Crypto Economy - Publications - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

Filter Results: (26)

Filter Results: (26)

Show Results For

Page 1 of 26 Results →

December 7, 2022
Article

Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash

By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers

In the past year, crypto markets dropped from $2.9 trillion in value to around $800 billion. In the wake of the collapse, crypto lenders and exchanges have been accused of fraud and other wrongdoing. What went wrong? One factor is competition. In theory, competition... View Details

Keywords: Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; Financial Complexity; Financial Crisis; Decentralization; Decentralized Markets; Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; Finance; Market Design; Financial Services Industry

Register to Read

February 9, 2024
Article

The Rise of Consumer Crypto

By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

Although non-fungible tokens are often misunderstood and even derided, they remain a general and flexible solution for establishing and tracking ownership in the digital domain. As a superior solution to existing technology in many areas of the consumer economy, their... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Crypto Economy; NFTs; Non-fungible Tokens; Internet Of Everything; Market Design; Technological Innovation; Demand and Consumers; Web Services Industry

Register to Read

Article

Bitcoin and Beyond

By: Christian Catalini, Ravi Jagadeesan and Scott Duke Kominers

From the growing attention to Bitcoin and "decentralized finance" to the latest excitement spurred by non-fungible tokens, the crypto economy is here to stay. But will it develop the social consensus and institutional arrangements needed to go fully mainstream? View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Crypto Economy; Finance; Currency

Register to Read

Article

Metaverse Land: What Makes Digital Real Estate Valuable

By: Scott Duke Kominers

Keywords: Crypto Economy

16 Jul 2021
News

Crypto ‘Yield Farmers’ Chase High Returns, But Risk Losing It All

December 22, 2023
Article

How NFTs Will Make a Comeback in 2024

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Steve Kaczynski

NFTs are poised to be a major driver of Web3 adoption in 2024 – but the successful projects will look very different from what’s come before. View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Web3; Crypto Economy; Value Creation; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy

Article

How NFTs Create Value

By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

How much could a cluster of pixels possibly be worth? More pointedly, why is it worth anything at all? The explosion of NFTs and their accompanying marketplaces have left many baffled, incredulous, and deeply skeptical. But while NFTs may be fetching eye-popping,... View Details

Keywords: Technological And Scientific Innovation; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Technological Innovation; Currency; Technology Adoption; Digital Transformation

Find at Harvard

17 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

$45,000 or less accounted for another 20 percent of the transactions. This shows, Di Maggio says, that the crypto market consists of “average US investors that are using crypto as an alternative asset class... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

September 2024
Supplement

Wemade: (Re)Establishing Trust in Blockchain Games (B)

By: Jung Koo Kang, Charles CY Wang, David Allen and Kwangmoon So

This supplement reviews Wemade's efforts to rebuild confidence in its business after its WEMIX coin was delisted from the major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges on December 8, 2022. It outlines Wemade's strategy of transparency, which included partnerships with... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Crypto Economy; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Corporate Disclosure; Information Technology; Financial Markets; Governance; Accounting Industry; Video Game Industry; South Korea

August 2022
Case

SuperRare: Turning an NFT Marketplace into a DAO

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Scott Duke Kominers and Amy Klopfenstein

In June 2021, John Crain and Jonathan Perkins, the founders of SuperRare, a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), contemplate whether to transform their company into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Crain and Perkins founded SuperRare in 2018 to... View Details

September 10, 2022
Article

NFT Sales: Clearing the Market, Avoiding Gas Wars

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden

Instead of letting the market decide the price for their primary sale offerings, many NFT projects choose to initially sell their NFTs at prices below the market-clearing level. But what happens when market designers trade off efficiency for equity; or when demand far... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; NFTs; Auctions; Market Design; Price

July 28, 2022
Article

DAO Governance Attacks, and How to Avoid Them

By: Pranav Garimidi, Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden

Many web3 projects embrace permissionless voting using a fungible and tradable native token. Permissionless voting can offer many benefits, from lowering barriers to entry to increasing competition. Token holders can use their tokens to vote on a range of issues—from... View Details

Keywords: Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; Governance; Voting; Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms

February 21, 2024
Article

The NFT Staircase: How Digital Ownership Benefits Brands and Consumers

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Steve Kaczynski

One of our goals with our new book, The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create, is to unlock the power of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, for business. National and international brands are already using NFTs in some of... View Details

Keywords: Non-fungible Tokens; NFTs; Brand; Brand Building; Digitization; Metaverse; Tokenization; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Market Design; Brands and Branding; Value Creation

April 6, 2023
Article

A New NFT Launch Strategy: The Wave Mint

By: Scott Duke Kominers and 1337 Skulls Sers

In an NFT project, the mint—the process by which tokens are initially allocated—largely determines who your community is and how they and the broader market view the project going forward. In this piece, we review a new minting strategy recently introduced by 1337... View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Mechanism Design; Sales Management; Sales Model; Crypto Economy; Non-fungible Tokens; Networks; Product Launch; Auctions; Market Design

September 2023
Case

Diamond Standard

By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger

Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The... View Details

January 12, 2023
Article

Progressive Decentralization: A High-level Framework

By: Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers

We explain a high-level framework for designing for future decentralization up front, and offer some guidance about when and how to do so. The guidelines apply to both web3 projects and more traditional organizations. View Details

Keywords: Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; Decentralization; Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; Entrepreneurial Journey; Entrepreneurial Management; Organization Behavior; Organization And Management Theory; Organization Form; Organizational Structure

July 13, 2023
Article

Threads Foreshadows a Big—and Surprising—Shift in Social Media

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu

Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, has become the fastest downloaded app in history. One of the reasons for this is because it allows users to port over their profiles and follows from the already popular social media platform Instagram, also owned by Meta—a feature... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; Crypto Economy; Blockchain; Network; Industrial Organization; Competition; Open Innovation; Open Platforms; Open Source Innovation; Social Networks; Social Media; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry

Register to Read

February 2024 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Uniswap: Fighting a Vampire Attack (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Liang Wu

This is the first of a three-case series that explores the challenges faced by Uniswap, a key player in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Founded by Hayden Adams, the case traces Uniswap's rapid growth from a simple idea inspired by a Reddit post to becoming one... View Details

2023
Working Paper

The Effects of Cryptocurrency Wealth on Household Consumption and Investment

By: Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di Maggio, Mark J. Johnson and Jason Kotter

This paper uses transaction-level data across millions of accounts to identify cryptocurrency investors and evaluate how fluctuations in individual crypto wealth affect household consumption, equity investment, and local real estate markets. We estimate an MPC out of... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Marginal Propensity To Consume; Household Balance Sheet; Real Estate; Etherium; Bitcoin; Investment; Housing; Spending

03 Jan 2020
News

The year in quotes: 2019

1
2
→