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Exploring gender and race biases in the NFT market

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  • Zhong, Howard
  • Hamilton, Mark

Abstract

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are non-interchangeable assets, usually digital art, which are stored on the blockchain. Preliminary studies find that female and darker-skinned NFTs are valued less than their male and lighter-skinned counterparts. However, these studies analyze only the CryptoPunks collection. We test the statistical significance of race and gender biases in the prices of CryptoPunks and present the first study of gender bias in the broader NFT market. We find evidence of racial bias but not gender bias. Our work also introduces a dataset of gender-labeled NFT collections to advance the broader study of social equity in this emerging market.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhong, Howard & Hamilton, Mark, 2023. "Exploring gender and race biases in the NFT market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:53:y:2023:i:c:s1544612323000259
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2023.103651
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Timothy P. Hubbard & Daniel R. LaFave, 2026. "Price differentials and skin tone in digital art," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 50(1), pages 225-251, March.
    2. Kumar, Aman & Shankar, Amit & Behl, Abhishek & Wamba, Samuel Fosso, 2025. "Do you believe in the metaverse NFTs? Understanding the value proposition of NFTs in the metaverse," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    3. Dongyang He & Yuewen Liu & Juan Feng, 2025. "More than price prediction: a multimodal end-to-end interpretable deep learning (MEID) framework for NFT investment," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-39, December.
    4. Muneer M. Alshater & Nohade Nasrallah & Rim Khoury & Mayank Joshipura, 2025. "Deciphering the world of NFTs: a scholarly review of trends, challenges, and opportunities," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 25(5), pages 4193-4249, October.
    5. Yuan, Yuan & Liu, Xiao & Zhang, Shunyuan & Srinivasan, Kannan, 2025. "Gender and racial price disparities in the NFT marketplace," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 644-667.
    6. Menvouta, Emmanuel Jordy & Serneels, Sven & Verdonck, Tim, 2023. "Practicable optimization for portfolios that contain nonfungible tokens," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PB).
    7. Proelss, Juliane & Sévigny, Stéphane & Schweizer, Denis, 2023. "GameFi: The perfect symbiosis of blockchain, tokens, DeFi, and NFTs?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

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