Despite the fact that Bitcoin is not backed by any real assets and governmental claims, the hype and the general valuation trend seems impressive, especially over the last years. From an economic viewpoint, Bitcoin is interesting as a highly decentralized network without a clear owner. This is why, recently, economists have become interested in this Bitcoin ecosystem.
The original problem that led to Bitcoin (Nakamoto (2008)) was to devise a fully decentralized digital currency. Such a decentralized cash system, implies that individuals can trade without any third party involved, namely monetary authorities. Technically it is a peer-to-peer system. The system, however, needs to keep track of earlier transactions and find a consensus about which coin has been spent by...
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