Heartbeat of a Crypto-Economy:Transaction Information in a World withCentral Bank Digital Currencies

Abstract

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have captured the attention of world leaders. The current conversation is dominated by high-level motivations like the efficiency benefits of a cashless society. This discourse neglects the potential use of CBDC data for new analytics capabilities. This thesis makes three main contributions to that end. First, it identifies and explores the inherent challenges of analyzing blockchain data (as a proxy for future CDBC data), making future design recommendations where possible. Second, it develops a novel technique to extract useful sector-based macro-economic data from pseudonymous transaction data, using the Ethereum blockchain as a case study. This also enables a novel breakdown of the Ethereum ecosystem by actor type. Third, it unearths evidence new insights about the public blockchain ecosystem, for example that Ethereum users are becoming more sophisticated over time and that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) may have caused the 2018 cryptocurrency bubble.