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Exploring Gender and Race Biases in the NFT Market

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  • Howard Zhong
  • Mark Hamilton

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

  • Howard Zhong & Mark Hamilton, 2023. "Exploring Gender and Race Biases in the NFT Market," Papers 2304.06484, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2304.06484
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Dowling, Michael, 2022. "Fertile LAND: Pricing non-fungible tokens," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    2. Matthieu Nadini & Laura Alessandretti & Flavio Di Giacinto & Mauro Martino & Luca Maria Aiello & Andrea Baronchelli, 2021. "Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks and visual features," Papers 2106.00647, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Menvouta, Emmanuel Jordy & Serneels, Sven & Verdonck, Tim, 2023. "Practicable optimization for portfolios that contain nonfungible tokens," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PB).
    3. 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).
    4. 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).

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