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Knowledge Update

INVESTORS BEHAVIOR IN DIGITAL CURRENCIES

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The concept of cryptocurrency has been widely recognized in the last few years. These are digital currencies that make use of encryption for verification of a transaction. Bitcoin is a digital currency that was based on public-key cryptography. The major innovation in the case of Bitcoin is the decentralization of technology. The bitcoin database is distributed across a network of contributing computers, instead of storage of transactions on a single server. The database holding bitcoin database which is called “Blockchain” where blocks are added in the chain during the process of bitcoin mining. The mining process revolves around the solution of compound computational puzzles. In doing so, the miners receive the incentive of bitcoin rewards and transaction.

The bubble behavior of bitcoin is prompted by the noise traders which imply market inefficiency to increase, hence, there is a notion of experience of “fad” by the bitcoin market. The combination of different market news and events happen to have a strong effect in price volatility of bitcoin. The bubble-like behavior explains the increased volatility as a result of increased trading. The unsophisticated noise traders of bitcoin get easily affected by expectations and behaviors of other traders which can lead to “herding behavior, prospect behavior and heuristics behavior.” Hence, the decisions are mostly made in the light of heuristics instead of incorporating actual assessments.

From the behavioral finance point of view, the crowd activity literature is titled herding. The herding is described as a decision-making approach characterized by imitating other peoples’ behavior. It is also defined as a situation in which rational investors tend to act irrationally by imitating others’ judgments when it comes to making such investment decisions. It is stated that the herding factors affect asset prices significantly which this consider a part of the capital assets pricing theory. Moreover, herding can cause some emotional biases including conformity, congruity and cognitive conflict, the home bias, and gossip theories.

Traditional finance theory states that investors’ behavior is not significantly affecting the prices of assets. The argument behind that determined by investors’ demand that will be neutralized by the arbitrageurs’ transaction and by the trades, therefore, discounts the potential influence of the investors’ sentiment or investors’ feelings. Investors believe that they make their investment decision logically and rationally. However, the behavior finance theory states that investors’ behavior is significantly affecting the prices of assets. This indicated that behavior finance factors play a significant role in affecting investment decisions made by investors in the cryptocurrency market. As a conclusion, Behavioral Finance studies the psychology of financial decision-making. Most people know that emotions affect investment decisions. The behavioral finance holds out the prospect of a better understanding of financial market behavior and scope for investors to make better investment decisions based on an understanding of the potential pitfalls. The behavior finance factors play a significant role in influencing investment decisions made by investors in the cryptocurrency market.