Crypto politics

In the standard theories on portfolio selection, most of which are inspired by Markowitz, (1952) savers are said to maximize the returns from their assets while minimizing risk and volatility. However, younger generations today are investing their hope in extremely risky assets such as cryptocurrencies.

That is, there seem to be more than economic calculations behind these trades given that crypto currenices have little intrinsic value today in that they are not accepted as legal tender.

Instead, any long-term placement in these assets is a speculation against the current order where governments and banks have control over financial transactions.

I will stress the need to use a political perspective to understand these trends, especially a perspective of polarization and populism, given that a great concern among political scientists today is the growing polarization among voters and the rise of right-wing populism.

However, what I will ask in this project is whether increasing polarization has started changing the rules in financial markets.

More precisely I ask: Are crypto investments politically motivated and do these investments affect the political behaviour of their owners? These questions are relevant because much of the appeal of cryptocurrencies is derived from populist propaganda.

The hype around Bitcoin is huge, and this project aims to address these questions using both survey data, a survey experiment as well as with data extracted from social media