To date, much of the academic research on Bitcoin has lacked high-quality data and rigorous review. It’s time to fix that.
This is an opinion editorial by Rupert Matthews, a professor at Nottingham Business School.
Although the Bitcoin network is open source and accessible to anyone with an internet connection, the Bitcoin community can sometimes be seen as closed to new ideas, with many stories of people being excluded as a result of promoting and supporting “activities that They are not Bitcoin.” ”
At the same time, the benefits of Bitcoin are immediately apparent to those within the community, who also need to support sharing information about Bitcoin with “non-coiners” to support broader adoption. Unfortunately, broader perceptions of Bitcoin in the media and the “old guard on Wall Street” have meant that the educational process can be an uphill battle that must first dispel falsehoods before real education can begin.
Remember, even one of our most ardent supporters was once a non-coiner as well:
It’s also worth remembering that not every non-coiner can be Michael Saylor, and not everyone is lucky enough to have close personal friends (thanks eric weiss) willing to take the time to clearly explain the concept to us, or the personal motivation to spend thousands of hours educating us. We probably needed several touch points, combined with some basic understanding to create the mental curiosity to ask: What is money? And where does the money come from?
The works of Saifedean Ammous are some of the best and most referenced sources for answering these questions, but people still need to be willing to read all 274 pages of “The Bitcoin Standard” to access them.
So the issue is not only do we have the voices to promote education, but also do we have enough voices to compete against those who sell their “assets of choice” on Wall Street, but also against uninformed journalists (who often cannot own the assets they report on), and are more numerous or have larger audiences.
Unfortunately, the sources of conflicting Bitcoin views don’t end with Wall Street speculators and journalists. Nic Carter, in his critical review of the recent White House report on the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, highlighted the risks associated with “academic sources” that have a veneer of credibility but are ultimately uninformed. As a result, while something like the “White House Office of Science and Technology Policy” (OSTP) would suggest the utmost academic and scientific rigor, as Carter put it, “that’s where you’d be wrong.”
Questioning ‘academic rigor’
This gap in verifiable academic voices led me to begin my own academic Bitcoin journey by not only consuming material but also using my experience to venture out to research and write about Bitcoin from my own perspective.
A quick look at the works highlighted by Carter provided some easy gains in understanding how pseudo-academics can publish work under the guise of academia (specifically, the works of Alex de Vries). More disturbing was, within further research, finding actual academic sources that were peer-reviewed and published in reputable journals that relied on these sources and allowed them to significantly affect their findings. The influence can also be seen within the references that make the most fanciful predictions (like this one by john truby), catastrophizing the impact of Bitcoin mining on the environment, which are also published in academic journals, which in turn are based on the sources identified by Carter.
This creates a situation where while the original sources may not be peer-reviewed, commentary pieces, or personal blogs, their views can directly impact the findings and models that are presented in more respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. (see this example).
This puts an awkward lens on the academic peer review process, where those who review academic research on Bitcoin appear to be inexperienced in Bitcoin. More worrisome for academia in general, this also suggests that academics reviewing Bitcoin research are not questioning or verifying the sources from which it is drawn. If they did the most cursory job of checking the credibility of a website citation or even acknowledged that a particular paper was actually a non-peer-reviewed “comment”, the authors would require clarification before such papers would be accepted. for publication.
Further concerns are raised when considering time-pressed academics reading such “peer-reviewed” sources. They themselves could develop views that are influenced by the work, unaware of the quality/bias of the sources on which they are being built, and potentially pursue anti-Bitcoin research agendas.
Bitcoin is becoming famous for being interdisciplinary, with those who study the subject becoming knowledgeable in a variety of fields, from Austrian economics to the environment, from personal time preference to food supply chains. Unfortunately, it is widely recognized that academic journals focus on fairly defined domains in which they accept research. This means that accepted, topic-specific models of research and analysis, unfortunately, may not be able to capture the complex nature of Bitcoin research.
To illustrate this, a 2015 highly cited economic article, which follows rigorously accepted approaches, published in a high-quality journal, found that the “long-term fundamental value (of bitcoin) is not statistically different from zero.” Given that Bitcoin started 2015 at around $318 and ended the year at $430 and has risen sharply ever since, one can only imagine the “salty” potential of the academics presenting these findings and how this may have affected their long-term view of and research trip in Bitcoin.
How academics can improve Bitcoin research
While the idea of establishing new Bitcoin-focused research journals is a good way to go, academic journals take time to develop a reputation and scholars within the fields tend not to stray too far from sources they are comfortable with. . Scholars also receive incentives to publish in established journals by linking research results to professional advancement, which means that a new journal may not be a development pathway in the short term.
I’m a big fan of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which does invaluable work promoting research and advocacy to improve understanding of Bitcoin, but can only have a limited number of members at its current level of funding (not considering the issues associated with the large increase in members). ). This means that increasing the number of members of such institutions may not be the best path for development.
To reflect on these potential issues, my three suggestions for those working in academia are: First, identify ways to conduct rigorous, scholarly research from the perspective of your area of expertise for publication in journals related to your own discipline. Second, allocate resources specifically to respond to published research that is inaccurate, incomplete, and biased, through communication with respective journal editorial boards. Third, include Bitcoin within the topics they are willing to review articles on, thus helping to avoid publishing articles that misrepresent Bitcoin views. Through this process, as more academics enter the field, they will be able to benefit from robust academic discussions, with high standards to which they can aspire, in the hope of allowing themselves to write papers that contribute to the scientific understanding of Bitcoin.
These suggestions are unlikely to resolve the bias presented by journalists or politicians, but I believe they represent a way to improve the academic foundations of understanding Bitcoin. Scholars conduct research with the goal of discovering new knowledge and understanding, on the way to establishing new truths or refining existing ones, that are based on the scientific methods that underpin the modern world. Unless this foundation is established and people looking for quick academic wins are prevented from publishing their work, journalists and politicians will continue to find sources that are aligned with their views on catastrophizing the impact of Bitcoin. If journalists and politicians cannot profit from low-quality “investigation” that fails the test of critical review, they will not be able to distribute these views to the general public. While this may not solve the problem, it could move the debate in the right direction and allow academics to be the critical voices backed by scientific rigor. If the general public’s opinion of Bitcoin is not misinformed, there is one less barrier to overcome in the process of taking an orange pill from a future Bitcoiner.
Academy members are sometimes seen as conducting their research from ivory towers that have only limited impact on practice or the lives of ordinary people, but the recent OSTP report and the broader academic literature show that the growing interest in Bitcoin is magnifying the impact of Bitcoin. -related research. Unless steps are taken to ensure high academic standards in Bitcoin-related research are upheld, not only will Bitcoin’s progress be slowed down, but the reputation and prestige of academic research in general will be damaged.
This leaves me in a position where I would like to send a message to scholars who use low-quality or biased data in their work, and to reviewers who do not verify the sources from which they are drawn. As an academic, my message is: shame on you. As a Bitcoiner, my message cannot be published, but believe me, it is from the heart and does not mince words.
This is a guest post by Rupert Matthews. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
