Meanwhile, even the most enthusiastic bitcoin evangelists are realizing that a retooling is in order. Michael J. Casey, a senior adviser for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, recently wrote about how the crypto-winter has arrived, but it may lead to better things down the line:
“Regulation is probably one of the biggest overhangs in the crypto industry globally,” says Jeffrey Wang, head of the Americas at Amber Group, a Canada-based crypto finance firm. “We would very much welcome clear regulation.”

Using data from a prominent blockchain research firm, Coinmetrics.io, we explore the relationship between prices, computing power (measured by the hashrate), and network (measured by the number of unique active users). We focus on five major mineable cryptocurrencies (i.e. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin, and Dash). In some of our test, we expand our data to include an additional 33 cryptocurrencies. Our sample period spans from 7 August 2015 to 25 January 2019.
In Bhambhwani et al. (2019), we challenge the perception that cryptocurrency markets are simply plagued with bubbles and speculative trading by identifying two key blockchain measures that affect cryptocurrency prices. Specifically, theory suggests that the trustworthiness and the transaction benefits of a blockchain are important determinants of cryptocurrency values. Pagnotta and Buraschi (2018) link trustworthiness to the computing power devoted to the blockchain. Biais et al. (2018) link transaction benefits of a cryptocurrency to the size of its network.