ICES Experimental Economics Brown Bag Lecture
Religiosity, Culture, and a Crypto Bank Run
Thursday, October 31, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Vernon Smith Hall (formerly Metropolitan Building), Room 5075
The Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES) presents an ICES Brown Bag Lecture featuring:
George Mason University
Religiosity, Culture, and a Crypto Bank Run
Abstract
Following the twin collapses of stablecoins terraUST and LUNA in May 2022, an industry-wide selloff triggered bank run-style withdrawals by users on crypto platforms, including the crypto-lending service Celsius. By combining 15.5 million data points on individuals' daily transaction activity over a 13-week period leading up to the Celsius collapse with a novel method of assigning religiosity and other cultural variables to individuals based on their names, we are able to explore cultural and religious correlates of individuals’ behavior in a bank run. Our findings reveal that users with a more religious socialization have significantly higher starting balances than non-religious users.
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