Although Bitcoin has long been dominant in the crypto scene, it is certainly not alone. Ether is another cryptocurrency related project that has attracted an intensive attention because of its additional features. This study seeks to test whether these cryptocurrencies differ in terms of their volatile and speculative behaviors, hedge, safe haven and risk diversification properties. Using different econometric techniques, we show that a) Bitcoin and Ether are volatile and relatively more responsive to bad news, but the volatility of Ether is more persistent than that of Bitcoin; b) for both cryptocurrencies, the exuberance and the collapse of bubbles were identified, but Bitcoin appears more speculative than Ether; c) there is negative and significant correlation between Bitcoin/Ether and other assets (S\&P500 stocks, US bonds, oil), which would indicate that digital currencies can hedge against the price movements of these assets; d) there is negative tail independence between Bitcoin/Ether and other financial assets, implying that these cryptocurrencies exhibit the function of a weak safe haven; and e) The inclusion of Bitcoin/ Ether in a portfolio improve its efficiency in terms of higher reward-to-risk ratios. But investors who hold diversified portfolios made of stocks or bonds and Ether may face losses over bearish regime. In such situation, stock and bond investors may take a short position on Bitcoin.
Using 1-min returns of Bitcoin prices, we investigate statistical properties and multifractality of a Bitcoin time series. We find that the 1-min return distribution is fat-tailed, and kurtosis largely deviates from the Gaussian expectation. Although for large sampling periods, kurtosis is anticipated to approach the Gaussian expectation, we find that convergence to that is very slow. Skewness is found to be negative at time scales shorter than one day and becomes consistent with zero at time scales longer than about one week. We also investigate daily volatility-asymmetry by using GARCH, GJR, and RGARCH models, and find no evidence of it. On exploring multifractality using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis, we find that the Bitcoin time series exhibits multifractality. The sources of multifractality are investigated, confirming that both temporal correlation and the fat-tailed distribution contribute to it. The influence of "Brexit" on June 23, 2016 to GBP--USD exchange rate and Bitcoin is examined in multifractal properties. We find that, while Brexit influenced the GBP--USD exchange rate, Bitcoin was robust to Brexit.
The long-term dependence of Bitcoin (BTC), manifesting itself through a Hurst exponent $H>0.5$, is exploited in order to predict future BTC/USD price. A Monte Carlo simulation with $10^4$ geometric fractional Brownian motion realisations is performed as extensions of historical data. The accuracy of statistical inferences is 10\%. The most probable Bitcoin price at the beginning of 2018 is 6358 USD.
The long-term dependence of Bitcoin (BTC), manifesting itself through a Hurst\nexponent $H>0.5$, is exploited in order to predict future BTC/USD price. A\nMonte Carlo simulation with $10^4$ geometric fractional Brownian motion\nrealisations is performed as extensions of historical data. The accuracy of\nstatistical inferences is 10\\%. The most probable Bitcoin price at the\nbeginning of 2018 is 6358 USD.\n
Over the last two decades, key aspects of the financial industry have been automated to a substantial degree. While most progress in automation has come from traditional technologies, recent advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics are likely to accelerate the pace. In such a context, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Robo-Advisors and cognitive tools are creating a foundation for solving major problems faced by the industry. This paper provides an overview of the capabilities and limitations of these technologies and the challenges that await market participants who want to embrace and implement them. It draws attention to the importance of collaboration, governance, standards and market practice harmonisation in order to successfully deploy these technologies in a multi-party, globalised network environment.
This paper identifies trust factor and rewarding nature of bitcoin system, and analyzes bitcoin features which may facilitate bitcoin to emerge as a universal currency. Paper presents the gap between proposed theoretical-architecture and current practical-implementation of bitcoin system in terms of achieving decentralization, anonymity of users, and consensus. Paper presents three different ways in which a user can manage bitcoins. We attempt to identify the security risk and feasible attacks on these configurations of bitcoin management. We have shown that not all bitcoin wallets are safe against all possible types of attacks. Bitcoin core is only safest mode of operating bitcoin till date as it is secure against all feasible attacks, and is vulnerable only against block-chain rewriting.
Currently, there is no consensus on the real properties of Bitcoin. The\ndiscussion comprises its use as a speculative or safe haven assets, while other\nauthors argue that the augmented attractiveness could end accomplishing money's\nfunctions that economic theory demands. This paper explores the association\nbetween Bitcoin's market price and a set of internal and external factors using\nBayesian Structural Time Series Approach. I aim to contribute to the discussion\nby differentiating among several attractiveness sources and employing a method\nthat provides a more flexible analytic framework that decompose each of the\ncomponents of the time series, apply variable selection, include information on\nprevious studies, and dynamically examine the behavior of the explanatory\nvariables, all in a transparent and tractable setting. The results show that\nthe Bitcoin price is negatively associated with a neutral investor's sentiment,\ngold's price and Yuan to USD exchange rate, while positively related to stock\nmarket index, USD to Euro exchange rate and variated signs among the different\ncountries' search trends. Hence, I find that Bitcoin has mixed properties since\nstill seems to act as a speculative, safe haven and a potential a capital\nflights instrument.\n
Elie Bouri, Rangan Gupta, Chi Keung Marco Lau, David Roubaud · 5 authors
We apply different techniques and uncover the quantile conditional dependence between the global financial stress index and Bitcoin returns from July 18, 2010, to December 29, 2017. The results from the copula-based dependence show evidence of right-tail dependence between the global financial stress index and Bitcoin returns. We focus on the conditional quantile dependence and indicate that the global financial stress index strongly Granger-causes Bitcoin returns at the left and right tail of the distribution of the Bitcoin returns, conditional on the global financial stress index. Finally, we use a bivariate cross-quantilogram approach and show only limited directional predictability from the global financial stress index to Bitcoin returns in the medium term, for which Bitcoin can act as a safe-haven against global financial stress.
This article demonstrates the possibility of constructing indicators of critical and crisis phenomena in the volatile market of cryptocurrency. For this purpose, the methods of the theory of complex systems such as recurrent analysis of dynamic systems and the calculation of permutation entropy are used. It is shown that it is possible to construct dynamic measures of complexity, both recurrent and entropy, which behave in a proper way during actual pre-crisis periods. This fact is used to build predictors of crisis phenomena on the example of the main five crises recorded in the time series of the key cryptocurrency bitcoin, the effectiveness of the proposed indicators-precursors of crises has been identified.
Abeer ElBahrawy, Laura Alessandretti, Anne Kandler, Romualdo PastorâSatorras · 5 authors
The cryptocurrency market surpassed the barrier of \$100 billion market capitalization in June 2017, after months of steady growth. Despite its increasing relevance in the financial world, however, a comprehensive analysis of the whole system is still lacking, as most studies have focused exclusively on the behaviour of one (Bitcoin) or few cryptocurrencies. Here, we consider the history of the entire market and analyse the behaviour of 1,469 cryptocurrencies introduced between April 2013 and June 2017. We reveal that, while new cryptocurrencies appear and disappear continuously and their market capitalization is increasing (super-)exponentially, several statistical properties of the market have been stable for years. These include the number of active cryptocurrencies, the market share distribution and the turnover of cryptocurrencies. Adopting an ecological perspective, we show that the so-called neutral model of evolution is able to reproduce a number of key empirical observations, despite its simplicity and the assumption of no selective advantage of one cryptocurrency over another. Our results shed light on the properties of the cryptocurrency market and establish a first formal link between ecological modelling and the study of this growing system. We anticipate they will spark further research in this direction.
In recent years a new type of tradable assets appeared, generically known as cryptocurrencies. Among them, the most widespread is Bitcoin. Given its novelty, this paper investigates some statistical properties of the Bitcoin market. This study compares Bitcoin and standard currencies dynamics and focuses on the analysis of returns at different time scales. We test the presence of long memory in return time series from 2011 to 2017, using transaction data from one Bitcoin platform. We compute the Hurst exponent by means of the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis method, using a sliding window in order to measure long range dependence. We detect that Hurst exponents changes significantly during the first years of existence of Bitcoin, tending to stabilize in recent times. Additionally, multiscale analysis shows a similar behavior of the Hurst exponent, implying a self-similar process.
Using the unique characteristics of Bitcoin such as a world virtual currency with common intrinsic value and synchronous transactions in multiple countries, and employing normal distribution test and sup ADF test, this paper examines the Bitcoin bubble from the perspectives of price deviation and explosiveness, and provides empirical evidence for the existence of the Bitcoin bubble. It shows that Bitcoin is a perfect financial speculation, speculative factor is the main reason for the bursting of the Bitcoin bubble, and a lack of supervision significantly accounts for constant expansion of the Bitcoin bubble. In addition, the exaggeration of the advantages of Bitcoin leads to overvaluation and possible market manipulation, which is the important reason for the long-term existence of Bitcoin bubble. The authorities need to pay early attention to internet finance products, promptly formulate and improve relevant policies, reasonably guide the investorsâ rational investment, promote the perfection of transaction mechanisms, prevent market manipulation and maintain the healthy and stable development of internet finance.
Unlike prior studies that have mostly relied on ad hoc network structures, we use a data-driven methodology, namely the directed acyclic graph (DAG), to uncover the contemporaneous and lagged causal relations among Bitcoin and a set of financial assets. The DAG methodology allows the identification of networks of causality based on the observed correlations and partial correlations approach, without making a priori causal assumptions. The main results indicate that the Bitcoin market is quite isolated, especially during its bull market state. We also conduct forecast error variance decompositions and show that the influence of different financial assets on Bitcoin up to the 20-day horizon does not account for more than 10% of innovations in all cases.
Bitcoin is attracting a steadily increasing interest since its first appearance in 2008. Bitcoin price forecasting would be of great practical interest given its role as a relatively new virtual âcurrencyâ. This presupposes the modeling and verification of some kind of relation, causal or not, connecting bitcoin price to other âestablishedâ factors of economic interest. Towards this goal, cross-correlation analysis is used in this work to investigate relations between bitcoin price and a set of other factors of economic interest. The years 2013 to 2015 are selected as the temporal basis of this research, because earlier bitcoin prices were practically zero. Results reveal a strong correlation between bitcoin and stock market indices or other economical factor values. SWOT analysis for bitcoin is carried out for the same period of time, based on cross-correlation as well as on existing research results. Bitcoin is seen to possess more benefits than risks, while its strong temporal correlations with other economic indices or prices constitute an opportunity to be further explored towards the goal of bitcoin price forecasting.
We provide an extreme value analysis of the returns of Bitcoin. A particular focus is on the tail risk characteristics and we will provide an in-depth univariate extreme value analysis. Those properties will be compared to the traditional exchange rates of the G10 currencies versus the US dollar. For investors, especially institutional ones, an understanding of the risk characteristics is of utmost importance. So for Bitcoin to become a mainstream investable asset class, studying these properties is necessary. Our findings show that the bitcoin return distribution not only exhibits higher volatility than traditional G10 currencies, but also stronger non-normal characteristics and heavier tails. This has implications for risk management, financial engineering (such as bitcoin derivatives) â both from an investor's as well as from a regulator's point of view. To our knowledge, this is the first detailed study looking at the extreme value behavior of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
Cryptocurrencies have become increasingly popular since the introduction of bitcoin in 2009. In this paper, we identify factors associated with variations in cryptocurrencies' market values. In the past, researchers argued that the "buzz" surrounding cryptocurrencies in online media explained their price variations. But this observation obfuscates the notion that cryptocurrencies, unlike fiat currencies, are technologies entailing a true innovation potential. By using, for the first time, a unique measure of innovation potential, we find that the latter is in fact the most important factor associated with increases in cryptocurrency returns. By contrast, we find that the buzz surrounding cryptocurrencies is negatively associated with returns after controlling for a variety of factors, such as supply growth and liquidity. Also interesting is our finding that a cryptocurrency's association with fraudulent activity is not negatively associated with weekly returns-a result that further qualifies the media's influence on cryptocurrencies. Finally, we find that an increase in supply is positively associated with weekly returns. Taken together, our findings show that cryptocurrencies do not behave like traditional currencies or commodities-unlike what most prior research has assumed-and depict an industry that is much more mature, and much less speculative, than has been implied by previous accounts.
This thesis is a descriptive statistical analysis of cryptocurrency market and its relation within cryptocurrencies and across asset classes, using correlation functions, orthogonalized impulse response functions and OLS regressions. Consistent with Wang (2014), bitcoin does not suffer from a liquidity trap, even though bitcoin is a decentralized system. This thesis concludes that bitcoin has a lead effect on only 2 out of 8 of the top cryptocurrencies, endowing diversification benefits within cryptocurrency market. This paper provides evidence on cryptocurrency marketâs and US equity marketâs impulse response dynamics which are insignificant, consistent with Gangwalâs (2016) results that adding cryptocurrencies to a diversified portfolio will yield to a higher Sharpe ratio. Lastly, the study reports bitcoin momentum factor having an impact on banking and financial industriesâ excess returns.
This research project investigated the reasons for price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that are created over a decentralised, secure network built on the blockchain technology. The current challenges with understanding price fluctuations are that there is limited research in the field and extreme volatility in the environment. \nExploratory research was conducted using semi-structured interviews to understand and analyse the drivers of factors identified in the literature contributing to price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies. Insights were generated for the drivers of user perception, misconceptions that surround cryptocurrency security and the role of regulators in the cryptocurrency space. The research expanded the existing literature and offered propositions for future research that contribute to the theory surrounding price fluctuations of cryptocurrencies. \nThe findings should provoke business and management to reshape the way that cryptocurrencies are received and positioned in the marketplace. In addition, these findings are significant for those making business or social decisions regarding cryptocurrencies or those that are redefining traditional currency transactions.
The rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies, also known as cryptocurrencies or digital currencies. Virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services, and assets are exchanged. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies not only offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. This paper attempts to model the volatility of bitcoin using 5 variants of the GARCH model namely: GARCH(1,1), EGARCH(1,1) IGARCH(1,1) TGARCH(1,1) and GJR-GARCH(1,1). Once the best model is selected, an OLS regression was ran on the volatility series to measure the day of the week the effect. The results indicate that the TGARCH (1,1) model best fits the volatility price for the data. Moreover, Sunday appears as the most significant day in the week. A nontechnical discussion of several aspects and features of virtual currencies and a glimpse at what the future may hold for these decentralized currencies is also presented.