1. Equilibrium Bitcoin Pricing
- Author
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BIAIS, BRUNO, BISIÈRE, CHRISTOPHE, BOUVARD, MATTHIEU, CASAMATTA, CATHERINE, and MENKVELD, ALBERT J.
- Subjects
Financial disclosure -- Analysis ,Pricing -- Analysis ,Crypto-currencies -- Analysis ,Conferences and conventions -- Analysis ,Product price ,Banking, finance and accounting industries ,Business - Abstract
We offer a general equilibrium analysis of cryptocurrency pricing. The fundamental value of the cryptocurrency is its stream of net transactional benefits, which depend on its future prices. This implies that, in addition to fundamentals, equilibrium prices reflect sunspots. This in turn implies multiple equilibria and extrinsic volatility, that is, cryptocurrency prices fluctuate even when fundamentals are constant. To match our model to the data, we construct indices measuring the net transactional benefits of Bitcoin. In our calibration, part of the variations in Bitcoin returns reflects changes in net transactional benefits, but a larger share reflects extrinsic volatility. Article Note: Bruno Biais is at HEC Paris. Christophe Bisière, Matthieu Bouvard, and Catherine Casamatta are at Toulouse School of Economics, Université Toulouse Capitole (TSM-Research). Albert J. Menkveld is at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Many thanks for helpful comments to the editor, Stefan Nagel, the Associate Editor, two referees, as well as Will Cong, Patrick Fève, René Garcia, Co-Pier Georg, Alexander Guembel, Zhiguo He, Michael Kumhof, Nour Meddahi, Eric Mengus, Julien Prat, George Tauchen, Harald Uhlig, Boris Vallée, Stefan Voigt, Yu Wang and conference and seminar participants in the 2018 BIS Research Network meeting, the 2018 Becker Friedman Institute Conference on Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, the 2018 Ridge Forum, the 2018 EuroFIT Conference at UCL, the 2019 WEF Davos, the 2019 Toronto FinTech Conference, the 2019 Tokenomics Conference, the 2019 Sustainable Finance Center Conference and Financial Econometrics Conference at TSE, the 2019 ESSFM in Gerzensee, the 2019 CEBRA Annual Meeting, the 2019 EFA Meeting, the 2020 AFA meeting, the 2021 AFFI meeting, Autorité des Marchés Financiers, Banque Centrale du Luxembourg, Banque de France, Cambridge University, CEIBS Shanghai, Central European University, Fudan University, HEC Paris, HEC Liège, Imperial College, Said Business School, University of Chile FEB, University of New South Wales, University Paris Dauphine, University of Technology Sydney and University of Vienna. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Jean-Jacques Laffont Digital Chair, the Norwegian Finance Initiative (NFI), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO Vici grant), the ANR (grant ANR-17-EURE-0010), EconPol Europe, and the European Research Council (grant 882375, WIDE). We have read The Journal of Finance disclosure policy and have no conflicts of interest to disclose. CAPTION(S): Appendix S1: Internet Appendix. Replication Code. Byline: BRUNO BIAIS, CHRISTOPHE BISIÈRE, MATTHIEU BOUVARD, CATHERINE CASAMATTA, ALBERT J. MENKVELD
- Published
- 2023
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