Low on Trust and High on Risks: Is Sidechain a Good Solution to Bitcoin Problems?

Jamal Bouoiyour (1, 2) , Refk Selmi (2, 1) , Olivier Hueber (3)

1 CATT - Centre d'Analyse Théorique et de Traitement des données économiques
2 IRMAPE - Institut de Recherche en Management et Pays Emergents
3 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion

Over the past few years, cryptocurrencies (especially Bitcoin) have attracted a particular attention. As the number of transactions increase, these systems tend to become slower, expensive, and unsustainable for a use-case such as payment. In this way, the Bitcoin sidechain seeks to provide prompt and confidential transactions between major trading platforms. Although poor performance and high volatility can push potential users away from Bitcoin, this study reveals that the introduction of sidechain solves some of the problems Bitcoin is facing. Using relatively new techniques, we find that the implementation of sidechain reduces Bitcoin price volatility, rises its efficiency, and enhances its usefulness as a transaction tool and a diversifier. We explain these changes in Bitcoin characteristics by the sidechain"s capacity to speed up the circulation of money by shortening block validation times and to an improvement in the scalability of Proof of Work and Bitcoin payment services. Our results also indicate that the sidechain liquid network lead to a less energy-consuming and in turn to less polluting Bitcoin system. But a weakly vanishing causality between Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin energy consumption implies that the concentration of miners is still follow available electrical supply.

Mots clés: Bitcoin; Volatility; Efficiency; Risk management; Energy use; Sidechain

Domaines: Economies et finances

Jamal Bouoiyour, Refk Selmi, Olivier Hueber. Low on Trust and High on Risks: Is Sidechain a Good Solution to Bitcoin Problems?. 2019. ⟨hal-02348406⟩