Who trades cryptocurrencies, how do they trade it, and how do they perform? Evidence from brokerage accounts

Who Are the Bitcoin Investors? Evidence from Indirect Cryptocurrency Investments

“…It is likely that the price increases in 2016 and 2017 further enhanced the number of users who purchase Bitcoins to achieve high investment returns. This effect is also observed by Hasso et al (2019). Therefore, it is important to analyze the effects of introducing Bitcoin investment into the portfolios of private households.…”

“…Currently, little is known about the users and investors of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, mainly due to a lack of systematic data collection and costs associated with identifying users (Yelowitz and Wilson, 2015). Hasso et al (2019) find that men are more likely to trade cryptocurrencies. In addition, early work has suggested that individuals hold Bitcoins mainly as a currency or for fun (Grinberg, 2012).…”

“…However, we have a real measure of investors that hold assets that offer the return profiles of cryptocurrencies (Baur, 2013). In contrast to the proxies used so far (e.g., Bohr and Bashir, 2014;Yelowitz and Wilson, 2015) , 16 our measure is a tradable asset and is linked to financial behavior similar to the proxy used by Hasso et al (2019). Nevertheless, direct investors might still be somewhat different in characteristics.…”

“…Bohr and Bashir (2014) use the publicly available 5 survey data by Smyth (2013), 5 showing different indicators that positively affect Bitcoin accumulation, namely, age, early adoption and mining, spending Bitcoins on illicit goods, and participating in Bitcoin-specific forums. A contemporaneous paper by Hasso et al (2019) uses data from a contract of difference (CFD) 6 broker to identify demographic characteristics, trading patterns and the performance of cryptocurrency investors. Our work, in contrast, uses a considerably broader dataset that not only focuses on a specific, high-risk product class but also allows us to compare cryptocurrency and noncryptocurrency investor behaviors across a wide investment spectrum and time series.…”

Are cryptocurrency traders pioneers or just risk-seekers? Evidence from brokerage accounts

“…We extend prior research on market dynamics and instead focus on the individuals who buy and sell cryptocurrencies and their trading behavior. As such, we build on the work that has to date used search and brokerage data to understand who engages in cryptocurrency trading (Hasso, Pelster, & Breitmayer, 2019;Urquhart, 2018;Yelowitz & Wilson, 2015), and similarly to Baur and Dimpfl (2018) we contribute evidence in an area where economic models have previously been proposed but not empirically tested.…”