Author(s)

Ioanna Roussou¹, Chaido Dritsaki², Emmanouil Stiakakis¹

¹Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.
²Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece.

Bitcoin faces a network effects problem: although its widespread adoption is related to an increase in the number of users, its price volatility lowers consumption. Given the low consumption, a low number of merchants accepting bitcoins would also be expected. However, an increasing number of venues (i.e. merchants) are observed. This paper aims to investigate that paradox. An econometric procedure is followed examining the linkages among Bitcoin’s price volatility, market capitalization, and the number of venues, by using weekly time series data for a five-year time period (February 2013-February 2018). The results indicate that the number of merchants is unaffected by a shock of the market capitalization, while it is only initially affected by a shock of the price and then stabilizes. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the network effects’ phenomena appearing in the Bitcoin’s market and has significant implications for e-commerce practitioners concerning their decision-making process about Bitcoin adoption.

Bitcoin, Network Effects and Network Externalities, Market Capitalization, Price Volatility, Bitcoin Venues

Roussou, I. , Dritsaki, C. and Stiakakis, E. (2019) The Bitcoin’s Network Effects Paradox—A Time Series Analysis. Theoretical Economics Letters, 9, 1981-2001. doi: 10.4236/tel.2019.96126.