Methods and discussion

Data for this section includes digital assets historical monthly returns (Coincheckup.com), on-chain metrics such as fees and transaction volume (Coinmetrics.com), and off-chain web and social analytics (EconomyMonitor.com). We refer to the digital asset of the bitcoin network as ticker BTC, and that one of the bitcoincash blockchain as BCH.

Micro case

Application of Coase’s Theorem using empirical data

The graph in Figure 3 maps the attention flows from services used by the bitcoin cash and bitcoin communities in the period from 1 month before the hard fork to 1 month after the hard fork (July to August 2017). The network shows how audiences interests are sufficiently different, which likely offers an opportunity to support both currencies. The shared space includes common interests (such as wallets that supported both coins). The strength of the links encodes proximity, a measure of affinity between each service and the community — each particular cryptocurrency network is a sink, a consumer of attention of the users of a service.