Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies

What just happened? This was the question that seemed to echo across the art world, and then across the entire world, as news spread of a remarkable and unusual sale by Christie’s auction house in early March of 2021. A digital collage entitled Everydays: The First 5000 Days, had sold for $69 million USD. The sale price alone made this transaction remarkable news. But there was something more. Something that took this transaction from the realm of the rare into the land of the positively game-changing. Since then, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as a non-fungible token (NFT) for $2 million USD. Moreover, NBA super star Stephen Curry shelled out $180,000 USD for a Bored Ape Yacht NFT as his Twitter profile.

In the new Web 3.0 era, decentralised tokenisation is rapidly evolving, with NFTs representing a new innovation in the field. A ‘token’ often refers to any cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin and Ethereum. A non-fungible token is special because it is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. Apart from NFTs, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) tokens, Metaverse tokens, Polkadot tokens, and other such digital tokens also significantly contribute to the tokenisation process. As of October 2022, the market capitalisation of DeFi, NFT and Metaverse tokens is equal to $ 75.93 billion USD.

Given that digital tokens have increasingly attracted the attention of both industry and academia, there is limited knowledge that can help us fully understand these new digital assets, especially in this new, but highly uncertain era of FinTech. We, therefore, call for both theoretical and empirical contributions which could unpack digital tokens (DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc.) from both financial and economic perspectives. The call for research on the subject matter is both timely and necessary to meet global economic and financial challenges facing policymakers, scholars, and all stakeholders of economic, price and financial stability. We especially welcome innovative contributions related to the main following topics and streams, but are not limited to:

• Research agenda, systematic literature review and bibliometric literature review related to digital tokens
• Risk characteristics and diversification capabilities of digital tokens
• Market mechanism of digital tokens (Market interconnectedness, contagion and spillover effect, hedging and safe haven properties, etc.)
• Price mechanism (Determinants of digital tokens’ prices, price efficiency of digital tokens, explosive behaviors in digital tokens, etc)
• Behavioural finance (Herding behaviour, investor attention and sentiment analysis in digital tokens, etc).
• Unique dataset development of digital tokens and assets
• Digital tokens, Web 3.0 and FinTech
• Culture engagement and art economics
• Digital tokens and sustainable finance
• Virtual art and ethical
• Policy and regulation development (Policymaking in emerging markets and digital tokens, anti-money laundering, anti-price manipulation, policy options under digital tokens)
• Production, adoption and utilization
• Forward guidance

Related and suggested reading:

• Wang, Y. (2022). Volatility spillovers across NFTs news attention and financial markets. International Review of Financial Analysis, 83, 102313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102313
• Wang, Y., Horky, F., Baals, L. J., Lucey, B. M., & Vigne, S. (2022). Bubbles all the way down? Detecting and date-stamping bubble behaviour in DeFi and NFT markets. Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies. DOI: 10.1080/14765284.2022.2138161.
• Dowling, M. (2022). Fertile LAND: Pricing non-fungible tokens. Finance Research Letters, 44, 102096.
• Dowling, M. (2022). Is non-fungible token pricing driven by cryptocurrencies?. Finance Research Letters, 44, 102097.
• Nguyen, J. K. (2022). Racial discrimination in non-fungible token (NFT) prices? CryptoPunk sales and skin tone. Economics Letters, 218, 110727.
• Karim, S., Lucey, B. M., Naeem, M. A., & Uddin, G. S. (2022). Examining the interrelatedness of NFTs, DeFi tokens and cryptocurrencies. Finance Research Letters, 102696.
• Yousaf, I., & Yarovaya, L. (2022). Herding behavior in conventional cryptocurrency market, non-fungible tokens, and DeFi assets. Finance Research Letters, 50, 103299.
• Horky, F., Rachel, C., & Fidrmuc, J. (2022). Price Determinants of Non-fungible Tokens in the Digital Art Market. Finance Research Letters, 103007.
• Borri, Nicola, Yukun Liu, and Aleh Tsyvinski. "The economics of non-fungible tokens." Available at SSRN (2022).
• Ali, O., Momin, M., Shrestha, A., Das, R., Alhajj, F., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2023). A review of the key challenges of non-fungible tokens. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 187, 122248.

All submissions will undergo the same strict double-blind peer-review process applied to the journal, Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted).

Tentative timelines:

• Call for papers: November 2022
• Submission started: 03 January 2023
• Submission deadline: 31 December 2023
• Publication of the special issue: June 2024

Related conferences and workshops:

Authors are invited to submit their research paper (in English) or extended abstract in Word or PDF version to the following conferences and workshops. Also, we encourage the participants of the following conferences and workshops to submit their high-quality and original research papers to this special issue. A copy of the submission should email to the corresponding guest editor: Yizhi Wang ([email protected]). Please write your email title as "VSI Submission_Digital asset never sleeps? Unpacking new digital tokens"

1. CryptoAssets and Digital Asset Investment Conference

Time: 13^th – 14^th April 2023

Place: Ghent, Belgium

Organizers: Future Finance and Economics Association & Ghent University, Belgium

2. Bits and Blocks (Blockchain) Workshop

Time: TBA

Place: TBA

Organizers: Renmin University of China, CHINA; University of Manchester, UK; and American University of Sharjah, UAE.

3. Cardiff FinTech Conference 2023

Time: TBA

Place: TBA

Organizers: Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.

PLEASE NOTE: Submissions are not limited to conference or workshop participants. Academics can, of course, submit their work directly via a journal link. Please use the ScholarOne manuscript system following the instructions for authors: 

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rcea20

When submitting your paper to ScholarOne, please select the title of the special issue "Digital asset never sleeps? Unpacking new digital tokens".

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