Abstract: The authors analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo. Nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized. Certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange, or commodity money, depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs. There are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange. The authors find that equilibria are not generally Pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare. Velocity, acceptability, and liquidity are discussed. Copyright 1989 by University of Chicago Press.
You guys are going to be confused by the definition of fiat in this paper. The definition of fiat here is that the money has no intrinsic value. This contrasts with commodity money which does have intrinsic value. There is no state backing involved in fiat in any way. Their "fiat money" is equivalent to bitcoin. To interpret the abstract, just replace 'genuine fiat currency' with 'bitcoin' and 'commodity money' with 'gold', 'silver', or 'pouches of tobacco'.
This article might also be useful.
This paper examines the sets of feasible allocations in a large class of economic environments in which commitment is impossible (the standard definition of feasibility is adapted to take account of the lack of commitment). The environments feature either memory or money. Memory is defined as knowledge on the part of an agent of the full histories of all agents with whom he has had direct or indirect contact in the past. Money is defined as an object that does not enter preferences or production and is available in fixed supply. The main proposition proves that any allocation that is feasible in an environment with money is also feasible in the same environment with memory. Depending on the environment, the converse may or may not be true. Hence, from a technological point of view, money is equivalent to a primitive form of memory.
The blockchain is just some public memory of the past. Money is a "primitive form of memory", well the blockchain is just pure memory.