A Mean Field Games Model for Cryptocurrency Mining

Zongxi Li, A. Max Reppen and Ronnie Sircar

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We propose a mean field game model to study the question of how centralization of reward and computational power occur in Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Miners compete against each other for mining rewards by increasing their computational power. This leads to a novel mean field game of jump intensity control, which we solve explicitly for miners maximizing exponential utility, and handle numerically in the case of miners with power utilities. We show that the heterogeneity of their initial wealth distribution leads to greater imbalance of the reward distribution, and increased wealth heterogeneity over time, or a "rich get richer" effect. This concentration phenomenon is aggravated by a higher bitcoin mining reward, and reduced by competition. Additionally, an advantaged miner with cost advantages such as access to cheaper electricity, contributes a significant amount of computational power in equilibrium, unaffected by competition from less efficient miners. Hence, cost efficiency can also result in the type of centralization seen among miners of cryptocurrencies.

Date: 2019-12, Revised 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cmp, nep-ene, nep-gth, nep-pay and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.01952 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:1912.01952

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().