私人数字货币与资本流出——以比特币为例的研究

Private Cryptocurrency and Capital Outflow一Taking Bitcoin as an Example

本研究以比特币为例,结合私人数字货币交易所数据与区块链账本记录,考察私人数字货币市场上成本因素是否驱动资本流出。实证证据显示,成本因素对资本流出转向比特币渠道具有驱动力,更低的绝对成本及相对成本均显著驱动资本流出交易;资本流出规模与境内风险正相关、与境外风险负相关,与私人数字货币国内相对热度和全球关注程度均呈现负相关关系,且私人数字货币市场因素的影响更甚于宏观经济因素。在区块链技术应用领域不断延伸、法定数字货币呼之欲出的背景下,建议监管部门继续保持对私人数字货币的密切管控,在理论研究、交易监测与监管科技方面不断进行提升和完善,防范借助私人数字货币的资本流出风险。

Taking Bitcoin as an example, this paper examines whether cost factors drive capital outflows in the Cryptocurrency market by combining data from exchanges with records in blockchain ledger. Answering this question may provide both evidences and suggestions to the government’s regulation on Cryptocurrencies that potentially impose serious risks on China’s financial stability.This paper adopts the big data approach to analyze China’s Bitcoin and possible capital flight via Bitcoin. With the help of WalletExplorer tools and a crawling software written with Python code, this paper collects large amount of Bitcoin transactional data from the open ledger on Bitcoin Blockchain. Based on 258.91 million Bitcoin transactions that were sent from Bitcoin exchanges within the Chinese border, the calculation shows approximately 6.59 billion RMB capital flight, which were mainly transmitted to the US and neighboring countries of China. Combining plausible P2 P transactions, it’s estimated there are totally 0.51-3.03 trillions RMB capital flight through Bitcoin illegally.Following that, the paper studies the determinants of China’s capital flight via Bitcoin and identifies that the lower cost of using Bitcoin for capital flight is the key determinant. This result is robust to different data, measurements for the cost, and controlling for possible endogeneity issues.The empirical evidence shows that lower costs do drive capital outflow significantly. Meanwhile, the volume of capital outflows is positively related to domestic risks, negatively related to overseas risks, and negatively related to both the popularity and global attention of Cryptocurrency. Furthermore, the impact from Cryptocurrency market is greater than the impact from macroeconomic factors. In addition, Notice on Precautions Against the Risks of Bitcoins has limited effect on curbing capital outflow. On this basis, it is recommended that the regulatory authorities should continuously improve their efforts in theoretical research, transaction monitoring, and regulation technology.