This paper aimed to assess the effect of the cryptocurrency market on firms’ market value, especially on the sectoral level, in Africa. To reach the study’s main goal, the authors adopted the Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs) and Panel Double-Clustered Standard Errors (PDCSEs). Using firm-level data, the results of this study can be summarized as follows: (a) The cryptocurrency market hurts the firm market value in Africa. (b) The firms operating across different sectors respond disproportionally to the cryptocurrency market. For instance, the sectors that offer low returns in Africa (industrial, energy, financial) negatively respond to the cryptocurrency market, while the sectors that offer high returns (real estate and information technology) are not significantly affected. (c) The cryptocurrency market has a perverse effect on less experienced and highly indebted firms. (d) The consistent policies of governments to ban cryptocurrency do not work efficiently.
There is a lot of hope that blockchain technology may be used to standardize money transactions and increase access to banking. It is believed that regulators and industry professionals have looked into the possibility of using blockchain technology to modernize and even replace the infrastructure that currently supports international payments and remittances, such as correspondent banking, in order to ensure that transactions can be verified and recorded using blockchain technology in a distributed ledger. The purpose of this study was to analyze how blockchain technology has helped to include previously underserved populations in the mainstream financial system, and to remark on the best practices and lessons learned from sustainable development. Using a systematic literature review, the study discovered the many ways in which blockchain technology can facilitate digital financial inclusion, including its application in financial transactions, its utility as a tool for increasing financial savings, its use in the provision of credit, and its application in the provision of insurance. According to the findings, even though the global goals do not specifically target financial inclusion, providing access to financial services for the majority of the population is a critical enabler for several of the global goals. Therefore, the study concluded that sustainable development can be ensured on many fronts if the technology behind blockchains can be successfully used to improve financial inclusion. If governments, especially in developing countries, are serious about increasing citizens’ access to financial services, they must prioritize blockchain investment.
Coronavirus (COVID-19), which emerged as an epidemic in China in December 2019, has been recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization as of March 2020. Events regarding the coronavirus shocked the markets and were seen as a threat to the markets. In this context, this study aims to examine the effect of the COVID-19 on Bitcoin prices and precious metals which are seen as low-risk assets in global markets. In the study, the causality relationship between the daily number of COVID-19 cases approved by the WHO and Google trends, and the price series of Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium was investigated to determine the effects of the developments in the course of the epidemic on the prices of Bitcoin and precious metals. Toda-Yamamoto causality test was performed in the study where daily data were used between 19.01.2020-31.03.2021. According to the findings, a causality relationship could not be determined between the number of COVID-19 cases with Bitcoin and precious metals while it was observed that the recognition of COVID-19 has a very strong causal effect on Bitcoin prices and the prices of other precious metals except silver. In addition, a reciprocal causality relationship has been identified between the confirmed COVID-19 cases and the recognition of COVID-19.
D. V. Boguslavsky, Н. П. Шарова, Konstantin S. Sharov
In comparison with other respiratory viruses, the current COVID-19 pandemic’s rapid seizing the world can be attributed to indirect (contact) way of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus in addition to the regular airborne way. A significant part of indirect transmission is made through cash bank notes. SARS-CoV-2 remains on cash paper money for period around four times larger than influenza A virus and is absorbed by cash notes two and a half times more effectively than influenza A (our model). During the pandemic, cryptocurrencies have gained attractiveness as an “epidemiologically safe” means of transactions. On the basis of the authors’ gallop polls performed online with social networks users in 44 countries in 2020–2021 (the total number of clear responses after the set repair 32,115), around 14.7% of surveyed participants engaged in cryptocurrency-based transactions during the pandemic. This may be one of the reasons of significant rise of cryptocurrencies rates since mid-March 2020 till the end of 2021. The paper discusses the reasons for cryptocurrency attractiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them, there are fear of SARS-CoV-2 spread via cash contacts and the ability of the general population to mine cryptocurrencies. The article also provides a breakdown of the polled audience profile to determine the nationalities that have maximal level of trust to saving and transacting money as cryptocurrencies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a decentralization of the workforce in many industries. Due to the stay-at-home orders to control the spread of the virus, many are working from home. Even though modern technological advancements have helped some companies adapt to this new norm, many others are still scrambling to find the best way to remotely manage employees and accommodate their needs. Our research shows that the current challenges organizations face in managing their human capital are like the ones they face due to workplace demographic changes. This study focuses on analyzing those challenges and how human competency can be unlocked and developed to encourage sustainable autonomous working in an office, at home, or during frequent traveling. This study investigates the challenges faced by both organizations and employees, and presents a new business model that helps with the sustainable use of human resources and improves employee efficiency.
Muhammad Kamran, Pakeezah Butt, Assim Ibrahim Abdel-Razzaq, Hadrian Geri Djajadikerta
Purpose This study aims to address the timely question of whether Bitcoin exhibited a safe haven property against the major Australian stock indices during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and whether such property is similar or different in one year time from the first wave of the COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach The authors used the bivariate Dynamic Conditional Correlation, Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model, on the five-day returns of Bitcoin and Australian stock indices for the sample period between 23 April, 2011 and 19 April, 2021. Findings The results show that Bitcoin offered weak safe haven and hedging benefits when combined in a portfolio with S&P/ASX 200 Financials index, S&P/ASX 200 Banks index or S&P/ASX 300 Banks index. In regard to the S&P/ASX All Ordinaries Gold index, the authors found Bitcoin a risky candidate with inconsistent safe haven and hedging benefits. Against S&P/ASX 50 index, S&P/ASX 200 index and S&P/ASX 300 index, Bitcoin was nothing more than a diversifier. The outset of the second COVID-19 wave, which was comparatively more severe than the first, is also reflected in the results with considerably higher correlations. Originality/value There is a lack of in-depth empirical evidence on the safe haven capabilities of Bitcoins for various Australian stock indices during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study bridges this void in research.
Pandemics are not new and have occurred at different stages in human history (Ferguson et al. 2020). However, their impacts on financial markets are different and sometimes divergent. The market's sensitivity to these crises can provoke unexpected responses and sometimes disclose the precariousness of a market considered a riskless or safe haven. Covid-19 crises are still one of the most disturbing health crises of this decade. Starting in china, this pandemic spread rapidly to threaten the whole globe, which explains the global interest in studying its impact on economic and financial stability around the world, especially that, Goodell and Goutte (2020) highlights that this virus is inflicting unprecedented global destructive economic damage.The research focuses on cryptocurrency's market sensitivity to the pandemic framework. This market arouses the researcher's interest in their apparition. This interest arises with the emergence of Covid-19 since the end of 2019. Moreover, the analysis of the cryptocurrency market's sensitivity in a health crisis is a first since the emergence of this market whose could challenge its performance. Empirically, the research adopts an econometric approach based on the DCC-EGarch model to analyze the dynamic relationship between the Covid-19 and the cryptocurrency market volume of transaction evolution. It presents, to the best of our knowledge, an unprecedented empirical investigation of the pandemic second wave's impact on the dynamic relationship between Covid-19 cases and cryptocurrencies transaction volume. The remainder of the paper is as follows. We start with a literature review. We pass them to the data and the applied methodology. Finally, we describe the empirical results and conclude.
Purpose This article examines the susceptibility of cryptocurrencies to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) induced panic in comparison with major stock indices. Design/methodology/approach The author employs the Bayesian structural vector autoregression to examine the phenomenon in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin from 2nd January 2020 to 30th June 2021. A similar analysis is conducted for major stock indices, namely S&P 500, FTSE 100 and SSE Composite for comparison purposes. Findings The results suggest that cryptocurrencies returns suffered immensely in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak following declarations of the disease as a global health emergency and eventually a pandemic in March 2020. However, the returns for all three cryptocurrencies recovered by April 2020 and remained resistant to further COVID-19 panic shocks. The results are dissimilar to those of S&P 500, FTSE 100 and SSE Composite values which were vulnerable to COVID-19 panic throughout the timeframe to June 2021. The results further reveal strong predictive power of Bitcoin on prices of other cryptocurrencies. Research limitations/implications The article provides evidence to support the cryptocurrency as a safe haven during COVID-19 school of thought given their resistance to subsequent shocks during COVID-19. Thus, the author stresses the need for diversification of investment portfolios by including cryptocurrencies given their uniqueness and resistance to shocks during crises. Originality/value The author makes use of the novel corona virus panic index to examine the magnitude of shocks in prices of cryptocurrencies during COVID-19.
Agricultural insurance can help smallholder farmers in developing countries deal with risks that are too large for them to manage on their own. Thus, significant welfare gains can be achieved by increasing smallholder farmers’ access to such insurance. Estimates also suggest that by removing farming risks through crop insurance, it is possible to increase smallholder farmers’ investments and income by 20%–30%.1
This paper investigates the relationship between the COVID-19 crisis and the two leading cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, from 31 December 2019 to 18 August 2020. We also use an economic news sentiment index and financial market sentiment index to explore the possible mechanisms through which COVID-19 impacts cryptocurrency. We employ a VAR Granger Causality framework and Wavelet Coherence Analysis and find the cryptocurrency market was impacted in the early phase of the sample period through economic news and financial market sentiments, but this effect diminished after June 2020.
The objective in this study were to study the state of the art of Non-government-based cryptocurrency public policy in Thailand, to study the state of the art of Non-government-based cryptocurrency public policy in Argentina, to compare non-government-based cryptocurrency public policy between Thailand and Argentina, and to discuss implications for both Thailand and Argentina. Documentary research was employed in this study. The findings showed that Thailand and Argentina used a set of policy instruments and blockchain as a financial innovation in order to promote their political equilibriums. The comparison of non-government-based cryptocurrency public policy between Thailand and Argentina was conducted in four issues – scope, policy instrument, distribution, and restraints and innovation. In addition, both countries used both active and passive measures in order to maintain the stability of their political systems.
Nishant Kumar, Kamal Upreti, Shitiz Upreti, Mohammad Shabbir Alam · 5 authors
Infectious diseases a curse for humanity can be curbed through immunization. Vaccination can make people more resilient toward infectious diseases and the safety of the vaccine is of prime importance for public health. A smart vaccine management system can address the issue of vaccine expiration and counterfeiting. The study was conducted in twofolds: Stage I, a quantitative cross-sectional survey design was deployed to understand stakeholder adoption intention (ADI) toward blockchain-enabled vaccine supply chain through extended technology adoption model using partial least square structural equation modeling. Findings entail stakeholders' trust and perceived ease of use for blockchain-enabled vaccine supply chain directly affect perceived usefulness (PUS) and individual subjective norm. PUS significantly influences the ADI of stakeholders toward blockchain in the vaccine supply chain. Stage II, a blockchain integrated vaccine supply chain architecture with Internet of things devices was proposed to bring transparency and flexibility to the vaccine supply chain. Architecture would benefit the beneficiary to approve or disapprove the vaccines through the self-generated report and medical health centers can see the efficacy of vaccines before clinical delivery to patients.
The price of a stock rises or falls in relation to a number of different factors, including changes to the economy brought about by pandemics. A few studies have already identified the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the stock market. However, empirical evidence is lacking on changes in stock price performance of blockchain-based companies as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use the event study approach to estimate stock expected returns by applying an asset pricing model over a thirty-day event window around the announcement on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) as a global pandemic, using a sample of S&P Global 1200 companies. Overall, our results indicate more sensitivity in blockchain-based companies’ stock prices to the COVID-19 pandemic compared to those of non-blockchain-based companies. Cumulative abnormal returns show that the stock price of blockchain-based companies recover losses slower than non-blockchain companies. Our findings are important for investors and shareholders for future pandemics and events.
The current study investigates the connectedness between US COVID-19 news, Dowes Jones Index (DJI), green bonds, gold, and bitcoin prices for the period 22 January 2020–3 August 2021. The study has employed wavelet coherency, the continuous wavelet transform, and the wavelet-based Granger causality methods to obtain the dependence result. The continuous wavelet transform (CWT) analysis reveals that the United States equity market prices are extremely sensitive with regard to spreading coronavirus (USCOVID-19) news and changes in the oil price. Green bonds, gold, and bitcoin have minimal connectedness with the equity market, which might lead to the hedge and safe haven role of these assets during the COVID-19 crisis period. Lastly, very strong comovement was found between bitcoin and gold during the entire sample. The results of the present study offer a number of fresh and noticeable policy implications for international investors and asset managers.
Çin, ilk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vakasını 31.12.2019 tarihinde Dünya Sağlık Örgütü'ne (DSÖ) bildirmiştir. Bununla birlikte söz konusu virüs kısa sürede Dünya'da 200'den fazla ülkeye yayılmıştır. 07.04.2021 tarihi itibariyle Dünyada 133 milyondan fazla vaka tespit edilirken, yaklaşık 2.9 milyon kişi hayatını kaybetmiştir. Pandemi koşullarında hükümetler vatandaşlarını korumak için farklı politikalar izlediler. Pandemi, bu ülkelerdeki sağlık sistemine ek olarak borsaları ve altın, petrol, kripto para gibi çeşitli küresel varlıkları da etkilemiştir. Bu çalışmada, 26.06.2018 - 07.04.2021 dönemi için piyasa değeri en yüksek olan kripto para birimlerinde fiyat balonlarının varlığının incelenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında, pandemi öncesi ve pandemi döneminde on kripto para birimindeki fiyat balonlarının araştırılması için SADF testi uygulanmıştır. Buna göre, on kripto para biriminden sekizinin fiyat balonuna sahip olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Pandemi öncesi dönemde en yüksek fiyat balonu sayısının toplam 84 işlem günü ile Binance Coin'de görüldüğü belirlenmiştir. Sırasıyla, Bitcoin, Chainlink (Bitcoin ile aynı gün sayısı), Litecoin ve Tether bu kripto para birimini takip etmiştir. Bununla birlikte, COVID-19 salgınında işlem günü bazında en yüksek fiyat balonu, toplam 230 gün ile Theta'da görülmüştür. Pandemi döneminde, Chainlink, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cordano, Binance Coin ve Litecoin, Theta'yı sırasıyla 183, 140, 104, 94, 66 ve 28 işlem günü ile takip etmiştir. Fiyat balonlarının yaklaşık yüzde yetmiş beşi pandemi döneminde görülmüştür. Bu sonuçlar, kripto para birimlerinin yeni yatırımlar için spekülatif varlıklar olduğunu göstermektedir. Tüm analiz dönemi değerlendirildiğinde ise toplam 234 gün ile Chainlink'te en yüksek fiyat balonu tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca, Bitcoin 131 gün ile aralıksız en uzun fiyat balonunu göstermiş, Theta ve Ethereum bu kripto parayı takip etmiştir.
Ali Yavuz Polat, Ahmet Faruk Aysan, Hasan Tekin, Ahmet Semih Tunalı
Purpose This study aims to investigate the effect of fear sentiment with a novel data set on Bitcoin’s (BTC) return, volatility and transaction volume. The authors divide the sample into two subperiods to capture the changing dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The authors retrieve the novel fear sentiment data from Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices (TRMI). The authors denote the subperiods as pre- and post-COVID-19 considering January 13, 2020, when the first COVID-19 confirmed case was reported outside China. The authors use bivariate vector autoregressive models given below with lag-length k, to investigate the dynamics between BTC variables and fear sentiment. Findings BTC market measures have dissimilar dynamics before and after the Coronavirus outbreak. The results reveal that due to the excessive uncertainty led by the outbreak, an increase in fear sentiment negatively affects the BTC returns more persistently and significantly. For the post-COVID-19 period, an increase in fear also results in more fluctuations in transaction volume while its initial and cumulative effects are both negative. Due to extreme uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, investors may trade more aggressively in the initial phases of the shock. Practical implications The authors are convinced that the results in this paper have more far-reaching implications for other markets regulated by the states. BTC provides a natural benchmark to understand how fear sentiment drives and impacts the markets isolated from any interventions. Hence, the results show that in the absence of regulatory frameworks, market dynamics are likely to be more volatile and the fear sentiment has more persistent impacts. The authors also highlight the importance of using micro, asset-specific sentiment measures to capture market dynamics better. Originality/value BTC is not associated with any regulatory authority and is not produced by the governments and central banks. COVID-19 as a natural experiment provides an opportunity to explore the pure effects of market sentiment on BTC considering its decentralized and unregulated features. The paper has two main contributions. First, the authors use BTC-specific fear sentiment novel data set of TRMI instead of more general market sentiments used in the existing studies. Next, this is the first study to examine the association between fear and BTC before and after COVID-19.
Do Cryptocurrencies fear Coronavirus? This paper answers this question by examining the predictive power of the Covid-19 global fear index of Salisu and Akanni (2020) on major cryptocurrencies' returns during the period from 07/02/2020 to 05/03/2021. First, we formulate a predictive model of major cryptocurrencies' returns based on the Covid-19 global fear index. Second, we combine the global fear of the pandemic with other fear proxies and we present a multiple-factor fear-based predictive model that captures the effects of other economic and financial fear variables. Finally, we examine whether accounting for asymmetries would improve the predictability of returns. The empirical findings show that the global fear index contains information that help predict major cryptocurrencies and that the multiple-factor model is a better predictive model for cryptocurrencies' returns. Specifically, global fear related to health risks exhibits a significantly negative impact on the majority of the sampled cryptocurrencies' returns. Consistent with in-sample results, global fear provides a statistically significant out-of-sample forecast outcome. Our results suggest that, in the period of the pandemic, cryptocurrencies are not very different from other assets and that they exhibit a significant reaction to the fear environment.
BitCoin is a new digital currency that turned out to be quite interesting for the financial market. This digital currency has, in diverse manners, exhibited unique qualities in comparison with other financial assets, which certainly means that BitCoin investors may face more concerns and tradeoffs than those who choose more traditional investment opportunities. The present research paper primarily aims to show the importance of the BitCoin currency in the global markets and to highlight its relationship with the share prices of technology companies. It also tries to investigate and identify the most significant fluctuations that this sector witnessed in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a statistical analysis of ten technology companies during the period extending from 2015 to 2021. The findings of this study allowed concluding that a strong relationship exists between technology company share prices and BitCoin prices. It was also found that these companies greatly benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic and increased their profit rates, particularly information and communication technology companies.Keywords: BitCoin; Technology companies; Covid-19; Cryptocurrency; Share prices.JEL Classifications: F3, E4, G1, L1DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.11718