Early cryptocurrency proponents shared the goal of applying cutting-edge mathematical and computer science principles to solve what they perceived as practical and political shortcomings of “traditional” fiat currencies.
Cryptocurrency markets move according to supply and demand. However, as they are decentralised, they tend to remain free from many of the economic and political concerns that affect traditional currencies. While there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies, the following factors can have a significant impact on their prices: Supply: the total number of coins and the rate at which they are released, destroyed or lost Market capitalisation: the value of all the coins in existence and how users perceive this to be developing Press: the way the cryptocurrency is portrayed in the media and how much coverage it is getting Integration: the extent to which the cryptocurrency easily integrates into existing infrastructure such as e-commerce payment systems Key events: major events such as regulatory updates, security breaches and economic setbacks

Cryptocurrency mining is the process by which recent cryptocurrency transactions are checked and new blocks are added to the blockchain.
Identifying the determinants of asset prices is one of the most important questions in finance. Traditional asset pricing theories are founded on the idea that equity prices should be determined by fundamentals such as earnings (Gordon 1959, Campbell and Shiller 1988). In contrast, the behavioral finance literature posits that prices do not always follow fundamentals due to investor sentiment trading (Shiller 1981, Baker and Wurgler 2006, Stambaugh et al. 2012). Eventually however, equity prices seem to trace their fundamentals (Pa´stor and Veronesi, 2003, 2006, Bartram and Grinblatt 2018).