Bitcoin: A Natural Oligopoly

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Arnosti, Nick; Weinberg, S. Matthew
• 署名单位: University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Princeton University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2021.4095
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 4755-4771
• 关键词: economics; game theory and bargaining theory; Bitcoin; proof of work; Cryptocurrency

摘要

We argue that the concentrated production and ownership of Bitcoin mining hardware arise naturally from the economic incentives of Bitcoin mining. We model Bitcoin mining as a two-stage competition; miners compete in prices to sell hardware while competing in quantities for mining rewards. We characterize equilibria in our model and show that small asymmetries in operational costs result in highly concentrated ownership of mining equipment. We further show that production of mining equipment will be dominated by the miner with the most efficient hardware, who will sell hardware to competitors while possibly also using it to mine.