Zaghum Umar, Francisco Jareño, MarĂa de la O GonzĂĄlez
This research explores the impact of COVID-19-related media coverage on the dynamic return and volatility connectedness of the three dominant cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP)) and the fiat currencies of the euro, GBP and Chinese yuan. The sample period covers the first and second devasting waves of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and ranges from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020. The dynamic return and volatility connectedness measures are estimated using the time varying parameter-VAR approach. Our return connectedness analysis shows that the media coverage index (only before the first wave) and the cryptocurrencies are the net transmitters of shocks while the fiat currencies are the net receivers of shocks. Similar results are obtained in terms of volatility, except for the euro, which shows a clear net receiver profile in January and February. This fiat currency (the euro) became a net transmitter in March and during the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis, which possibly shows the virulence of the pandemic on the European continent. Moreover, the most relevant differences between the net dynamic (return and volatility) connectedness of these two groups of currencies are focused on the beginning of the sample period, just before the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic crisis, although some differences are observed during the first and second waves of the coronavirus outbreak.
We analyze the intraday time series of Bitcoin, comparing its features with those of traditional financial assets such as stocks and exchange rates. The results shed light on similarities as well as significant deviations from the standard patterns. In particular, our most interesting finding is the unusual presence of significant negative first-order autocorrelation of returns calculated on medium-frequency timeframes, such as one, two and four hours, signaling the presence of systematic mean reversion. It is also found that larger price movements lead to stronger reversals, in percentage terms. We finally point out the potential exploitability of the phenomenon by implementing a basic algorithmic trading strategy and retroactively applying it to the data. We explain the findings mainly through (i) investor and trader overreaction, (ii) excess volatility and (iii) cascading liquidations due to excessive use of leverage by market participants.
Bitcoin and other digital currencies are financial assets with high volatility, which calls for an investigation of the factors that influence their prices and thus has led to a debate on whether they are reliable investment instruments or diversification tools. The present study aims to explore the impact upon Bitcoin prices of commodities such as gold and oil, the S&P 500 index, and the volatility index and financial stress index, which represent the financial risk environment. To this purpose, we analyze this relationship using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach based on the monthly data from the 2010-2021 period. The results suggest that both in the long and short run, gold price per ounce does not have a statistically significant effect on Bitcoin price. On the other hand, an increase in crude oil prices has a negative impact on Bitcoin price in the short run, with no significant effect in the long run. The S&P 500 stock market index positively affects the Bitcoin price both in the short and long run. In addition, our analysis results also demonstrate that developments indicating increased risk in the long run tend to reduce Bitcoin returns.Keywords: Bitcoin, gold, oil, volatility, ARDL.JEL Classifications: G11; B23DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.11602
This study examines the volatility of nine leading cryptocurrencies by market capitalizationâBitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Litecoin, TRON, Cardano, and IOTA-by using a Bayesian Stochastic Volatility (SV) model and several GARCH models. We find that when we deal with extremely volatile financial data, such as cryptocurrencies, the SV model performs better than the GARCH family models. Moreover, the forecasting errors of the SV model, compared with the GARCH models, tend to be more accurate as forecast time horizons are longer. This deepens our insight into volatility forecast models in the complex market of cryptocurrencies.
In recent years, the attention of investors, practitioners and academics has grown in cryptocurrency. Initially, the cryptocurrency was designed as a viable digital currency implementation, and subsequently, numerous derivatives were produced in a range of sectors, including nonmonetary activities, financial transactions, and even capital management. The high volatility of exchange rates is one of the main features of cryptocurrencies. The article presents an interesting way to estimate the probability of cryptocurrency volatility clusters. In this regard, the paper explores exponential hybrid methodologies GARCH (or EGARCH) and through its portrayal as a financial asset, ANN models will provide analytical insight into bitcoin. Meanwhile, more scalable modelling is needed to fit financial variable characteristics such as ANN models because of the dynamic, nonlinear association structure between financial variables. For financial forecasting, BP is contained in the most popular methods of neural network training. The backpropagation method is employed to train the two models to determine which one performs the best in terms of predicting. This architecture consists of one hidden layer and one input layer with N neurons. Recent theoretical work on crypto-asset return behavior and risk management is supported by this research. In comparison with other traditional asset classes, these results give appropriate data on the behavior, allowing them to adopt the suitable investment decision. The study conclusions are based on a comparison between the dynamic features of cryptocurrencies and FOREX Currencyâs traditional mass financial asset. Thus, the result illustrates how well the probability clusters show the impact on cryptocurrency and currencies. This research covers the sample period between August 2017 and August 2020, as cryptocurrency became popular around that period. The following methodology was implemented and simulated using Eviews and SPSS software. The performance evaluation of the cryptocurrencies is compared with FOREX currencies for better comparative study respectively.
Saiful Izzuan Hussain, Nurulkamal Masseran, Nadiah Ruza, Muhammad Aslam Mohd Safari
Abstract Extreme value theory(EVT) has been used to study the frequency and probability related to extreme situations in finance. This approach focuses on the extreme values and able to provide a better estimation for risk models. In this study, Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD) is employed to model daily extreme returns in the Bitcoin market from 2017 to 2019. These periods have witnessed three phases of extreme volatility for the cryptocurrency market. The returns level for the Bitcoin range between 17.011 and 18.746. The results demonstrate heavy tail and finite tail distribution characteristics for the tails. The findings provide a better understanding of the tailsâ behaviour in the cryptocurrency market and help investors to make a financial decision.
Abstract The increasing daily use of virtual currency (cryptocurrency) is being adopted worldwide for many legal and illegal transactions. Cryptocurrency technology operates on a network that allows people to make payments around the world without any middleman. Since the technology was first developed, it became popular, and the price of cryptocurrencies started to rise and became unstable. In terms of the returns gained from investing in cryptocurrencies, they have been huge in recent times, but there has always been a question about their existence and reliability. A cryptocurrency is a digital process that relies on the use of an encryption system for security primarily. Despite the challenges and problems facing cryptocurrencies, the success of Bitcoin has led several companies to search for alternative digital currencies. This paper tries to compare two cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) with respect to their stability and understanding its trends in the recent period.
Khalid Khan, Jiluo Sun, Sinem Derindere KöseoÄlu, Ashfaq U. Rehman
This study examines the relationship between global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) and bitcoin prices (BCP) employing the rolling window method. The full sample test shows that there is no causality between GEPU and BCP. However, the full sample causal relationship between the variables can be different when considering structural changes. The finding of the rolling window test indicates that there is causality in different subsamples. It has found both positive and negative bidirectional causalities between GEPU and BCP across various subsamples. The decision makers need to accelerate the development of blockchain technology that can be used for hedging and portfolio diversification. Moreover, enacting laws and regulations on state interventions and prohibitions ensures investor confidence. Information about policy changes should be incorporated into portfolio selection to avoid random market fluctuations. Its unregulated nature makes it more turbulent in the short term and has undergone sudden changes, so investors should be able to obtain comprehensive information about global economic and policy changes. Policy makers should ensure investor confidence by making legal regulations on state interventions and prohibitions.
Recently, the world of cryptocurrencies has experienced an undoubted increase in interest. Since the first cryptocurrency appeared in 2009 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the popularity of digital currencies has, year by year, risen continuously. As of February 2021, there are more than 8525 cryptocurrencies with a market value of approximately USD 1676 billion. These particular assets can be used to diversify the portfolio as well as for speculative actions. For this reason, investigating the daily volatility and co-volatility of cryptocurrencies is crucial for investors and portfolio managers. In this work, the interdependencies among a panel of the most traded digital currencies are explored and evaluated from statistical and economic points of view. Taking advantage of the monthly Google queries (which appear to be the factors driving the price dynamics) on cryptocurrencies, we adopted a mixed-frequency approach within the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model. In particular, we introduced the Double Asymmetric GARCHâMIDAS model in the DCC framework.
In this paper, we attempt to analyze the dynamic interplay between Bitcoin, social media, and the Covid-19 health crisis. For this end, we apply the fractional autoregressive vector model, fractional error correction model and impulse response functions on daily data over the period 31/12/2019-30/10/2020. Our results clearly show the short- and long-term evidence of the nexus between the Bitcoin price, social media metrics (Tweets and Google Trends) and the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic. As well, the Covid-19 pandemic does not impact on social media metrics in the short- and long-term. On the other hand, the Covid-19 pandemic positively affects social media metrics. Also, the Covid-19 pandemic encourages investing in digital currencies such as Bitcoin. So, the Covid-19 health crisis significantly influences social media networks and Bitcoin prices.
In recent years, cryptocurrency or virtual currency is becoming an essential medium of exchange in consumer and domestic trading. Nevertheless, the trading values of cryptocurrency compared to real money are very uncertain and can change dramatically. This article is aimed to assess the uncertainty or volatility of cryptocurrencies, mostly on Bitcoin. In the digital currencies market, Bitcoin is a widely accepted currency. Other digital currencies of the market may influence Bitcoin. For example, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, Dash and Ripple have a positive impact on Bitcoin. Previous research only focuses on Bitcoin and other markets such as stock markets, energy markets, and exchange rates. However, here we focus on interlinkages and volatility dynamics within cryptocurrency markets by applying some econometrics models. In this article, we have shown that the relationship between Bitcoin and other currencies can be modelled in the ARCH, GARCH, VAR and MGARCH framework. Forecast values of the GARCH (3,3) model are given very close to the original data. VAR stability result shows that the model is stable. Using the CCC, VCC, and DCC of the MGARCH model on daily returns from 1st January 2017 to 15th March 2019, we found significant volatility and strong correlations between the variables.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on the spillovers across economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and cryptocurrency uncertainty indices. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses cross-country economic policy uncertainty indices and the novel data measuring the cryptocurrency price uncertainties over the period 2013â2021 to construct a sample of 946 observations and applies the time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) model to do an empirical study. Findings The findings suggest that there are cross-country spillovers of economic policy uncertainty. In addition, the total uncertainty spillover between economic policies and cryptocurrency peaked in 2015 before gradually decreasing in the following periods. Concomitantly, the cryptocurrency uncertainty has acted as the âreceiver.â More importantly, the authors found the predictive power of economic policy uncertainty to predict the cryptocurrency uncertainty index. This paperâs results hold robust when using alternative measurement of cryptocurrency policy uncertainty. Originality/value This study is the first research that deeply investigates the association between two uncertainty indicators, namely economic policy uncertainty and the cryptocurrency uncertainty index. We provide fresh evidence about the dynamic connectedness between country-level economic policy uncertainty and the cryptocurrency index. Our work contributes a new channel driving the variants of uncertainties in the cryptocurrency market.
This study explores the bubble behavior in the prices of top five cryptocurrencies (i.e., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, and Tether) using daily data of the closing level at the COVID-19 pandemic, covering the period from January 2, 2020 to January 2, 2021. The testing procedure of the bubble behavior in selected cryptocurrencies prices is investigated by two methodologies. Those covers the test statistics originated by the Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SADF) (Phillips et al., 2011) and Generalized Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (GSADF) (Phillips et al., 2015) to define several bubble periods. The empirical results emphasize that bubble behavior is not a diverse and stable feature of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Stellar prices, except the Tether prices, which point out the emergence of a potential crisis in the digital assets market through an increasing degree of financial instability.
We analyze the path from cryptocurrencies to official Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), to shed some light on the ultimate dematerialization of money. To that end, we made an extensive search that resulted in a review of more than 100 academic and grey literature references, including official positions from central banks. We present and discuss the characteristics of the different CBDC variants being consideredânamely, wholesale, retail, and, for the latter, the account-based, and token-basedâas well as ongoing pilots, scenarios of interoperability, and open issues. Our contribution enables decision-makers and society at large to understand the potential advantages and risks of introducing CBDCs, and how these vary according to many technical and economic design choices. The practical implication is that a debate becomes possible about the trade-offs that the stakeholders are willing to accept.
This study is an integrated survey of GARCH methodologies applications on 67 empirical papers that focus on cryptocurrencies. More sophisticated GARCH models are found to better explain the fluctuations in the volatility of cryptocurrencies. The main characteristics and the optimal approaches for modeling returns and volatility of cryptocurrencies are under scrutiny. Moreover, emphasis is placed on interconnectedness and hedging and/or diversifying abilities, measurement of profit-making and risk, efficiency and herding behavior. This leads to fruitful results and sheds light on a broad spectrum of aspects. In-depth analysis is provided of the speculative character of digital currencies and the possibility of improvement of the riskâreturn trade-off in investorsâ portfolios. Overall, it is found that the inclusion of Bitcoin in portfolios with conventional assets could significantly improve the riskâreturn trade-off of investorsâ decisions. Results on whether Bitcoin resembles gold are split. The same is true about whether Bitcoins volatility presents larger reactions to positive or negative shocks. Cryptocurrency markets are found not to be efficient. This study provides a roadmap for researchers and investors as well as authorities.
The study investigates the safe haven properties and sustainability of the top five cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero, and Ripple) and gold for BRICS stock markets during the COVID-19 crisis period from 31 January 2020 to 17 September 2020 in comparison to the precrisis period from 1 January 2016 to 30 January 2020, in a nonlinear and asymmetric framework using Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) methodology. Our results show that the relationship dynamics of stock market and cryptocurrency returns both in the short and long run are changing during the COVID-19 crisis period, which justifies our study using the nonlinear and asymmetric model. As far as a sustainable safe haven is concerned, Dash and Ripple are found to be a safe haven for all the five markets before the pandemic. However, all five cryptocurrencies are found to be a safe haven for three emerging markets, such as Brazil, China, and Russia, during the financial crisis. In a comparative framework, gold is found to be a suitable safe haven only for Brazil and Russia. The results have implications for index fund managers of BRICS markets to include Dash and Ripple in their portfolio as safe haven assets to protect its value during a stock market crisis.
This study investigates the performance of Bitcoin as a diversifier under different constraining portfolio optimization frameworks. The study employs different constraining optimization frameworks that seek to maximize risk-adjusted returns (Sharpe ratio) of the portfolio by optimizing allocations to each asset class (asset allocation). The performance attributes are evaluated by comparing the portfolios both with and without Bitcoin under frameworks ranging from equal-weighted, risk-parity, and semi-constrained to unconstrained. This study suggests that Bitcoin, due to its exotic nature, unwavering appeal, and unknown set of drivers, could act as a diversifier in normal market conditions, and it might also have some borderline hedge to safe haven properties. The results further suggest that while Bitcoin may be a potential diversifier for a risk-seeking investor, the risk-averse investor must exercise caution by limiting their exposure to Bitcoin in their portfolios, as unnecessary exposure may increase the probability of losses in extreme market conditions.
Hashem Abdullah AlNemer, Besma Hkiri, Muhammad Asif Khan
This study attempts to investigate the nexus between investor sentiment and cryptocurrencies prices. Our empirical investigation merges bivariate and multivariate wavelet tools to examine the investor sentiment nexus to inter-cryptocurrencies prices. The study outcomes show that the Sentix Investor Confidence index provides significant information in explaining long-term changes in Bitcoin and Litecoin prices. Moreover, the findings generated from the multiple wavelet coherence illustrate the simultaneous contribution of cryptocurrencies and the Sentix Investor Confidence index in explaining the Bitcoin index movement across frequencies and over horizons, especially during bubble burst periods. The study also suggests a time-dependent relationship of Bitcoin prices with alternative cryptocurrencies and the Sentix Investor Confidence index, mostly pronounced during the Bitcoin bubble. We discuss our results using GSV-based investor sentiment. Our findings remain robust and confirm the strong predictive power of investor sentiment in cryptocurrencies price movements over time and across scales.
The volatility of bitcoin (BTC) and time horizon is the center point for investment decisions. However, attention is not often drawn to the relationship between BTC and equity indices. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the volatility and time frequency domain of BTC with stock markets.