Bitcoin Forum

Hello there! (please put this topic in the right category if necessary)

In this spring I am going to do my master's thesis in Economics. A current topic I find interesting is Bitcoins.

Since this is a master's thesis it can not be a "school work" about bitcoins. It need to contain a specific question formulation that must be answered by a theory, and possibly a regression analysis to evaluate various connections.

What I find difficult is to find a good question formulation that can be analyzed closely.
I therefore ask you to see if someone can come up with some tips that would seem interesting and possible to write about.

Some thoughts I have so far is:
- Will Bitcoins and other virtual currencies survive in the long term or is it something that will rush in popularity and then bubble and be forgotten? What happens when Bitcoin reaches its maximum quantity? What are the risks with Bitcoins since it is unregulated, has no controlling authority and whose price is based only on speculations?

- Could Bitcoins act as a substitute for the gold standard? Is it possible to change something so that it is not as unstable and volatile as it is today?

Best regards

It is not going to rush in popularity and it likely to stay in use just by a small group of people.


The transaction fees will raise astronomically.


Risk of loss by fraud, loss by swindling, loss by ineptitude, etc.


No.


Yes, but it is not going to happen soon.

Tell me more about your educational background, so I can think something interesting to you.

Thanks!

I have a bachelor in Economics and I am currently doing a one year master in Financial economics. The courses that I found most interesting was behavioral economics and microeconomics but I am also genuinely interested in macroeconomics. I am pretty good at math and I believe that I have good analyzing skills.

I was just thinking about something related to microeconomics.

Let's start with the basics.

Did you read Satoshi Nakamoto's paper, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)?

On the front page of  JohnnyBitcoinseed.com (http://JohnnyBitcoinseed.com/) right now is a blurb about a university Masters degree in being offered in digital currencies.

Now there is an economics niche with potential!

You means this:

http://www.unic.ac.cy/master-degrees/master-in-digital-currency-msc-distance-learning-3-semesters-or-1-calendar-year

I would not recommend this to anyone.

Instead of looking only at the price for Bitcoin and its potential development (Boring!) why don't you focus on an anctual usecase of Bitcoin.


How about:

"Implication of digital currencies as clearing Networks for international operating Companies"

You know, companies that buy their resources in yen, pay their workers in zloty, make profits in Euro and pay taxes in Dollar. I'm certain there would be interesting opportunities here.

I think there is a lots of potential.

Good Luck with your master´s thesis! i think it´s very nice and good topic.

One must be stupid to go for that.

I have to a sort of mini dissertation at college, and I was thinking about doing it on Bitcoin... I have thought of pretty similar questions to you, although I was thinking of perhaps going more along on the lines of the profit related possibilities related to bitcoin, like trading. Good luck with yours :) 

Hmm, what about "Cryptocurrency, A Paradigm between yesterday Economics and Today's Technology."

Hope that helps and hope just as much to read your paper.

I done a lot of work here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=394221.0

Please contact me if you need use part or whole my work.

Be sure to carefully spell check your thesis.   ;)

This Fortune article is one of the better ones I've read about bitcoins. You may find a few ideas in it. Even the title is promising (if a little misleading).

Bitcoin is not just digital currency. It's Napster for finance.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/21/bitcoin-platform/

Are bitcoins revolutionary in themselves, or are they the next extension of the internet?

Here is a list of Bitcoin-related research papers.
You might need to get familiar with most of these

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Research

Thanks a lot for all the response. I am going to look into this and come back if I have any further thoughts.

OK, look like you are going to be a bit busy reading plenty of papers. Anyway, my suggestion would be a thesis focused in microeconomics. I would try to understand what would happen if a software like Bitcoin was used as medium of exchange to support the local markets. E.g. How could a community of farmers use a software like Bitcoin to help them to supply their goods to a specific area. That would facilitate distribution of the goods? Less incurred fees for the final consumers? That helps the farmers to increase their capital and consequently they capacity to keep the supply steady?