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COVID-induced social isolation drove cryptocurrency investment up 75%
Lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic saw an exponential rise in cryptocurrency investments which was partially driven by the stress of social isolation, QUT researchers have found.
The study’s results have major implications for financial advisors, marketers and policymakers on how to curb excessive risk-taking among isolated individuals.
The article, “Social isolation and risk-taking behavior: The case of COVID-19 and cryptocurrency,” was published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Dr. Thusyanthy Lavan and Professor Brett Martin, from the QUT School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, with overseas colleagues, studied the consumer interest in cryptocurrency during the pandemic.
Dr. Lavan said the team looked at the impact of the pandemic’s prolonged enforced social isolation coupled with economic instability that drove risk-taking behavior, particularly in cryptocurrency investment.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, in January 2020, market capitalization of these online currencies was about $191 billion but had surged to $769 billion by December 2020,” Dr. Lavan said.
“This shift is underscored by the significant increase in the Bitcoin price, up 700% from March 2020 to March 2021.
“The attraction of these high-risk investments could be linked to their perceived potential for high returns during times of economic instability and market volatility.
“A further factor might be people’s tendency to try to reinstate some control in their lives and gravitate toward more autonomous and seemingly empowering activities, such as trading in cryptocurrencies.
“With this in mind, our aim was to look for the broader psychological responses to social isolation that catalyzed these changes in consumer decision-making, particularly in adopting new, and potentially riskier behaviors.
“Previous research has established the direct effects of social isolation on risk-taking behavior in non-purchase situations such as sharing of personal information on social media, but this is one of the first studies to examine risky purchase behavior.”
Professor Martin said they conducted a survey in December 2022 during a lockdown period in Australia of 216 participants screened for awareness of and familiarity with cryptocurrency but who were not current investors.
“By focusing on potential future investors, we aimed to capture unbiased perceptions and insights into cryptocurrency investment decisions,” Professor Martin said.
“Our survey sought to identify how three psychological constructs—perceived stress, sense of control and neuroticism—might underlie the relationship between social isolation and risk-taking behavior.
“Perceived stress is a personal interpretation of stress regarding a situation in a person’s life they consider to be beyond their adaptive capacities, while sense of control reflects a person’s belief in their ability to influence events and outcomes in their life.
“Neuroticism is a tendency to experience negative emotional states such as anxiety and impulsiveness.
“Our analysis of the results showed that perceived stress, rather than a sense of control or neuroticism, plays a key role in driving risk-taking behaviors during periods of social isolation.
Professor Martin said the researchers were not criticizing cryptocurrency.
“To be clear, my recently published research has shown how the process of cryptocurrency investing can have a positive effect on peoples’ lives.
“In this project, we looked at the effect of lockdowns and isolation-induced risk-taking. This research can provide insights on developing better support strategies for vulnerable populations.”
The research team comprised Dr. Lavan, Professor Martin, and Professor Weng Marc Lim and Professor Linda Hollebeek from Sunway University, Malayasia.
More information:
Thusyanthy Lavan et al, Social isolation and risk-taking behavior: The case of COVID-19 and cryptocurrency, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2024.103951
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Sediments reveal the ancient ocean during a mass extinction event
About 183 million years ago, volcanic activity in modern South Africa unleashed an estimated 20,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ocean–atmosphere system over a period of 300 to 500 thousand years. Known as the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), the lack of oxygen, or anoxia, in the water during this time caused a mass extinction of marine species.
Human activity since the industrial revolution has already resulted in cumulative CO2 emissions representing 12% of the total CO2 released during the entire T-OAE, in less than 0.1% of the time. The T-OAE foreshadows what might happen to our oceans if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase.
“You can see lots of fossils within ocean sediments before the T-OAE, and then suddenly they disappear,” says Caltech’s Francois Tissot, Professor of Geochemistry and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator.
Tissot is a co-author on a new study that was published on June 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describing the extent of the ocean anoxia during the T-OAE.
Led by researchers from George Mason University, the team collected 30 samples of stratified limestone from the Mercato San Severino region in southern Italy to assess the severity of ocean deoxygenation during the T-OAE.
The team analyzed the samples for their uranium content and isotopic composition. Isotopes are twin version of an element with different number of neutrons, and thus very slightly different masses.
The relative abundance of isotopes of uranium in the ocean depends on the amount of anoxia. This means that by measuring the isotopic composition of uranium in the ocean, scientists can infer the amount of anoxia in the ocean.
In the absence of actual seawater samples from the past, scientists are able to use a proxy for it, such as carbonate rocks, which faithfully record the seawater composition.
When there is plenty of oxygen in the ocean, uranium likes to stay in its soluble form, dissolved in the seawater. But when oxygen in the water becomes more scarce, then uranium begins to precipitate out of the seawater, and settles into sediments on the ocean floor.
Thus, through careful modeling developed by former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Michael Kipp, Tissot, and collaborators, the amount of uranium in seafloor samples can indicate the percentage of oxygen in the ocean at the time of the T-OAE.
“Using this model, we found that anoxia peaked at 28 to 38 times of the modern ocean,” says Tissot. “Today, only about 0.2% of the ocean floor is covered with anoxic sediments, similar to those found in the Black Sea. At the time of the T-OAE, 183 million years ago, it was 6% to 8% of the ocean floor that was covered in anoxic sediment.”
The results indicate that past OAE events can foreshadow the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on marine ecosystems.
“If we don’t curb carbon emissions and continue on an increasing CO2 trajectory, we can clearly see that there will be severe negative impacts on the ocean’s ecosystem,” says Tissot.
The paper is titled “Carbonate uranium isotopes record global expansion of marine anoxia during the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event.”
More information:
Mariano N. RemÃrez et al, Carbonate uranium isotopes record global expansion of marine anoxia during the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2406032121
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California Institute of Technology
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Sediments reveal the ancient ocean during a mass extinction event (2024, June 25)
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Australia’s giant lizards help save sheep from being eaten alive
Giant lizards called heath goannas could save Australian sheep farmers millions of dollars a year by keeping blowfly numbers down—and must be prioritized in conservation schemes to boost native wildlife, say researchers.
A study led by the University of Cambridge has found that heath goannas—a species of giant, scavenging lizard—act as natural cleanup crews by clearing maggot-ridden animal carcasses from the landscape.
This reduces the emergence of blowflies, which attack sheep by laying eggs on their backsides that hatch into flesh-eating maggots. The disease, known as “fly strike,” costs the Australian sheep farming industry an estimated $280 million a year.
This study was carried out at 18 sites across the Marna Banggara Rewilding Project area on Australia’s southern Yorke Peninsula, where over 90% of the native mammals are now extinct. The work is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
The study found that heath goannas perform a superior blowfly control service to introduced European mammals, including red foxes and cats, which are displacing them.
The researchers say that boosting populations of native large reptiles like heath goannas is vital in restoring Australia’s ecosystem and the services it supports.
“We found that Australia’s native scavengers like heath goannas are much more effective in removing blowflies from the landscape than invasive scavengers like European foxes and cats,” said Tom Jameson, a Ph.D. researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the report.
High densities of blow flies put sheep at risk of fly strike, a disease where blowfly maggots burrow into the sheep’s flesh and start to eat it alive, causing painful wounds. This affects the market value of the sheep, reduces breeding success and often results in death.
“Blowflies are a massive problem for the Australian sheep farming industry. They cause a horrible disease that is expensive for farmers to manage and a real animal welfare problem for sheep,” said Jameson.
This is the first study to show the importance of large reptiles as scavengers.
To get these results, Jameson compared the scavenging activity of different animals in a region of southern Australia. He left hundreds of dead rats at feeding stations, with camera traps, across the landscape. He returned after five days to see whether the rats had been eaten, and to count the number of blowfly maggots left on any remaining carcasses. Camera trap footage revealed which scavenging animal had found the rat, and how quickly.
Native Australian scavengers ate more of the dead rats, and with them the flesh-eating maggots, than scavengers introduced from Europe.
“It was disgusting—we were counting maggots. After five days, we’d find over 1,000 maggots in one rat if a scavenger hadn’t found it. Those maggots produce blowflies that can spread up to 20 kilometers in a week, putting local sheep flocks at risk of fly strike,” said Jameson.
In natural situations, any dead animal in the landscape will fill with blowfly maggots very quickly.
“The results suggest that conservation work in southern Australia to remove invasive species should also focus on boosting the population of heath goannas and other native species because they’re really important for the wider ecosystem,” said Jameson. “As well as benefiting native wildlife, this will have knock-on benefits for local agricultural industry, and also attract more wildlife tourism.”
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The study was carried out at the Marna Banggara Rewilding Project area on Australia’s southern Yorke Peninsula, where over 90% of the native mammals are now extinct. Credit: Tom Jameson
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Jameson spent a total of six months living remotely in Australia, mostly alone, to conduct the research. He says it was “an absolute privilege to work in this utterly stunning landscape with such wonderful wildlife.” Credit: Tom Jameson
Marna Banggara, supported by Narungga traditional owners, is an ambitious rewilding project that aims to restore ecosystem health in the region by reintroducing missing native Australian species.
Eighteenth-century European settlers to Australia brought with them red foxes for hunting, and cats as pets. Australia’s native wildlife—including many scavengers—has since been decimated by them.
The heath goanna is an endangered species of giant lizard native to the heathlands of southern Australia that can grow up to a meter and a half in length. It feeds on the dead carcasses of other animals, as well as catching live animals.
Reptiles like the heath goanna are the largest remaining native land scavengers in much of Australia today.
More information:
Squamate Scavenging Services: Heath goannas (Varanus rosenbergi) support carcass removal and may suppress agriculturally damaging blowflies, Ecology and Evolution (2024).
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University of Cambridge
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Australia’s giant lizards help save sheep from being eaten alive (2024, June 25)
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