IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/quaeco/v85y2022icp280-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The price and cost of bitcoin

Author

Listed:
  • Marthinsen, John E.
  • Gordon, Steven R.

Abstract

Explaining changes in bitcoin’s price and predicting its future have been the foci of many research studies. In contrast, far less attention has been paid to the relationship between bitcoin’s mining costs and its price. One popular notion is the cost of bitcoin creation provides a support level below which this cryptocurrency’s price should never fall because if it did, mining would become unprofitable and threaten the maintenance of bitcoin’s public ledger. Other research has used mining costs to explain or forecast bitcoin’s price movements. Competing econometric analyses have debunked this idea, showing that changes in mining costs follow changes in bitcoin’s price rather than preceding them, but the reason for this behavior remains unexplained in these analyses. This research aims to employ economic theory to explain why econometric studies have failed to predict bitcoin prices and why mining costs follow movements in bitcoin prices rather than precede them. We do so by explaining the chain of causality connecting a bitcoin’s price to its mining costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Marthinsen, John E. & Gordon, Steven R., 2022. "The price and cost of bitcoin," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 280-288.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:85:y:2022:i:c:p:280-288
    DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2022.04.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062976922000473
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.qref.2022.04.003?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Garcia & Claudio Juan Tessone & Pavlin Mavrodiev & Nicolas Perony, 2014. "The digital traces of bubbles: feedback cycles between socio-economic signals in the Bitcoin economy," Papers 1408.1494, arXiv.org.
    2. Pavel Ciaian & Miroslava Rajcaniova & d’Artis Kancs, 2016. "The economics of BitCoin price formation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(19), pages 1799-1815, April.
    3. Joseph E. Gagnon, 2012. "Combating Widespread Currency Manipulation," Policy Briefs PB12-19, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    4. John M. Griffin & Amin Shams, 2020. "Is Bitcoin Really Untethered?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(4), pages 1913-1964, August.
    5. Kurbucz, Marcell Tamás, 2019. "Predicting the price of Bitcoin by the most frequent edges of its transaction network," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    6. Dean Fantazzini & Nikita Kolodin, 2020. "Does the Hashrate Affect the Bitcoin Price?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-29, October.
    7. Buiter, Willem H., 1987. "Borrowing to defend the exchange rate and the timing and magnitude of speculative attacks," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3-4), pages 221-239, November.
    8. Hattori, Takahiro & Ishida, Ryo, 2021. "Did the introduction of Bitcoin futures crash the Bitcoin market at the end of 2017?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    9. Łukasz Goczek & Ivan Skliarov, 2019. "What drives the Bitcoin price? A factor augmented error correction mechanism investigation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(59), pages 6393-6410, December.
    10. Hau, Liya & Zhu, Huiming & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Sun, Wuqin, 2021. "Does transaction activity predict Bitcoin returns? Evidence from quantile-on-quantile analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    11. Grilli, Vittorio U., 1986. "Buying and selling attacks on fixed exchange rate systems," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 143-156, February.
    12. Bouri, Elie & Molnár, Peter & Azzi, Georges & Roubaud, David & Hagfors, Lars Ivar, 2017. "On the hedge and safe haven properties of Bitcoin: Is it really more than a diversifier?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 192-198.
    13. Wei, Wang Chun, 2018. "The impact of Tether grants on Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 19-22.
    14. David Garcia & Frank Schweitzer, 2015. "Social signals and algorithmic trading of Bitcoin," Papers 1506.01513, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2015.
    15. Young Bin Kim & Jun Gi Kim & Wook Kim & Jae Ho Im & Tae Hyeong Kim & Shin Jin Kang & Chang Hun Kim, 2016. "Predicting Fluctuations in Cryptocurrency Transactions Based on User Comments and Replies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-17, August.
    16. Chevapatrakul, Thanaset & Mascia, Danilo V., 2019. "Detecting overreaction in the Bitcoin market: A quantile autoregression approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 371-377.
    17. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi, 2015. "What Does Bitcoin Look Like?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 16(2), pages 449-492, November.
    18. Balcilar, Mehmet & Bouri, Elie & Gupta, Rangan & Roubaud, David, 2017. "Can volume predict Bitcoin returns and volatility? A quantiles-based approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 74-81.
    19. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi & Aviral Kumar Tiwari, 2015. "Is Bitcoin Business Income Or Speculative Foolery? New Ideas Through An Improved Frequency Domain Analysis," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(01), pages 1-23.
    20. Katsiampa, Paraskevi, 2017. "Volatility estimation for Bitcoin: A comparison of GARCH models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 3-6.
    21. Adam S. Hayes, 2019. "Bitcoin price and its marginal cost of production: support for a fundamental value," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(7), pages 554-560, April.
    22. Liu, Ruozhou & Wan, Shanfeng & Zhang, Zili & Zhao, Xuejun, 2020. "Is the introduction of futures responsible for the crash of Bitcoin?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    23. Baur, Dirk G. & Hong, KiHoon & Lee, Adrian D., 2018. "Bitcoin: Medium of exchange or speculative assets?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 177-189.
    24. Frode Kjærland & Aras Khazal & Erlend A. Krogstad & Frans B. G. Nordstrøm & Are Oust, 2018. "An Analysis of Bitcoin’s Price Dynamics," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-18, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. John E. Marthinsen & Steven R. Gordon, 2022. "The Price and Cost of Bitcoin," Papers 2204.13102, arXiv.org.
    2. Ahmed, Walid M.A., 2022. "Robust drivers of Bitcoin price movements: An extreme bounds analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    3. 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.
    4. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Stengos, Thanasis & Vravosinos, Orestis, 2019. "The effects of markets, uncertainty and search intensity on bitcoin returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 220-242.
    5. Kraaijeveld, Olivier & De Smedt, Johannes, 2020. "The predictive power of public Twitter sentiment for forecasting cryptocurrency prices," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Haffar, Adlane & Le Fur, Eric, 2021. "Structural vector error correction modelling of Bitcoin price," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 170-178.
    7. 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.
    8. Zura Kakushadze & Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, 2018. "CryptoRuble: From Russia with Love," Papers 1801.05760, arXiv.org.
    9. 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.
    10. Helder Sebastião & Pedro Godinho, 2021. "Forecasting and trading cryptocurrencies with machine learning under changing market conditions," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-30, December.
    11. Haffar, Adlane & Le Fur, Éric, 2022. "Time-varying dependence of Bitcoin," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 211-220.
    12. Ji, Qiang & Bouri, Elie & Gupta, Rangan & Roubaud, David, 2018. "Network causality structures among Bitcoin and other financial assets: A directed acyclic graph approach," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 203-213.
    13. Syuhada, Khreshna & Hakim, Arief & Suprijanto, Djoko & Muchtadi-Alamsyah, Intan & Arbi, Lukman, 2022. "Is Tether a safe haven of safe haven amid COVID-19? An assessment against Bitcoin and oil using improved measures of risk," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Neveen Ahmed & Omar Farooq & Nidaa Hamed, 2023. "Relation Between Bitcoin and Its Forks: An Empirical Investigation," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 249-261, April.
    15. 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.
    16. Dean Fantazzini & Stephan Zimin, 2020. "A multivariate approach for the simultaneous modelling of market risk and credit risk for cryptocurrencies," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 47(1), pages 19-69, March.
    17. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi, 2017. "Are Trump and Bitcoin Good Partners?," Working Papers hal-01480031, HAL.
    18. Kubal, Jan & Kristoufek, Ladislav, 2022. "Exploring the relationship between Bitcoin price and network’s hashrate within endogenous system," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    19. Dunbar, Kwamie & Owusu-Amoako, Johnson, 2023. "Predictability of crypto returns: The impact of trading behavior," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    20. Zhou, Siwen, 2018. "Exploring the Driving Forces of the Bitcoin Exchange Rate Dynamics: An EGARCH Approach," MPRA Paper 89445, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bitcoin; Mining costs; Value; Price; Causation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eee:quaeco:v:85:y:2022:i:c:p:280-288. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620167 .

    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.