Through a bibliometric analysis, this article researches the central topics that link blockchain to public policy design and investigates the key policy priorities for the use of blockchain technology in the public sector. The analysis points out six thematic foci in the current literature: (1) business and strategic management, (2) technology adoption, (3) system infrastructure, (4) cryptocurrency and decentralized economy, (5) regulations and geopolitics, and (6) governance. The analysis demonstrates a high degree of co-occurrence between “barriers” and “blockchain adoption” confirming that blockchain adoption in the public sector domain is perceived as challenging. The association of the term “barrier” with other key terms suggests theoretical, technological, resource-based, and managerial challenges as the main showstoppers. The bibliometric analysis also reveals the underrepresentation of social and political sciences in our knowledge base, despite the thematic relevance of these disciplines to understand the underlying challenges. More research from these disciplines is warranted to understand better how this technology can be best integrated into the public policy processes.
Purpose This paper aims to analyze the connectedness between bitcoin (BTC) and other traditional assets (e.g. metals) in times of financial turbulence like the COVID pandemic. The purpose is to see to what extent BTC is mimicking the role precious metals are known for, that of being a reliable store of value. Design/methodology/approach The author relies on vector autoregressive modeling, as it yields a very flexible framework for forecasting and interpreting the interdependencies among variables, while providing a very intuitive framework when the underlying structural model is unknown. The author performs the analysis first for the whole sample and then for a “COVID-19 subsample.” Findings The author finds evidence supporting a stronger link between BTC and gold in COVID-19 times, with BTC the main driving force. The author quantifies the contribution of BTC to the surge in gold’s price during those early months of COVID-19 in the order of 28%, thus lending support to the idea of intrinsic or fundamental value in BTC. Practical implications Investors might consider including BTC in their portfolios as a long-term investment, very much like they do with gold. Social implications Cryptos at large represent an important check on the ever-expanding monetary policy pursued by central banks in recent times. Originality/value The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the world economy. It is thus timely to reevaluate the relationship between BTC and other assets such as gold and silver, which are traditionally seen as safe havens against uncertainty.
Ngô Thái Hưng, Toan Luu Duc Huynh, Muhammad Ali Nasir
Abstract This study investigates the impacts of economic policy uncertainty on the Bitcoin market using the monthly data from January 2014 to December 2022. In so doing, six major uncertainty indices (Global Economic Policy Uncertainty, Equity Market Volatility, Twitter‐based Economic Uncertainty, Geopolitical risk index, The Cryptocurrency Policy Uncertainty Index, The Cryptocurrency Price Uncertainty Index), and in particular, two novel Cryptocurrency Uncertainty indexes as introduced by Lucey et al. (2022) are taken into account. Our findings uncover a negative connectedness between Bitcoin prices and the key selected uncertainty indices, suggesting that higher uncertainties result in lower Bitcoin fluctuation across time and frequency domains. Our results provide valuable information on constructing asset portfolios for investors who have investment strategies entailing Bitcoin since Bitcoin would be a diversifier under economic policy uncertainty shocks. Our results hold robust by using the alternative methodology.
This paper studies asymmetric spillovers from Bitcoin to green and traditional assets by using a full distributional framework established by a recently-developed Quantile-on-Quantile approach. The spillovers from gold to the same are further studied to compare the effectiveness of the underlying digital investment shelter of Bitcoin with its traditional counterpart of gold. Statistical evidence indicates that the cross-market spillover features evident asymmetry and non-linearity from three perspectives involving various quantiles of the joint distribution of dependent and independent variables, data in return and volatility, and before/after the COVID-19 pandemic. The investment sheltering role of Bitcoin is examined by its weakly positive, negligible, or even negative dependence with financial assets under different market conditions, while such the role is found to be relatively stronger for green assets compared to that for traditional assets. Moreover, the digital investment shelter is shown to be more effective than the traditional shelter given Bitcoin’s weaker or even more negative dependence with both green and traditional financial assets than gold. Additional analyses confirm the robustness of our findings that should be of interest to various stakeholders.
Rui Dias, Paulo Alexandre, Nuno Teixeira, Mariana Chambino
Green investors have expressed concerns about the environment and sustainability due to the high energy consumption involved in cryptocurrency mining and transactions. This article investigates the safe haven characteristics of clean energy stock indexes in relation to three cryptocurrencies, taking into account their respective levels of “dirty” energy consumption from 16 May 2018 to 15 May 2023. The purpose is to determine whether the eventual increase in correlation resulting from the events of 2020 and 2022 leads to volatility spillovers between clean energy indexes and cryptocurrencies categorized as “dirty” due to their energy-intensive mining and transaction procedures. The level of integration between clean energy stock indexes and cryptocurrencies will be inferred by using Gregory and Hansen’s methodology. Furthermore, to assess the presence of a volatility spillover effect between clean energy stock indexes and “dirty-classified” cryptocurrencies, the t-test of the heteroscedasticity of two samples from Forbes and Rigobon will be employed. The empirical findings show that clean energy stock indexes may offer a viable safe haven for dirty energy cryptocurrencies. However, the precise associations differ depending on the cryptocurrency under examination. The implications of this study’s results are significant for investment strategies, and this knowledge can inform decision-making procedures and facilitate the adoption of sustainable investment practices. Investors and policy makers can gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between investments in renewable energy and the cryptocurrency market.
Afees A. Salisu, Ahamuefula E. Ogbonna, Tirimisiyu F. Oloko
This study examines the effect of pandemic-induced uncertainty on cryptocoins (Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple). It employs the Westerlund and Narayan (2012, 2015) predictive model to examine the predictability of pandemic-induced uncertainty and our model's forecast performance. We examine the role of asymmetry in uncertainty and the sensitivity of our results to the recently-developed Salisu and Akanni (2020) Global Fear Index. Cryptocoins act as a hedge against uncertainty due to pandemics, albeit with reduced hedging effectiveness in the COVID-19 period. Accounting for asymmetry improves predictability and model forecast performance. Our results may be sensitive to the choice of measure of pandemic-induced uncertainty.
Purpose While Blockchain can serve us, Bitcoin threatens our survival. If Bitcoin is assumed to be a country, it will rank 38th globally for energy consumption. With 90.2 metric million tonnes of carbon dioxide, Bitcoin mining and trading has emerged as an environmental threat. The current study investigates how the trading-specific variables, the prices of Crypto Index and Ethereum, affect bitcoin-based energy consumption. Also, the role of mining-specific variables is analyzed. Design/methodology/approach The study uses monthly data from various sources collected from December 2018 to January 2023. The authors used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model to determine the short- and long-term relationships between variables. This study uses the Theory of Green Marketing and the Theory of Cross Elasticity of Demand as a theoretical lens. Findings The findings show that escalating crypto market index and Ethereum prices with a one-month lag increases bitcoin-specific electricity consumption and carbon emissions. Green investors may shift to cryptocurrencies based on consensus other than of Proof-of-Work. Ethereum behaves like a substitute for Bitcoin, reflected by the long-term positive relationship between Bitcoin's energy consumption and Ethereum prices. Originality/value The study analyses how the crypto market index and Ethereum price affect bitcoin-based energy use. The relationships identified are substantiated by the literature to provide suggestions to green investors and policymakers to mitigate the harmful impact of Bitcoin's colossal energy consumption on the natural environment.
This study investigates the hedge and safe-haven possibilities with bitcoin, gold and crude oil in different equity markets in the presence of time-varying market inefficiency. Our results indicate that periods of market inefficiency for the Bitcoin, gold and crude oil price positively influence their function as a hedge asset for the equity markets of Japan, China, the US, Europe and emerging countries. In addition to contributing to the discussion on the factors which affect the functioning of safe-haven assets, the empirical findings of this study further highlight the importance of market efficiency as a market microstructure feature. These results have important implications for investors seeking to manage risk through diversification across different asset classes.
Surmounted environmental concerns and energy challenges have created an augmented awareness among the public and policymakers about alternate energy resources. Using a network approach, this paper aims to investigate the dependence between cryptocurrencies and the alternative energy market using data from January 1, 2018, to December 23, 2021. For this investigation, first, we build a static dependency network for a given set of variables using partial correlations. Then, we demonstrate within-system connections in a minimum spanning tree (MST) to assess the centrality of all variables. Finally, rolling-window estimations are made to exhibit time variations in both dependency and centrality networks. We find that clean alternative markets (SPGCE, ELEVHC & WILCE) and ETH are net risk transmitters to other markets and system-wide net contributors. We also demonstrate how SPGCE is essential for tying together the various parts of the networks and provide convincing evidence of time-varying within-system dependency. Our thorough examination of the dependency analysis offers significant insights to macroprudential regulators, policymakers, and portfolio managers, enabling them to safeguard the most vulnerable markets and choose the best legislative and policy measures to protect investors' interests in the face of unforeseen financial and economic conditions.