Bitcoin Forum

The cryptocurrency field needs more economic research done around it. So, I'm asking that people with economics experience help to create this field which can greatly improve the Cryptocurrency economy.

I'm currently working on a study of the Cryptocurrency  economy, I hope to have it complete by the end of the summer.

I am glad you start research. Will you write research paper?

I plan on it.

POW and POS are pyramids. If you want to develop a new cryptocurrency economic theory, start from there.

this!

Good idea and good luck! The work will be interesting.
Maybe these thoughts will bring a little https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=655461.0 

Cryptocurrency field needs more research, I fully agree,  but it is impossible to conduct research without valid subjects. We need to have reference point. Bitcoin - the most advances and main cryptocurrency right now is in its infancy state, so I we can only guess what will happen in the future with it.

There are lessons to be learnt as it's happening now, but you're right. Apart from a few noble people trying to develop closed loops and private individuals trading with each other, it's not really an economy at all at present. It's still a system for transmitting dollars.

Regardless of what happen to Bitcoin, it'll be something that's still talked about and analysed for a long, long time to come.

See here: http://ssrn.com/author=2372041

I beg to differ. A small economy, definitely, but an economy nonetheless. I like to think of the bitcoin economy as a highly unstable , borederless economy with significantly more imports than exports.

The currency might be "new", the market economic behind it is same old same old.

I would find it hard to believe that there is no difference between a borderless, completely voluntary economy and the national/global economies.

We shall not need dedicated economic theories. The main difference with fiat is in a controlled growth of the money supply.

We need the economic theories. The money supply must grow and shrink with economic activity, allowing stable prices. The question is: How can we do that in cryptos?

Economy theory is always politically related, so the first question is to answer if government allow the mass circulation of alternative currency? So far, most of the countries only allow their domestic currency to circulate, that also has something to do with tax collection

From this perspective, I think bitcoin will only work as a digital asset, serving specific purposes like saving and international transaction, so the demand is not driven by GDP or something in mainstream economics

Money supply does not need to change, the price will change, people will adapt to changing prices with their own strategy

We don't need economic theory when things simply work in reality. Even less we need economic interventionism. And the very least we need a repetition of central bank interventionism based on economic theories already proven to be wrong in reality.

The very reason Bitcoin was invented was to challenge the current economic system that's based on a braindead economic doctrine that even a 5-year-old quickly identifies as unsustainable BS - unless he is an economist.

Economists may theorize ad infinitum. Meanwhile I use Bitcoin.

ya.ya.yo!

Very true. Before it was called "Economics", Economics was called "Political Economy"

You need to watch the documentary "The secret of Oz".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIhDdST27g

You dont know a thing about bitcoin if you think PoW is a pyramid scheme (ponzi scheme I suppose you're trying to say)

Well in bitcoin you don't have banks, fiscal policy, GDP, debt (there is?), taxes, so at least over here in bitcoin things are easier to understand apart from the supply and demand factor, mining, investment. So it works kind of different as generally you don't have the reserve bank to set the policy and comes with it all the bunch of economic terms.

While I'll admit they share some characteristics, POW/POS are definitely not pyramid or ponzi schemes.

You don't need the reserve bank to set the policy. There are scientists economists for that.

Nothing new under the Sun. Only the medium is different, concept is still the same.

Every monetary asset is a pyramid.

Money is money because people think that people think that it is money.  So if enough people think that an asset is money, it is money.  If not enough people think that it is money, then it isn't money.

In a pyramid, you hope for a greater fool.  Of course, one ends up not finding a greater fool any more, because you're probably not a greater fool than yourself.

With a monetary asset, you hope for a similar fool.  That can last for a long time, because you are probably just a fool as you are yourself.  So money can go around several times.  Pyramid stuff cannot go around.

It's a great Idea to have more research on cryptocurrency, the fact that BTC works outside the mainstream financial system and that it is not owned  by any body,country or government,it shows no economic trends or adhere to political policy,it seems to serve the purpose of anonymous digital transactions and saving or profiting on the long run  :)

The money should be printed by scientists of the government, not by uneducated bankers.

This is so good.

The bankers are uneducated idiots. They don't know how to print money, thats why they create economic crises. Only government can do good job.

A cryptocurrency based economy would probably be totally different from the modern economy we're used to.

My guess is that money would gradually buy more and more (ie no more monetary policy driven long-term inflation;) people would save rather than spend or lend out most of their money; economic growth would be slower; people would probably be happier; the elites would have to stop getting a free lunch by expanding money and state-backed debt; financial crises would be much rarer and milder.

Will this ever happen?  It's hard to see the entire financial and economic world order change in the near term.  But a currency has some value as long as there are people who agree to use it, for one reason or another.  When Irish bank employees went on strike in the 60s, debt slips became cash.

I'm also afraid you won't get much help from the economics profession, for the following reasons, either to agree that limited-supply money is a good idea or to conduct meaningful research on such an economy:

1. The most legitimate argument is that the economy would take a deep and painful dive into deflation and unemployment if we made any major changes to make money sounder.  In my view, this is the addict's cry that it's too painful to stop.  Since our current path is not sustainable long-term, taking the dive now would be less painful than in future.

2. The best economists, who have the stature to speak on big topics like this, will have ambitions to work with and be on good terms with the political and financial elites, who are the biggest beneficiaries of modern state-managed money.

3. The current system doesn't just take from everyone and give to the elites.  It does the same between rich world populations and the developing world.  Thus every rich world citizen is a major beneficiary, due to the overvaluation of their currency.  (Think of this the next time you vacation in SE Asia or buy something made in Bangladesh.)  And most economists are either rich world citizens or allied with the elites in the developing world who are also facilitators of the system.  People tend to have deep reservations about speaking against a system that benefits themselves and their families in such a fundamental way, perhaps understandably.

4. State-based money adds a lot of complexity to economics due to being "flexible" at the core of the system.  The value of trained economists is in dissecting and understanding this complexity (more or less.)  Consciously or not, people generally don't want to see their hard-earned training go to waste when the system they study becomes a lot simpler.

Everything we do now in fiat form, would be used same way as crypto form.

But in sub sections of micro transactions are split. Theres no way to quanitfy anything of what bitcoin will be, theres the debate on being a commodity, everyday currency, or used for something else.

Its a endless struggle, but in between that time theres always profit.

I guess we're talking a brand new theory here. I agree, any economic theory is in fact a political economy, still I can't recall any well-grounded theory (at least originated in medieval Europe and till today) that has a decentralization at its very heart.

I would also like to mention that I find your opinion towards bitcoin being in future just quite reasonable, but not conflicting with the idea of research and creation of a new Economic theory.

Thanks to the OP author, I'm gonna stay tuned and think of a way to contribute.

The economic theories are here, e.g. quantity theory of money, Cambridge cash balance theory etc. but nobody uses them.

Yup. It is only a matter of time before you have banks and fractional reserves.
Shouldn't be too different from the time everything was benchmarked to gold.

The "political" part is true at the current level of public awareness.  When public awareness improves, hopefully, people will want the state out of money, the same as for-profit business.

There actually is precedent for a decentralized system during this period.  China went back to commodity money some time during the 15th or 16th centuries after a few hundred years of paper money (with all the issues of inflation and progressive financial repression.)  The system was so "decentralized" that the sovereign didn't mint coins.  People just used chunks of silver.

This system worked fine until financial pollution (ie proliferation of paper assets) arrived from the Bank of England in the mid-19th century.  But Britain had to use war to force China to open itself for trade, and thus be subject to financial pollution.  Basically, a country with sound (or sounder) money which is not the dominant global power doesn't do well in a free trading system.  It will find itself priced out of markets by its strong currency, and eventually be forced to issue paper assets of its own.  Either that, and/or it's a long-term threat to the current system if it's big enough.  Either by trade or by war, it'll suffer at the hands of the dominant power.  (Just ask late 19th, early 20th century Germany.)  Switzerland held out for a while, but even with a highly skilled workforce, it is giving in to financial pollution now.

I'd made some arguements some time back in "Learning from Imperial Rome" for an improved cryptocurrency.
The thread hasn't reached a conclusion, but sets out historical problems - this link "cuts to the chase"
https://mises.org/library/price-fixing-ancient-rome

Bitcoin has too much in common with gold to be a universal currency, and historically a trimetallic currency
seems close to workable - it "just" needs to have an inbuilt Jubilee to be perfect IMHO.

So I *think* Bitcoin needs one or more alternative cryptocurrencies to form a good monetary system.  

I'm pretty sure someone already did it  ;D

In times of distress it is smart to hold on to the real economic theories, those that logically works.

At the dotcom bubble, lots of people were ready to invent new ones, like: A business doesn't need to have a profit, in fact it doesn't even have to sell anything, stock rises anyway. It is impossible to compute a multiple because of the zero, value is infinite! It's magic, it has to be the Internet, the rules of economy have changed!

One disclaimer there is you should not try to straitjacket all the rules of the traditional economy to the bitcoin economy.
There are still a lot of people who claim that Bitcoin will fail because it does not have any 'intrinsic value'.

But the part of value of money, that is monetary, is exactly the absence of "intrinsic value".

Even with traditional commodity money, such as gold, its price comes from two parts, as the price of any commodity: demand (accepting that offer is constant).

The demand has a part which is 'intrinsic', that is, the demand for its usage, consumption, or whatever.  That demand is there, independent of whether gold has any monetary usage (that is, as intermediate asset, or as store-of-value asset).
But the demand, that happens, because it is also a monetary asset (that is, it is used as an intermediate asset in trade, or as a store-of-value) increases the price: that price increase is exactly its monetary value.

So the monetary part of the price of money is exactly what has no intrinsic value.  Gold has maybe some intrinsic value, but most of its value is monetary (most demand for gold is to store it as a store of value, and not to use it).

Bitcoin has no intrinsic part.  It is purely monetary.  But that doesn't mean it is less monetary than gold.  On the contrary.

Of course, on the other hand, the risk is larger the larger is the monetary part of the price, because you could think that there is a floor on the price, which is its intrinsic or usage value.  

I have no idea of the intrinsic value of gold.  It is maybe 5% of its current price.  Maybe 0.1%.  I don't know.  So you can believe that if gold, one day, looses all monetary aspects, you would still hold 5% or 0.1% of its value as usage value.  While for bitcoin, the floor is 0.  Don't know if that matters much...

Probably for real estate, that's different.  Real estate is also partly monetary.  But I would think that its monetary part is at most a factor 2 or so above the usage value.  It is certainly not a factor of 10 or so.  Yes, people buy houses partly with the idea of selling it, as a store of value.  But they also buy houses to live in (consumption), or to rent them to people that live in it (capital).  Apart from during a housing bubble, I think that the speculative (that is monetary) part of the price of a house is still not more that 2 or so times the "intrinsic" usage value.

So the risk in real estate is probably much less to have a drop by a factor 20 or 1000 or so, than in gold.

Yes, most people do not inform themselves, they just follow the stream of people peddling defunct rules.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=cphrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=regulation%20of%20online%20gambling

There is definitely GDP and debt in bitcoin. Every time someone buys a final good with Bitcoin it effects the GDP and I myself currently have debt denominated in bitcoin through BTCJam.com

And I think it would be foolish to say that the interaction between multiple decentralized, intrinsic-valueless currencies would not lead to at-least some novel economic effects.

I don't think there would be anything special with that.  After all, fiat money is already such an asset.  What is somewhat different, is the micro-economic equations of the producers of those assets.  In the case of fiat moneys, these are essentially private banks writing out loans.  In the case of cryptocurrencies, these are miners/minters.  The rules to which these abide are different.  But the interaction of assets without intrinsic value is already old as the world.

At the current level, profound effects for the individual: Larger economic freedom, less cost, to move money over boarders and trade remotely. Possibility to save in money in stead of apartment. For submarkets: More effective blue markets, avoid absurd regulations and hide your money.

Great effects that comes when and if bitcoin takes a substantial part of the economy: It restricts governments to spend only taxes, taxes necessarily lower because people will hold fast to their money.

Keywords: Sound money, hideability, mobility. All new compared to fiats.

http://informationtransfereconomics.blogspot.gr/
enjoy

Not long ago I had described a coin that rusts, ie it expires.
Creating not a trimetalic but multimetalic system
This essentaily I think that can capture the growth or shrink of market activity, within the effective money supply used.

I would think that cooperative villages and small towns using Bitcoin as a main currency or other cryptocurrencies for that matter would help to create a society with less disparity between rich and poor. Now fiat is controlled by the large corporations but if every village invested also in bitcoin mining and spread the wealth of that investment to all villages then it could help generate more real income for many who now don't have a chance in hell to make a living.