Without a clear track record to assess long-term value, cryptocurrency rises and falls on an unpredictable demand cycle. And for individual investors, the challenge is “you really don’t know where supply and demand can end up,” Aliaga-Díaz says.
Bitcoin wasn’t the only cryptocurrency to feel the effects of Tesla’s decision. (Pic: Shutterstock)

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).
And cryptocurrency exchanges are somewhat vulnerable to hacking, representing the most common venue for digital currency theft by hackers and cybercriminals like those responsible for taking down Mt. Gox.