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

The authors thank the editor, associate editor and three anonymous reviewers. This paper has also benefited from comments by seminar participants at the Academy of Finance, Boca Corporate Finance and Governance Conference, Cryptocurrency Research Conference 2021, Economics of Financial Technology Conference, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference, Global AI Finance Research Conference, Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen Zug Fintech Colloquium, New Zealand Finance Meeting, Shanghai-Edinburgh-London Fintech Conference, Stern Salomon Center Microstructure Conference, University of Western Australia Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, Vienna-Copenhagen Conference on Financial Econometrics, and World Federation of Exchanges as well as Tim Carpenter, Rodney Garratt, Robin Greenwood, Hugh Hoikwang Kim, Toomas Laarits, Ned Prescott, Vicki Wei Tang, Tarik Umar, Jeffrey Wurgler, James Yae, and Alan Zhang. The authors thank Cornelius Johnson for invaluable research assistance. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System. All errors are theirs. The data set for the study was obtained from Kaiko.