Blockchain Papers

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Mar 10, 2018·Authorea
0 cites
On the sources of systemic risk in cryptocurrency markets

Percy Venegas

Value in algorithmic currencies resides literally in the information content of the calculations; but given the constraints of consensus (security drivers) and the necessity for network effects (economic drivers), the definition of value extends to the multilayered structure of the network itself --that is, to the information content of the topology of the nodes in the blockchain network, and, on the complexity of the economic activity in the peripheral networks of the web, mesh-IoT networks, and so on. In this phase change between the information flows of the native network that serves as the substrate to the blockchain, and that of the real-world data, is where a new "fragility vector" emerges. Our research question is whether factors related to market structure and design, transaction and timing cost, price formation and price discovery, information and disclosure, and market maker and investor behavior, are quantifiable to the degree that can be used to price risk in digital asset markets. The results obtained show that while in the popular discourse blockchains are considered robust and cryptocurrencies anti-fragile, the cryptocurrency markets are in fact fragile. This research is pertinent to the regulatory function of governments, that are actively seeking to advance the state of knowledge regarding systemic risk, to develop policies for crypto markets, and for investors, who are in need of expanding their understanding of market behavior beyond explicit price signals and technical analysis.

Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Original source
Mar 8, 2018·Royal Society Open Science
56 cites
Classification of cryptocurrency coins and tokens by the dynamics of their market capitalizations

Ke Wu, Spencer Wheatley, Didier Sornette

We empirically verify that the market capitalizations of coins and tokens in the cryptocurrency universe follow power-law distributions with significantly different values for the tail exponent falling between 0.5 and 0.7 for coins, and between 1.0 and 1.3 for tokens. We provide a rationale for this, based on a simple proportional growth with birth and death model previously employed to describe the size distribution of firms, cities, webpages, etc. We empirically validate the model and its main predictions, in terms of proportional growth (Gibrat's Law) of the coins and tokens. Estimating the main parameters of the model, the theoretical predictions for the power-law exponents of coin and token distributions are in remarkable agreement with the empirical estimations, given the simplicity of the model. Our results clearly characterize coins as being 'entrenched incumbents' and tokens as an 'explosive immature ecosystem', largely due to massive and exuberant Initial Coin Offering activity in the token space. The theory predicts that the exponent for tokens should converge to 1 in the future, reflecting a more reasonable rate of new entrants associated with genuine technological innovations.

Open access
2 source records
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Complex Network Analysis Techniques
Original source
Mar 8, 2018·RePEc: Research Papers in Economics
1 cites
Classification of cryptocurrency coins and tokens by the dynamics of their market capitalisations

Ke Wu, Spencer Wheatley, Didier Sornette

We empirically verify that the market capitalisations of coins and tokens in the cryptocurrency universe follow power-law distributions with significantly different values, with the tail exponent falling between 0.5 and 0.7 for coins, and between 1.0 and 1.3 for tokens. We provide a rationale for this, based on a simple proportional growth with birth & death model previously employed to describe the size distribution of firms, cities, webpages, etc. We empirically validate the model and its main predictions, in terms of proportional growth (Gibrat's law) of the coins and tokens. Estimating the main parameters of the model, the theoretical predictions for the power-law exponents of coin and token distributions are in remarkable agreement with the empirical estimations, given the simplicity of the model. Our results clearly characterize coins as being "entrenched incumbents" and tokens as an "explosive immature ecosystem", largely due to massive and exuberant Initial Coin Offering activity in the token space. The theory predicts that the exponent for tokens should converge to 1 in the future, reflecting a more reasonable rate of new entrants associated with genuine technological innovations.

Open access
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Complex Network Analysis Techniques
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Mar 1, 2018·Wilmott
0 cites
The Bubble-Likeness of Cryptocurrencies

Aaron Brown

The same investors who invest in normal markets, using the same strategies they use in normal markets, for the same motivations they have in normal markets, can cause bubbles.

Financial Markets and Investment Strategies
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Original source
Mar 1, 2018·Duo Research Archive (University of Oslo)
20 cites
Forecasting Cryptocurrencies Financial Time Series

Leopoldo Catania, Stefano Grassi, Francesco Ravazzolo

This paper studies the predictability of cryptocurrencies time series. We compare several alternative univariate and multivariate models in point and density forecasting of four of the most capitalized series: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple and Ethereum. We apply a set of crypto–predictors and rely on Dynamic Model Averaging to combine a large set of univariate Dynamic Linear Models and several multivariate Vector Autoregressive models with different forms of time variation. We find statistical significant improvements in point forecasting when using combinations of univariate models and in density forecasting when relying on selection of multivariate models.

Open access
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling
Economic and Technological Systems Analysis
Original source
Mar 1, 2018·International Journal of Academic Research and Development
15 cites
Bitcoin Price Prediction

Mareena Fernandes, Saloni Khanna, Leandra Monteiro, Anu Thomas · 5 authors

Advancement in technological developments introduced virtual currency exchange methods viz Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and so on which are evolving rapidly. Cryptocurrencies were introduced to eliminate financial intermediaries leading to direct peer-to-peer transactions. With the spread of the global Coronavirus pandemic, the relationship between Bitcoin and the equity market has expanded. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile but can also prove to be good investments. Cryptocurrency, being a novel technique for transaction systems, has led to a lot of confusion among investors and any rumours or news on social media has been claimed to significantly affect the prices of cryptocurrencies. The huge percentage increase/decrease in Bitcoin's price over a short period of time is an intriguing phenomenon that cannot be foreseen. For a long time, bitcoin price prediction has been a hot topic of study.In this paper, we discuss the implementation and results of the Deep Learning Bitcoin Price Prediction Model and prepare a strategy to maximize gains for investors. The paper covers to framework with a set of deep learning models, analysis methods with a fixed set of factors to predict daily Bitcoin prices and design-integration of price prediction of different cryptocurrencies using RNN (Recurrent Neural Network), LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) and GRU (Gated recurrent units). The idea of incorporating Public Sentiment in the prediction of the hikes and falls of the Bitcoin market from Social Media platforms like Reddit and Twitter leading to meaningful predicted results. This prediction can bring confidence to the common man to invest with lesser risk and more profit. Also, this can enable the digital new-age currency to become a primary method of transaction.

Open access
7 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Stock Market Forecasting Methods
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Original source
Mar 1, 2018·Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
119 cites
Scaling properties of extreme price fluctuations in Bitcoin markets

Stjepan Begušić, Zvonko Kostanjčar, H. Eugene Stanley, Boris Podobnik

Detection of power-law behavior and studies of scaling exponents uncover the characteristics of complexity in many real world phenomena. The complexity of financial markets has always presented challenging issues and provided interesting findings, such as the inverse cubic law in the tails of stock price fluctuation distributions. Motivated by the rise of novel digital assets based on blockchain technology, we study the distributions of cryptocurrency price fluctuations. We consider Bitcoin returns over various time intervals and from multiple digital exchanges, in order to investigate the existence of universal scaling behavior in the tails, and ascertain whether the scaling exponent supports the presence of a finite second moment. We provide empirical evidence on slowly decaying tails in the distributions of returns over multiple time intervals and different exchanges, corresponding to a power-law. We estimate the scaling exponent and find an asymptotic power-law behavior with 2 < α < 2.5 suggesting that Bitcoin returns, in addition to being more volatile, also exhibit heavier tails than stocks, which are known to be around 3. Our results also imply the existence of a finite second moment, thus providing a fundamental basis for the usage of standard financial theories and covariance-based techniques in risk management and portfolio optimization scenarios.

Open access
3 source records
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Market Dynamics and Volatility
Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling
Original source
Feb 20, 2018·International Research in Economics and Finance
14 cites
How Does Price of Bitcoin Volatility Change?

Yutaka Kurihara, Akio Fukushima

The trading volume of Bitcoin has increased immensely since its conception. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, it is not a legal currency but rather a private monetary system that manages by itself and does not depend on governments or central banks. It is an autonomous currency system that is not liable to any governing body. Some fear that the increase of Bitcoin usage, as it is quite different from traditional currencies and is free from control or regulations by monetary authorities. Although its popularity has grown worldwide, fluctuations of the prices are sometimes erratic. Hence, such large and sudden movements would dampen the sound development of Bitcoin. This paper examines how the volatile price of Bitcoin changes empirically. The empirical results show that there is a difference between short-term volatility and long-term volatility. Traders should see not only the short-term movements in volatile Bitcoin pricing but also long-term developments.

Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Market Dynamics and Volatility
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Original source
Feb 12, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM). IEEE, 2018: 989-994
66 cites
Bitcoin Volatility Forecasting with a Glimpse into Buy and Sell Orders

Tian Guo, Albert Bifet, Nino Antulov-Fantulin

Bitcoin is one of the most prominent decentralized digital cryptocurrencies. Ability to understand which factors drive the fluctuations of the Bitcoin price and to what extent they are predictable is interesting both from the theoretical and practical perspective. In this paper, we study the problem of the Bitcoin short-term volatility forecasting based on volatility history and order book data. Order book, consisting of buy and sell orders over time, reflects the intention of the market and is closely related to the evolution of volatility. We propose temporal mixture models capable of adaptively exploiting both volatility history and order book features. By leveraging rolling and incremental learning and evaluation procedures, we demonstrate the prediction performance of our model as well as studying the robustness, in comparison to a variety of statistical and machine learning baselines. Meanwhile, our temporal mixture model enables to decipher the time-varying effect of order book features on volatility. It demonstrates the prospect of our temporal mixture model as an interpretable forecasting framework over heterogeneous Bitcoin data.

Open access
2 source records
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling
Stock Market Forecasting Methods
Original source
Feb 12, 2018·arXiv (Cornell University)
11 cites
An experimental study of Bitcoin fluctuation using machine learning methods

Tian Guo, Nino Antulov-Fantulin

In this paper, we study the ability to make the short-term prediction of the exchange price fluctuations towards the United States dollar for the Bitcoin market. We use the data of realized volatility collected from one of the largest Bitcoin digital trading offices in 2016 and 2017 as well as order information. Experiments are performed to evaluate a variety of statistical and machine learning approaches.

Open access
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Stock Market Forecasting Methods
Original source
Feb 11, 2018·arXiv (Cornell University)
1 cites
A Dynamic Network Perspective on Cryptocurrencies

Li Guo, Yubo Tao, Wolfgang Karl Härdle

Cryptocurrencies are becoming an attractive asset class and are the focus of recent quantitative research. The joint dynamics of the cryptocurrency market yields information on network risk. Utilizing the adaptive LASSO approach, we build a dynamic network of cryptocurrencies and model the latent communities with a dynamic stochastic blockmodel. We develop a dynamic covariate-assisted spectral clustering method to uniformly estimate the latent group membership of cryptocurrencies consistently. We show that return inter-predictability and crypto characteristics, including hashing algorithms and proof types, jointly determine the crypto market segmentation. Based on this classification result, it is natural to employ eigenvector centrality to identify a cryptocurrency’s idiosyncratic risk. An asset pricing analysis finds that a cross-sectional portfolio with a higher centrality earns a higher risk premium. Further tests confirm that centrality serves as a risk factor well and delivers valuable information content on cryptocurrency markets.

Open access
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Complex Network Analysis Techniques
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Feb 11, 2018·arXiv (Cornell University)
3 cites
A Dynamic Network for Cryptocurrencies

Li Guo, Yubo Tao, Wolfgang Karl Härdle

Cryptocurrencies return cross-predictability yields information on risk propagation and market segmentation. To explore these effects, we build a dynamic network of cryptocurrencies based on the evolution of return cross-predictability and develop a dynamic covariate-assisted spectral clustering method to consistently estimate the latent group membership of cryptocurrencies. We show that return cross-predictability and cryptocurrencies' characteristics, including hashing algorithms and proof types, jointly determine the cryptocurrencies market segmentation. Portfolio analysis reveals that more centred cryptocurrencies in the network earn higher risk premiums.

Open access
Financial Markets and Investment Strategies
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Financial Risk and Volatility Modeling
Original source
Feb 11, 2018·Journal of Business and Economic Statistics
19 cites
A Time-Varying Network for Cryptocurrencies

Li Guo, Wolfgang Karl Härdle, Yubo Tao

Cryptocurrencies return cross-predictability and technological similarity yield information on risk propagation and market segmentation. To investigate these effects, we build a time-varying network for cryptocurrencies, based on the evolution of return cross-predictability and technological similarities. We develop a dynamic covariate-assisted spectral clustering method to consistently estimate the latent community structure of cryptocurrencies network that accounts for both sets of information. We demonstrate that investors can achieve better risk diversification by investing in cryptocurrencies from different communities. A cross-sectional portfolio that implements an inter-crypto momentum trading strategy earns a 1.08% daily return. By dissecting the portfolio returns on behavioral factors, we confirm that our results are not driven by behavioral mechanisms.

Open access
5 source records
stat.ME
econ.EM
q-fin.PM
Original source
Feb 6, 2018·Caginalp, C., & Caginalp, G. (2018). Opinion: Valuation, liquidity price, and stability of cryptocurrencies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(6), 1131-1134
32 cites
Valuation, Liquidity Price, and Stability of Cryptocurrencies

Carey Caginalp, Gunduz Caginalp

Cryptocurrencies are examined through the asset flow equations and experimental asset markets. Since tangible value of a typical cryptocurrency is non-existent, the theory suggests that price will gravitate toward liquidity value, i.e., the total amount of cash available for purchase of the asset divided by the number of units. Thus it is unlikely that cryptocurrencies in their current form will be stable in the absence of a mechanism of a link to value.

Open access
3 source records
q-fin.MF
cs.CR
Financial Markets and Investment Strategies
Original source
Feb 1, 2018·Working paper
38 cites
On the Economics of Digital Currencies

Jesús Fernández‐Villaverde, Daniel R. Sanches

Can a monetary system in which privately issued cryptocurrencies circulate as media of exchange work? Is such a system stable? How should governments react to digital currencies? Can these currencies and government-issued money coexist? Are cryptocurrencies consistent with an e cient allocation? These are some of the important questions that the sudden rise of cryptocurrencies has brought to contemporary policy discussions. To answer these questions, we construct a model of competition among privately issued at currencies. We nd that a purely private arrangement fails to implement an e cient allocation, even though it can deliver price stability under certain technological conditions. Currency competition creates problems for monetary policy implementation under conventional methods. However, it is possible to design a policy rule that uniquely implements an e cient allocation by driving private currencies out of the market. We also show that unique implementation of an e cient allocation can be achieved without government intervention if productive capital is introduced.

Open access
Economic theories and models
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Feb 1, 2018·Finance research letters
209 cites
On the determinants of bitcoin returns: A LASSO approach

Theodore Panagiotidis, Thanasis Stengos, Orestis Vravosinos

We examine the significance of twenty-one potential drivers of bitcoin returns for the period 2010–2017 (2533 daily observations). Within a LASSO framework, we examine the effects of factors such as stock market returns, exchange rates, gold and oil returns, FED’s and ECB’s rates and internet trends on bitcoin returns for alternate time periods. Search intensity and gold returns emerge as the most important variables for bitcoin returns.

Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Market Dynamics and Volatility
Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
Original source