Blockchain Papers

Maurice Omane‐Adjepong, Paul Alagidede

No abstract is available for this record.

Ahmed Jeribi, Dhouha CHAMSA, Yasmine Snene Manzli

In this study we discuss the determinants of the BRICS and GCC stock market returns during the COVID-19 outbreak. We employ the OLS regression to discern how crypto-currencies, VIX, oil, GOLD prices, and the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, affect the Gulf and BRICS stock markets. We find that Bitcoin and Ethereum can generate benefits from portfolio diversification and hedging strategies but not from safe haven strategies for Russia, Brazil, Abu-Dhabi, Bahrain, and Qatar financial investors during the COVID-19 outbreak. Our results reveal that Gold is neither hedge nor a safe haven but is only an effective diversifier for investors during the COVID-19 outbreak. The results indicated that among all the BRICS and GCC stock indexes, the expected volatility of the US stock market has an effect only on china and Kuwait financial markets. Finally, our results show that the growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases has a negative impact only on South Africa and Brazil stock market.

Imran Yousaf, Shoaib Ali

Abstract Through the application of the VAR-AGARCH model to intra-day data for three cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin), this study examines the return and volatility spillover between these cryptocurrencies during the pre-COVID-19 period and the COVID-19 period. We also estimate the optimal weights, hedge ratios, and hedging effectiveness during both sample periods. We find that the return spillovers vary across the two periods for the Bitcoin-Ethereum, Bitcoin-Litecoin, and Ethereum-Litecoin pairs. However, the volatility transmissions are found to be different during the two sample periods for the Bitcoin-Ethereum and Bitcoin-Litecoin pairs. The constant conditional correlations between all pairs of cryptocurrencies are observed to be higher during the COVID-19 period compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. Based on optimal weights, investors are advised to decrease their investments (a) in Bitcoin for the portfolios of Bitcoin/Ethereum and Bitcoin/Litecoin and (b) in Ethereum for the portfolios of Ethereum/Litecoin during the COVID-19 period. All hedge ratios are found to be higher during the COVID-19 period, implying a higher hedging cost compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. Last, the hedging effectiveness is higher during the COVID-19 period compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. Overall, these findings provide useful information to portfolio managers and policymakers regarding portfolio diversification, hedging, forecasting, and risk management.

Yuehao Zhai

Investors are still worried about the variables brought about by COVID-19 and the presidential election because of the recent growth trend of the stock market despite the macroeconomic downturn. This article speculated whether the portfolio of biotech owned stocks and bitcoin can cope with these uncertainties. At the same time, investors need to pay attention to the companies that are studying the COVID-19 vaccine and whether they have state financial support. Also, Python and Excel were used to explore the daily return, annual volatility, and portfolio performance of biotechnology stocks. Besides, a multiple linear regression model on CPI and GDP focusing on whether macroeconomic factors affect bitcoin was established. These results support the conclusion that currently adding biotech supported by the federal government and bitcoin into the portfolio could respond to the risks from COVID-19.

Ahmed Jeribi, Yasmine Snene Manzli

In this paper, we discuss the behavior of stock market returns in Tunisia during the COVID-19 outbreak. Using the OLS regression, we find that Bitcoin act as a hedge and Ethereum as a diversifier for Tunisia’s stock market before the COVID-19 outbreak; however, Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot generate benefits from portfolio diversification and hedging strategies for financial investors during the COVID-19. Moreover, Dash, Monero, and Ripple act as hedges before the COVID-19 outbreak and as diversifiers during this pandemic. Our results reveal that gold acts as a hedge and diversifier before the pandemic, but it's neither hedge nor a haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the results indicated that the expected volatility of the US stock market has an impact on the Tunisian stock market. Finally, our results indicate that the growth rate of the COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths harms Tunisia's stock market.

Trung H. Le, Hung Xuan, Duc Khuong Nguyen, Ahmet Şensoy

No abstract is available for this record.

Najaf Iqbal, Zeeshan Fareed, Guangcai Wan, Farrukh Shahzad

No abstract is available for this record.

Ahmed Jeribi, Mohamed Fakhfekh

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the determinants of G7, and Chinese stock market returns during the COVID-19 outbreak. We find that Bitcoin and Ethereum can generate benefits from portfolio diversification and hedging strategies for G7 financial investors in early 2020. Our result reveals that Gold is neither hedge nor haven during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the results indicated that the expected volatility of the US stock market has no effect on the Japanese and Chinese financial markets. Finally, our results suggest that the growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths has an impact only on the US stock market.

Khaled Lafi AL-Naif

This study aims to explore the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) effects on gold and bitcoin prices variabilities and on the relationship between each of them, both prices are denominated in USD.The study period is divided into two groups, first group included 120 workdays before 30 January 2020 when WHO first declared COIVD-19 outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern, and the second group included 120 observations post that date. The period as a total extends from June. 24, 2019 to 22 of May 2020.To this end, the study used the appropriate statistical tools including stationery and unit root test, Levene's test for the equality of variances, correlation, least squares regression, and pairwise Granger causality test.The results of testing the equality of variances and homogeneity between each of the study groups before and after COVID 19 revealed a strong rejection of the null hypothesis of equal variances for gold but not bitcoin which was accepted. The results also indicate a significant relationship between gold and bitcoin before and after COVID-19, but the sign changed from negative to positive respectively.Finally, the study concludes that there were significant effects of COIVD-19 on gold but not bitcoin prices. These results are consistent with gold’s traditional role as a safe-haven in crises, and bitcoin as a ‘virtual gold’ which has some similarities, and likely to be complementary rather than in a competion with gold.

Chih-Chieh Chiu, Mitchell Ratner, Emre Yetgin

This study examines the potential risk reducing benefits of Bitcoin against systemic risk in 28 countries from 2011-2020. The results indicate that Bitcoin provides a safe haven in times of extreme financial market volatility and during periods of financial crisis.

Çağrı Hamurcu

The purpose of this study is to reveal whether cryptocurrency and non-cryptocurrency investors are different in terms of financial threats. In order to measure financial threat, 5-Item Financial Threat Scale (FTS) is used. It is found that the Turkish version of a 5-Item Financial Threat Scale (FTS) is highly reliable, unidimensional and a valid instrument for measuring the financial threat. According to the analysis, non-cryptocurrency investors have a more significant financial threat than cryptocurrency investors. Moreover, it is investigated that the working sector difference is not a distinguishing factor for financial threat. It is found that financial threat is associated with age, level of education, and monthly income. On the other hand, it is obtained that gender and marital status are not affecting factors for financial threat.

Raja Wasim Ahmad, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman, Ibrar Yaqoob · 6 authors

<div><b>Objectives: </b>Telehealth and telemedicine systems aim to deliver remote healthcare services to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19. Also, they can help to manage scarce healthcare resources to control the massive burden of COVID-19 patients in hospitals. However, a large portion of today's telehealth and telemedicine systems are centralized and fall short of providing necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Methods: </b>The current study has explored the potential opportunities and adaptability challenges for blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine sector. It has explored the key role that blockchain technology can play to provide necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Results: </b>Blockchain technology can improve telehealth and telemedicine services by offering remote healthcare services in a manner that is decentralized, tamper-proof, transparent, traceable, reliable, trustful, and secure. It enables health professionals to accurately identify frauds related to physician educational credentials and medical testing kits commonly used for home-based diagnosis.</div><div><b>Conclusions: </b>Wide deployment of blockchain in telehealth and telemedicine technology is still in its infancy. Several challenges and research problems need to be resolved to enable the widespread adoption of blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine systems.</div><div> </div><div><br></div>

Shaen Corbet, Yang Hou, Yang Hu, Les Oxley

The circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic have generated substantial international political strain as governments attempt to mitigate the widespread associated social and economic repercussions. One theory has focused on the potential for Chinese informational asymmetry. Using Chinese financial market data, we attempt to establish the scale and direction of information flows during multiple distinct phases of the development of the pandemic. Two specific results are identified. Firstly, the majority of domestically-traded Chinese stocks present evidence of significant information flows at a far earlier stage than internationally-traded comparatives, suggesting that domestic investors recognised the dangers associated with COVID-19 far in advance of the rest of the world. One potential explanation surrounds the view that the severity of domestically-reported Chinese news was not appropriately recognised by international investors. Secondly, while evidence of safe-haven and flight-to-safety behaviour is evident throughout traditional energy and precious metal markets, cryptocurrencies became informationally-synchronised with Chinese equity markets, indicating their use as an investor safe-haven. This is a particularly concerning outcome for international policy-maker and regulatory authorities due to the fragility of these developing markets.

Shaen Corbet, Yang Hou, Yang Hu, Les Oxley · 5 authors

Utilising Chinese-developed data based on long-standing influenza indices, and the more recently-developed coronavirus and face mask indices, we set out to test for the presence of volatility spillovers from Chinese financial markets upon a broad number of traditional financial assets during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such indices are used to specifically measure the performance of Chinese companies who are inherently involved in the R&D and production of materials and products used to mitigate and counteract the effects of influenza and coronavirus, therefore, such indices present a unique barometer of broad population-based sentiment relating to COVID-19 in comparison to traditional Chinese influenza. Within days of the formal announcement of the COVID-19 outbreak, results indicate exceptionally pronounced and persistent impacts of the coronavirus pandemic upon Chinese financial markets, compared to that of the traditional and long-standing influenza index. Further, in a novel finding to date, COVID-19 is found to have had a substantial effect on directional spillovers upon the Bitcoin market. Cryptocurrency-based confidence appears to have been instigated through government-developed education schemes, which are identified as one possible explanation for our results, which are found to remain robust across both data-frequency and methodological variation.

Neetu Jora, Naveen Nandal

The purpose of this study was to analyse and understand the attitude of gender towards cryptocurrency. The questionnaire was formed to collect data about knowledge, experience, trust, and other investment factors of the gender towards cryptocurrency. This paper will be beneficial to the upcoming or existing companies of cryptocurrency to estimate their future viability based on gender. The research was also aimed  to the detection of gender differences within the areas of awareness, investing, mining and paying with the cryptocurrencies.  The research aimed to analyse the data collected and conclude the overall attitude of male/ female towards cryptocurrency. The findings confirmed the existence of gender differences in attitude towards crypto currencies, as the male respondents were more willing to use the crypto currencies in most of the cases.

Danson Kimani, Kweku Adams, Rexford Attah‐Boakye, Subhan Ullah · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Hechem Ajmi, Nadia Arfaoui

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the effect of the political risk on Bitcoin return and volatility during the 2016 US pre-election and post-election periods. Design/methodology/approach A daily composite political risk index is calculated by using the principal component analysis and Google Trends. A quantile regression approach is adopted to assess the effect of the political risk index on Bitcoin return and volatility for both periods subject to market conditions. Findings Findings reveal that the political risk index tends to increase when moving from the pre-election period to the post-election one. This is mostly attributed to the new challenges faced by the new elected government. During the pre-election period, the quantiles regression shows that the political risk index negatively affects Bitcoin return when the market is bearish, whereas a positive impact on volatility is found in bearish and bullish markets. When the political situation becomes severer during the post-election period, the quantiles plots show that the increase of the political risk index leads to a significant increase of Bitcoin return, whereas Bitcoin volatility remains relatively stable. This means that Bitcoin can be adopted as a hedging tool when the political situation becomes severer. Originality/value Comparing to the existed studies in the field, this paper considers Google trends as a main source to assess the daily composite political risk index during the 2016 US presidential election.

Conghui Chen, Lanlan Liu, Ningru Zhao

This paper studies the impact of fear sentiment caused by the coronavirus pandemic on Bitcoin price dynamics. We construct a new proxy for coronavirus fear sentiment using hourly Google search queries on coronavirus-related words. The results show that market volatility has been exacerbated by fear sentiment as the result of an increase in search interest in coronavirus. Moreover, we find that negative Bitcoin returns and high trading volume can be explained by fear sentiment regarding the coronavirus. Our results also show that Bitcoin fails to act as a safe haven during the pandemic.

Agam Bansal, Chandan Garg, Rana Prathap Padappayil

No abstract is available for this record.

Salim Lahmiri, Stelios Bekiros

No abstract is available for this record.

Klaus Grobys

Using the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as a set-up for a quasi-experiment, this study derives novel insights on the dynamic correlation between Bitcoin and US stocks. Given the unprecedented scale of infections and the nature of the virus, the potential impact on the dynamic correlation was unpredictable and therefore uncertain. Using a difference-in-differences setting, the dynamic correlation between Bitcoin and stocks is controlled for the dynamic correlation between gold and stocks. This study finds that Bitcoin performed poorly in hedging this tail risk.

Leonardo Juan Ramírez López, Nicolas Beltrán Álvarez

The impact of COVID-19 has challenged science in its quest to control and mitigate it through a new vaccine. This is why the world's research centers and laboratories are in serious competition over time to offer humanity an effective vaccine that prevents the spread of this virus. From a technological point of view, the challenge is to manage the distribution of this next vaccine, from its generation anywhere in the world, to the site of application to the population. The research results approximate the solution to the design of a secure Blockchain-based supply chain surveillance design, to control the variables and critical points of the next distribution of vaccines worldwide. The expected impact of the application of this new design will be the confidence of the population in the quality of the vaccine, in the generating laboratory, and it supplies.

Emna Mnif, Anis Jarboui

Cryptocurrency is a new form of digital asset based on a network distributed across a large number of computers. The main objective of this work is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Islamic cryptocurrency markets returns. In this methodology, we identify a group of Islamic cryptocurrencies consisting of the X8X, Hellogold and OneGram. This paper uses the Newey-West standard errors regression to estimate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Islamic cryptocurrencies returns. The empirical results show that COVID-19 total deaths have a negative effect on respectively the X8X cryptocurrency, HelloGold, and OneGram cryptocurrencies. In the same way, the COVID-19 total confirmed cases growth has a negative effect on respectively the X8X cryptocurrency, and OneGram cryptocurrencies. This study contributes to the literature by identifying the impact of COVID-19 on the Islamic cryptocurrency markets.

Amirul Azim, Muhammad Nazrul Islam, Paul E. Spranger

The present world has observed the SARS-CoV2 or COVID-19 spreading rapidly with a rising death toll and transmission rates with an absence of proper data management and information sharing. The current traditional database storage system has the limitations of a centralized control system and tampering of data, particularly when it is being shared with others. The Novel technology known as “Blockchain” is a distributed ledger technology that acts as a shared database, keeping all its copies synced and verified. The objective of this article is to study the concept of a Blockchain based pandemic data management system that would ensure unified patients’ data storage and reliable data management to trackdown coronavirus to combat against this and future pandemics.