But to understand the dynamic that led to this year’s depressing year for crypto, we actually should start a few years before 2018. In bitcoin’s early days, Mt. Gox was the go-to service for handling transactions. Then, in 2014, it halted transactions and slowly copped to a crypto-hack to the tune of $473 million, the biggest hack of its kind at the time, and it gave many people pause. But it was still early enough for people to believe that the blockchain system was still getting all the technical kinks out.
If you are a merchant, you can also accept digital assets as payment directly or through a payment processor or service that is more convenient and adds capabilities. Some services give the option to convert paid cryptocurrencies into cash automatically on the back end, while there are also some companies that offer crypto top-up debit cards that are indistinguishable from any other plastic card to pay for goods or services.

The SADF test finds the largest ADF statistic from all the windows considered. If this value exceeds a critical value, the null hypothesis can be rejected, and it is deemed the series displays explosive behaviour in at least one of the windows (taken as indication of a bubble occurring).
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.