| Bitcoin is defined as electronic cash generated by open source software.It is a kind of network virtual currency.It is not issued by a specific monetary institution.It is generated by a large number of calculations of specific algorithms,using distributed databases spread throughout the P2 P network nodes to manage currency issue,transaction and account balance information.It has characteristics of decentralization,reduced transaction costs,security,anonymity,and fixed totals.It has no intrinsic value and is independent of any government or central bank.Bitcoin seems to be the pioneer of future currency undoubtedly according to this series of characteristics.But looking at the current national regulatory policies globally and the state of the Bitcoin market,it seems that Bitcoin is still being used as a new investment tool to replace traditional investment tools only.Therefore,this paper first explores whether Bitcoin conforms to the definition of currency from the theoretical level,and then further explores the motives of people holding Bitcoin at current stage from an empirical perspective.According to the explanation of credit currency theory,money represents a debtor-creditor relationship,which represents the degree of trust of debtors to creditors,and helps to measure the debtor-creditor relationship formed in the exchange of goods.This paper starts with a promised credit model,and then puts in the environment with the existence of public records,finally affiliates the currency to verify the memory function of the currency.It's found out that the monetary economic incentive feasible configuration is exactly the same as the incentive feasible configuration set under the credit economy when there is a public record.It can be said that the role of money is equivalent to the public record maintenance mechanism,and Bitcoin's distributed accounting technology is essentially a public record maintenance mechanism,but its top-down trust mechanism consumes a lot of time and cost,so Bitcoin is difficult to become the world's mainstream currency.Since most scholars are more willing to compare Bitcoin with Hayek's free-currency theory,this paper also analyzes the theory of money denationalisation and finds out that Bitcoin cannot fully agree with Hayek's theory of money denationalisation in the theoretical state.According to Marx's monetary theory,real money should have five functions,measures of value,means of circulation,means of payment,means of storage,and world money,but Bitcoin is difficult to meet these standards to a certain extent.Since Bitcoin's trading volume is only a small part of daily trading activity,and most holders do not hold Bitcoin for purchasing daily goods or services,Bitcoin is not widely accepted from this point.Moreover,Bitcoin's volatility is much higher than gold and foreign exchange.Extreme price fluctuations may make Bitcoin unable to become a global currency accepted by merchants and consumers,because it may not accurately express the relative prices of goods and services in economic transactions.In addition,since the value of Bitcoin cannot be stabilized over time,this will bring great uncertainty to the holders.In order to further explore the motives of holders holding Bitcoin,this paper analyzes motives by comparing the fluctuation factors of Bitcoin prices with the fluctuation factors of gold and stock index prices,and discusses the variables in the long-term and the short-term impact on Bitcoin prices with VECM models to further confirms the properties of Bitcoin.Empirically,it is found out that in the long-term equilibrium state,when the price of gold rises,investors are more inclined to invest in gold to obtain high returns.When the economic environment is better,people are more willing to seek high returns in the stock market.When the benchmark interest rate increases,capital will flow from the Bitcoin market to the money market.These factors will lead to a decline in demand for Bitcoin and thus a decline in Bitcoin prices.Since Bitcoin is mainly pegged to the US dollar,Bitcoin prices will rise correspondingly when the dollar depreciates.However,in the short-term,the impact of various factors on Bitcoin is not serious.Bitcoin is mainly dependent on its own influence.The correlation between Bitcoin yield and gold,foreign exchange and interest rates is very weak.Inflation is not the driving force to affect Bitcoin price.Bitcoin is more susceptible to capital markets.Since the exchange rate represents monetary assets,gold represents safe-haven assets,and stock indexes represent investment assets,this paper compares the impulse response and variance analysis of exchange rate,gold price,stock index price and Bitcoin price to find out the impact of each variable on Bitcoin price is completely inconsistent to the impact on the exchange rate.And there are similarities and differences between the impact of each variable on Bitcoin and the impact of gold and stock index.Therefore,the current motives for people to hold Bitcoin is not to use it as a monetary asset.A hedging or investment asset is not a property definition for Bitcoin.It is a bit more like an emerging independent asset,with both risk aversion and investment characteristics.Although Bitcoin can meet the requirements of monetary theory to a certain extent,it cannot fully play the basic function of money due to its shortcomings,such as high cost of trust mechanism,unstable currency value,unacceptable degree of acceptance,and difficulty in reading the price.It's difficult for Bitcoin to become a real currency in practice,but its distributed accounting technology can provide some new ideas for the future direction of monetary development from the multilateral trust mechanism. |
PDF Full Text Request