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Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2, ... : An experiment in privately issued outside monies

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  • Garratt, Rodney
  • Wallace, Neil

Abstract

The value of Bitcoin depends upon self-fulfilling beliefs that are hard to pin down. We demonstrate this for the case where Bitcoin is the only form of money in the economy and then generalize the message to the case of multiple Bitcoin clones and/or a competing sovereign currency. Some aspects of the indeterminacy we describe would no longer hold if Bitcoin were an interesting-bearing object.

Suggested Citation

  • Garratt, Rodney & Wallace, Neil, 2016. "Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2, ... : An experiment in privately issued outside monies," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt91c7x1js, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:qt91c7x1js
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences; Virtual Currency; Bitcoin; Indeterminancy; Exchange Rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System

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