurelio F. Bariviera & Ignasi Merediz‐Solà, 2021. "Where Do We Stand In Cryptocurrencies Economic Research? A Survey Based On Hybrid Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 377-407, April.
    10. Baur, Dirk G. & Cahill, Daniel & Godfrey, Keith & (Frank) Liu, Zhangxin, 2019. "Bitcoin time-of-day, day-of-week and month-of-year effects in returns and trading volume," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 78-92.
    11. Ishtiaq Ahmad Bajwa & Shafiq Ur Rehman & Abid Iqbal & Zaheer Anwer & Murtaza Ashiq & Muhammad Ajmal Khan, 2022. "Past, Present and Future of FinTech Research: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(4), pages 21582440221, October.
    12. Dyhrberg, Anne H. & Foley, Sean & Svec, Jiri, 2018. "How investible is Bitcoin? Analyzing the liquidity and transaction costs of Bitcoin markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 140-143.
    13. 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.
    14. Kim, Thomas, 2017. "On the transaction cost of Bitcoin," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 300-305.
    15. Fry, John & Cheah, Eng-Tuck, 2016. "Negative bubbles and shocks in cryptocurrency markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 343-352.
    16. Ziaul Haque Munim & Mohammad Hassan Shakil & Ilan Alon, 2019. "Next-Day Bitcoin Price Forecast," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-15, June.
    17. Zhou, Siwen, 2018. "Exploring the Driving Forces of the Bitcoin Exchange Rate Dynamics: An EGARCH Approach," MPRA Paper 89445, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. Lennart Ante, 2020. "A place next to Satoshi: foundations of blockchain and cryptocurrency research in business and economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1305-1333, August.
    20. Helder Miguel Correia Virtuoso Sebastião & Paulo José Osório Rupino Da Cunha & Pedro Manuel Cortesão Godinho, 2021. "Cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Overview and future perspectives," International Journal of Economics and Business Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 21(3), pages 305-342.

    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:zbw:iprjir:214063. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://policyreview.info/ .

    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.