Time: 2022/11/11(Fri.), 14:00 – 15:30 (Beijing Time)

Title: Cryptocurrency Bubbles and Costly Mining

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About the speaker:

Kohei Iwasaki is an assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University. He received his Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. His research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary theory, and finance, with particular emphasis on bubbles of assets including digital currencies.

Abstract:

This paper develops a model of a cryptocurrency by incorporating mining into the otherwise standard search-theoretic monetary framework. As usual, multiple equilibria exist due to self-fulfilling expectations. To obtain a sharp prediction on whether a cryptocurrency’s value will last in the future, I propose an equilibrium refinement based on the feature that mining uses real resources. This refinement eliminates all equilibria where the value of the cryptocurrency is zero at some date or where it converges to zero over time. This result suggests that agents can collectively sustain the value of the cryptocurrency using costly mining as a coordinating device.