Forecasting the unforecastable: An independent component analysis for majority game-like global cryptocurrencies

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies do not have proper economic fundamentals. Consequently, economic variables cannot predict crypto prices. According to economic theory, cryptocurrencies are unbacked assets that are inherently unforecastable. However, a growing strand of literature suggests global crypto markets to be informationally inefficient. It implies the possibility of return predictability based on past information. Forecasting the allegedly unforecastable becomes feasible. Keeping it sophisticatedly simple, past infomation can be captured by autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) processes of principal components. However, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for crypto price series is due to their non-Gaussian property not applicable and requires the assumption of a stochastic trend model. Making use of the Central Limit Theorem, Independent Component Analysis (ICA) overcomes this deficiency. We show that ICA combined with ARIMA modeling more than triples the predictability of global crypto price dynamics. • Crypto markets are found to be inefficient in the sense of majority games. • ICA based ARIMA more than triples predictability of crypto price dynamics. • ICA based ARIMA is most reliable for directional out-of-sample predictions.