Thesis title: Three essays on cryptocurrencies
This work is organised into three essays whose common theme is the emerging environment of cryptocurrencies and its impact on economic and monetary aspects.
We start by focusing on the traditional monetary system and, after developing a categorisation of existing cryptocurrencies (both private and public ones), we identify a possible new instrument for pursuing the goal of democratisation beyond traditional money: Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
We then proceed to analyse the possible benefits and risks of issuing a CBDC from a macroeconomic perspective. Using a stock-flow consistent framework, the effects of issuing CBDC are compared with those of an expansive fiscal policy scenario and of Quantitative Easing (QE).
Finally, the third essay focuses on the operation of a necessary set of rules that govern the Blockchain underlying a private cryptocurrency. We propose a new way to validate transactions, an alternative Consensus Algorithm, aimed at improving the speed and the collaboration between two validator nodes of this procedure; and we test this new procedure using experimental data based on a level-k model.