Fear of missing out and cryptocurrency miners: Evidence from Dogecoin and Litecoin

We examine how fear of missing out (FoMO), defined as persistent anxiety that others might be enjoying valuable experiences from which one is absent, influences cryptocurrency miners’ behavior, focusing on Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC). These two cryptocurrencies present a naturally developed experimental setting that allows us to investigate how FoMO-driven price fluctuations affect mining decisions without the need to account for additional variables such as mining costs. Our quantile vector autoregressive connectedness approach suggests that FoMO influences mining decisions. Returns influence DOGE-LTC mining participation more than vice versa when there are abrupt positive spikes in the DOGE price, whereas this tendency does not appear when LTC experiences price surges or when the DOGE price plunges. Given DOGE’s significantly stronger FoMO exposure, despite its other similarities to LTC, we interpret these findings as evidence that FoMO influences mining decisions.