The term cryptoeconomics was coined by the Ethereum community during its formative years (2014-2015),[5][6] but was initially inspired by the application of economic incentives in the original Bitcoin protocol in 2008.
Alternatively, in a 2017 talk, Buterin's view is more narrow and pragmatic: “… a methodology for building systems that try to guarantee certain kinds of information security properties”.
[9] According to Binance, the primary goals of cryptoeconomics are to understand how to fund, design, develop, and facilitate the operations of DeFi systems,[10] and to apply economic incentives and penalties to regulate the distribution of goods and services in emerging digital economies.
The historical roots of cryptoeconomics can be traced to the rise of altcoins, prominent among them the Ethereum project, which in 2015 pioneered the integration of smart contracts into its blockchain, thereby enabling a wide range of DeFi applications.
[17] Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by many economists, including Robert Shiller,[18] Joseph Stiglitz,[19] Richard Thaler,[20] Paul Krugman,[21] and Nouriel Roubini.