Uncovering Retail Trading in Bitcoin: The Impact of COVID-19 Stimulus Checks

Author:

Divakaruni Anantha1ORCID,Zimmerman Peter2ORCID

Affiliation:

1. University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway;

2. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio 44114

Abstract

In April 2020, the U.S. government sent economic impact payments (EIPs) directly to households as part of its measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic. We characterize these stimulus checks as a wealth shock for households and examine their effect on retail trading in Bitcoin. We find a significant increase in Bitcoin buy trades of size $1,200, which is the modal EIP amount. We find similar increases in trading for other countries that paid out stimulus checks. We estimate that the EIPs have a significant impact on the U.S. dollar–Bitcoin trading pair, increasing buy volume by 3.8% and the price by 0.6%. We also find that demand for Bitcoin is highly price inelastic compared with the demand for stocks. We suggest the demographic characteristics that make people more resilient to the COVID-19 economic shock—single, computer literate, and educated—are also characteristics of people who are more interested in Bitcoin. This paper was accepted by Bruno Biais, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4790 .

Publisher

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

Subject

Management Science and Operations Research,Strategy and Management

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