Deciphering Bitcoin Blockchain Data by Cohort Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Liu, Yulin, Zhang, Luyao, Zhao, Yinhong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2021
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author Liu, Yulin
Zhang, Luyao
Zhao, Yinhong
author_facet Liu, Yulin
Zhang, Luyao
Zhao, Yinhong
contents Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that has rapidly grown in popularity in recent years. Usually, the complete history of Bitcoin blockchain data must be queried to acquire variables with economic meaning. This task has recently become increasingly difficult, as there are over 1.6 billion historical transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is thus important to query Bitcoin transaction data in a way that is more efficient and provides economic insights. We apply cohort analysis that interprets Bitcoin blockchain data using methods developed for population data in the social sciences. Specifically, we query and process the Bitcoin transaction input and output data within each daily cohort. This enables us to create datasets and visualizations for some key Bitcoin transaction indicators, including the daily lifespan distributions of spent transaction output (STXO) and the daily age distributions of the cumulative unspent transaction output (UTXO). We provide a computationally feasible approach for characterizing Bitcoin transactions that paves the way for future economic studies of Bitcoin.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2103_00173
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deciphering Bitcoin Blockchain Data by Cohort Analysis
Liu, Yulin
Zhang, Luyao
Zhao, Yinhong
General Economics
Economics
Numerical Analysis
Computational Finance
Computation
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that has rapidly grown in popularity in recent years. Usually, the complete history of Bitcoin blockchain data must be queried to acquire variables with economic meaning. This task has recently become increasingly difficult, as there are over 1.6 billion historical transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is thus important to query Bitcoin transaction data in a way that is more efficient and provides economic insights. We apply cohort analysis that interprets Bitcoin blockchain data using methods developed for population data in the social sciences. Specifically, we query and process the Bitcoin transaction input and output data within each daily cohort. This enables us to create datasets and visualizations for some key Bitcoin transaction indicators, including the daily lifespan distributions of spent transaction output (STXO) and the daily age distributions of the cumulative unspent transaction output (UTXO). We provide a computationally feasible approach for characterizing Bitcoin transactions that paves the way for future economic studies of Bitcoin.
title Deciphering Bitcoin Blockchain Data by Cohort Analysis
topic General Economics
Economics
Numerical Analysis
Computational Finance
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00173