Blockchain Papers

Brahim Gaies, Mohamed Sahbi Nakhli, Jean‐Michel Sahut, Denis Schweizer

No abstract is available for this record.

Santosh Patidar, Vijay Kumar Sukhwani, Apratul Chandra Shukla

No abstract is available for this record.

KISHORE KUNAL K. R. RAMPRAKASH

The deciding factor in the emergence of cryptocurrency as a global currency depends on the level of acceptance it gains in society. The study is based on primary data collected from a targeted sample of 750 respondents. A theoretical model based on UTAUT and TTAT was developed. A purposive sampling technique was adopted for the study, and the required data were collected using a well-structured and pre-tested questionnaire. PLS-SEM analysis has been used to assess the theoretical model of the study. The study established that perceived threat, attitude, and social influence are the significant factors affecting the adoption of cryptocurrency in India. Effort expectancy and performance expectancy have a considerable impact on the intention to use via attitude. In contrast, perceived severity and perceived susceptibility significantly affect the intention to use via perceived threat. Financial literacy and facilitating conditions don’t seem to impact the intention to use cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange in India.

Jacob Kazungu, Nancy Kagwanja, Huihui Wang, Jane Chuma · 5 authors

<title>Abstract</title> Background Healthcare workers (HCWs) face a high risk of infection during pandemics or public health emergencies as demonstrated in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding how governments respond can inform public health control measures and support health system functioning. An economic impact analysis examining HCW COVID-19 infections in Kenya and three other countries estimated that the total economic costs related to HCW COVID-19 infections costs and deaths in Kenya were US$113.2 million (range US$35.8-US$246.1). We examined the governance arrangements for and implementation of HCW protection during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya between March 2020 and March 2021. Methods We conducted a scoping review of 44 policy and legislative documents and reports on HCW protection and 22 media articles. We adopted the transparency, accountability, participation, integrity and capacity (TAPIC) governance framework to analyse and summarize our findings into policy gaps and implementation challenges. We followed the guidance of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRSIMA-ScR). Results Policy design gaps included inadequate provisions for emerging threats, inconsistencies with the devolved context and inadequate structures to monitor, inform and respond to HCW COVID-19 infections. Implementation challenges were attributed to inadequate quantity and quality of PPE, difficulty in accessing medical care for HCWs, delays in HCW remuneration, insufficient infection prevention and control measures, the top-down application of plans, difficulties in working in a decentralized context, and pre-existing public finance management (PFM) bottlenecks. Conclusion Implementation of HCW protection during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond could leverage the revamping of current legislation on labour relations to reflect devolved governance and develop a broader and long-term approach to occupational health and safety implementation that considers all HCWs. Improvements in PFM arrangements coupled with increased investment in the health sector and attention to efficient use of resources will also impact positively on HCW protection.

Wajdi Frikha, Mariem Brahim, Ahmed Jeribi, Amine Lahiani

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war on the interconnectedness between the US and China stock markets, major cryptocurrency and commodity markets using the wavelet coherence approach over the period from January 1 2016 to April 18 2022. The aim is to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have affected the hedging efficiency of volatile crypto-currencies and gold. Wavelet coherency analysis unveils perceptual differences between the short-term and longer-term market reactions. In the short-run, we find strong co-movements during the first and second waves of the pandemic. During the first wave, longer-term investors were driven by the belief of future pandemic demise. They make use of time diversification that results in positive returns. During the Russia-Ukraine war, S&P 500 leads Bitcoin, BNB, and Ripple whereas Ethereum leads S&P 500 and SSE.

Sang Baum Kang, Yao Xie, Jialin Zhao

This article investigates the determinants of Bitcoin returns. The authors consider a comprehensive set of information variables under five categories: macroeconomics, blockchain technology, other assets, stress level, and investor sentiment. Their approach toward this large dataset is built upon dimension-reduction models such as Backward Elimination, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), principal component regression (PCR), and three-pass regression filter (3PRF). The empirical results show that blockchain technology, stress level, and investor sentiment have positive, negative, and positive predicting power on Bitcoin returns, respectively. Macroeconomic variables exhibit insignificant impacts on Bitcoin returns. Other asset variables show little predicting power until 2019, but some become a significant predictor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the authors caution against using Bitcoin as a risk-hedging device in financial portfolios. They also find that, consistent with other financial assets such as equities, Bitcoin shows increased predictability with a longer return horizon. Due to their empirical results, they also advocate the use of 3PRF; relative to other dimension-reduction methods under consideration, they observe superior performance of 3PRF in predicting both the level and the direction of future Bitcoin returns across all return horizons.

Siok Jin Lim, Andaeus Zun Khan Neoh

This paper applies the DCC-MGARCH model to investigate the role of Bitcoin as a hedge for Islamic stocks in Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being a highly volatile cryptocurrency, evidence of low dynamic correlation between Bitcoin and Islamic stocks is confirmed across the Asian region. We find that Bitcoin’s diversification benefits improve towards the later stages of the pandemic when countries were transitioning to an endemic phase.

Yassine Elkoraichi

Integrating Africa's small farmers to the agricultural supply chains is necessary for their economic growth and development. Nonetheless, the lack of access to finance prevents many African farmers from taking part in the supply chain. the agriculture sector has a persistent problem with getting financial from finance institutions. Smallholder farmers have been mostly excluded from the access to financing services. Blockchain has been applied to resolve a variety of issues in numerous sectors. In the agricultural industry, Blockchain is utilized to increase the supply chain's transparency, security, and traceability. the deployment of Blockchain technology, known as distributed and immutable ledger could be utilized to strengthen agriculture finance. Regarding this, we suggest a systematic literature review to gather all pertinent research on the applications of Blockchain technology for financial inclusion of African small farmers in order to identify current research themes. This research makes a concrete contribution by discussing how blockchain technology might help address the problem of financial exclusion of African small farmers, laying the groundwork for a potential solution that could link these farmers to the global agricultural supply chain.

Haiye Huang

As the pandemic, Covid-19, spreading across the world from 2020, it changes the habits of people. It helped the development of the online movement. Cryptocurrency investment was one of them. Ethereum is one of the most significant blockchain-based platforms and the second largest proportion of the cryptocurrency market. The price of Ethereum was examined from the last 3 years. The result shows that the price of Ethereum increases drastically at the beginning of the pandemic due to different influences of Covid-19. However, it is decreasing as Covid-19 has become a normal illness to handle recently. In summary, Ethereum is in a strong correlation with Covid-19 and still can fluctuate by illness or movement that increases the interaction of people on the internet. In this paper, vector autoregression model and ARMA-GARCHX model was constructed where VAR model helped to find the relationship between the new infections of COVID-19 in China and Overseas and the return rate of Ethereum and ARMA-GARCHX model was applied to analyze the volatility of the return and predict the future return rate. The models suggest that the return rate can be affected if the number of new infections increases in a short period. However, the number of new infections is not significant to the volatility of the return rate of Ethereum.

Mohammad Abdullah, Mohammad Ashraful Ferdous Chowdhury, Zunaidah Sulong

No abstract is available for this record.

Bhavesh Garg, Karan Rai, Rishabh Pachoriya, Manik Thappa

The paper examines whether an unanticipated event like the COVID-19 crisis has strengthened the contagion in the cryptocurrency market utilizing samples of data representing the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. Employing the wavelet coherence and DCC-GARCH(1,1) models, we identify that the cryptocurrency market started integrating from 2018 as volatility within the market reduced. Our main finding is that the cryptocurrency market is highly interconnected and that the contagion strengthened during the crisis period. We draw appropriate policy implications from these findings.

Frédéric Tronnier, Peter Hamm, David Harborth

Following a significant increase in media attention with the exorbitant rise in Bitcoin prices in 2017, initial coin offerings (ICOs) were introduced as a new way for organizations and companies to fund their businesses, presenting retail investors with a new opportunity to invest in young projects and companies. Little is known about who these investors are, why and how they invest in ICOs, and how they evaluate their investments afterward. This chapter investigates how investment behavior and investment satisfaction are influenced by behavioral biases and personality traits of retail investors in ICOs. We analyze quantitative survey data from more than 300 retail ICO investors and argue that investors demonstrate a unique set of personality traits that are connected to several behavioral biases. Biases are found to affect investment satisfaction, with overconfidence and disposition bias surprisingly being positively associated with investment satisfaction. The insights generated in this work are then also discussed in the context of meme stocks and more recent financial developments where similar biases and personality traits might influence retail investor behavior. Our findings may help investors understand and improve their investment behavior and decisions in various asset classes and situations that are comparable to the past ICO craze.

J. Sadeesh, E. Suresh

Cryptocurrency is a widely used word. As e-commerce becomes increasingly important, more Techno-Indians are buying online. Bitcoin was created in 2009 as an internet currency. Financial institutions bridged the buyer-seller divide. They processed trustworthy e-payments. Even if the gap was filled, buyer and seller trade operations remained dependent. This research examines cryptocurrency's influence on Indians. This reliance helped create Cryptocurrency. This will help India advance in e-commerce. Cryptocurrency will help Indians, but not necessarily the country.

Muneer Shaik, George Varghese, Vinodh Madhavan

We investigate the dynamic volatility connectedness of regional stocks, gold, Bitcoin, oil, and uncertainty index related to infectious diseases for the period from January 2014 to June 2022. We investigate the connectivity during Ebola & MERS periods, the normal period, the COVID-19 period and the full sample period. We find that the regional stock indices of the US, Europe, Africa and Latin America are net volatility transmitters whereas regional indices of Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and other assets like gold, oil and Bitcoin are net volatility recipients throughout the sample periods. By employing the TVP-VAR-based dynamic connectedness approach, we find the temporal evolution of system-wide total connectedness and pair-wise connectedness of financial assets to exhibit higher intensity of volatility spillover during the COVID-19 pandemic as compared to other sub-sample periods. We further observe, based on quantile connectedness approach, that the degree of dynamic connectedness is strong and significant across all the quantile spectrums only during the COVID-19 period. We observe that the safe haven characteristics of assets like gold, oil and Bitcoin diminish during the COVID-19 period due to strong dynamic connectedness with regional stock indices. Our findings have implications for policymakers, investors and portfolio managers in better risk management during periods of health epidemics and pandemics.

Nader Naifar, Sohale Altamimi

Purpose This paper investigates the impact of global sentiment and various coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related media coverage news (Media-Hype index; Panic Index; Media Coverage Index, infodemic index and coronavirus statistics) on the dynamics of bitcoin returns during the COVID-19 pandemic using an asymmetric framework. Design/methodology/approach The authors use an asymmetric framework based on quantile regression (QR) and quantile-on-quantile regression. Findings QR results show that COVID-19 panic news negatively affects bitcoin market returns at times of extreme bearish. However, COVID-19 bullish sentiment negatively impacts bitcoin market returns during bullish market conditions. Quantile-on-quantile approach's (QQA) empirical results show that the effects of COVID-19-related news on bitcoin returns were heterogeneous, mainly negative and varied across quantiles. Research limitations/implications The authors find some significant differences regarding the impact of news on bitcoin return dynamics compared to stock markets, suggesting the safe-haven role of bitcoin against stock during the ongoing epidemic. Practical implications The authors find some significant differences regarding the impact of news on bitcoin return dynamics compared to stock markets, suggesting the safe-haven role of bitcoin against stock during the ongoing epidemic. Originality/value This study contributes to understanding the dynamics of bitcoin returns using various COVID-19 media news.

Hwang Kim

Purpose This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of travel cryptocurrency and stock markets over a long period during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach A generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model was developed for 6 travel cryptocurrencies and the top 10 hotel, 7 airline and 26 restaurant stocks listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. An event-study approach was applied to the emergence of the novel coronavirus and its variant, Omicron. Additionally, abnormal returns of the respective assets in response to such events were estimated. Findings Results indicated that the travel cryptocurrency market did not respond to the early stage of the pandemic, but NASDAQ hotel, restaurant and airline stocks revealed abnormal negative returns when the pandemic manifested in the USA. Upon the official US declaration of a pandemic, both cryptocurrencies and tourism stocks showed abnormal negative returns, but these were considerably greater among stocks than cryptocurrencies. Conversely, in response to the Omicron variant, only hotel, restaurant and airline stocks showed abnormal negative returns. Practical implications These results imply that travel cryptocurrencies are a financial instrument independent of hotel, restaurant or airline stocks. Thus, adopting travel cryptocurrencies may help investors and businesses diversify risk during long-duration crises such as COVID-19. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the recently emerging travel cryptocurrency market using an event-study approach to investigate how it differs from tourism stock performances.

Elvin Shava, David Mhlanga

With the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) wave engulfing African governments, the need to do, and use something new has already infiltrated many public sector organizations. While modern technologies are being embraced in the private sector, African governments are emulating new technologies and other Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to advance their economies while managing the risk that these sophisticated technologies can trigger. Blockchain technology is one of the emerging 4IR technology that is believed to have the capacity to mitigate bureaucratic inefficiencies, although scholars argue implementing such comes at a higher price. To understand how blockchain can help reduce inefficiencies in African bureaucracy, the researchers employed the systematic literature review analysis where documents from various databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were systematically sampled depending on how they offer meaningful data concerning blockchain implementation. The analyses of these secondary sources revealed multiple challenges and opportunities associated with blockchain technology in the African government. The challenges include poor project management, weak institutions that do not uphold accountability and transparency in data entry using blockchain, unavailability of blockchain infrastructure, risk-averse attitude, and absence of institutional readiness. By implementing enabling technology policies in government, the study revealed that blockchain could help improve taxation in African bureaucracies and mitigate data altering and errors while maximizing efficiency. Further merits in public healthcare and education can be realized by using blockchain technology. The conclusions drawn from this study have shown that for African bureaucracy to thrive using blockchain technology, there is a need to prepare public sector institutions to embrace blockchain technology. At the same time, investment in soft and technical skills remains fundamental to mitigate inefficiencies in public service provision. Institutional readiness is another deterrent to blockchain technology as public administration regard this technology as demanding since it may require change, and management where institutions and structures are reshuffled to respond to the demands of blockchain technology in the delivery of public goods.

Bikramaditya Ghosh, Dimıtrios Paparas

Blockchain can support the food supply chain in several aspects. Particularly, food traceability and trading across pre-existing contracts can make the supply chain fast, error-free, and support in detecting potential fraud. A proper algorithm, keeping in mind specific geographic, demographic, and additional essential parameters, would let the automated market maker (AMM) supply ample liquidity to pre-determined orders. AMMs are usually run by a set of sequential algorithms called a ‘smart contract’ (SM). Appropriate use of SM reduces food waste, contamination, extra or no delivery in due course, and, possibly most significantly, increases traceability. However, SM has definite vulnerabilities, making it less adaptable at times. We are investigating whether they are genuinely vulnerable during stressful periods or not. We considered seven SM platforms, namely, Fabric, Ethereum (ETH), Waves, NEM (XEM), Tezos (XTZ), Algorand (ALGO), and Stellar (XLM), as the proxies for food supply-chain-based smart contracts from 29 August 2021 to 5 October 2022. This period coincides with three stressed events: Delta (Covid II), Omicron (Covid III), and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We found strong traces of risk transmission, comovement, and interdependence of SM return among the diversified SMs; however, the SMs focused on the food supply chain ended up as net receivers of shocks at both of the extreme tails. All these SMs share a stronger connection in both positive shocks (bullish) and negative shocks (bearish).

Maaz Khan, Maaz Khan, Umar Nawaz Kayani, Mrestyal Khan · 7 authors

Across the globe, COVID-19 has disrupted the financial markets, making them more volatile. Thus, this paper examines the market volatility and asymmetric behavior of Bitcoin, EUR, S&amp;P 500 index, Gold, Crude Oil, and Sugar during the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied the GARCH (1, 1), GJR-GARCH (1, 1), and EGARCH (1, 1) econometric models on the daily time series returns data ranging from 27 November 2018 to 15 June 2021. The empirical findings show a high level of volatility persistence in all the financial markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the Crude Oil and S&amp;P 500 index shows significant positive asymmetric behavior during the pandemic. Apart from this, the results also reveal that EGARCH is the most appropriate model to capture the volatilities of the financial markets before the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas during the COVID-19 period and for the whole period, each GARCH family evenly models the volatile behavior of the six financial markets. This study provides financial investors and policymakers with useful insight into adopting effective strategies for constructing portfolios during crises in the future.

Agatha Pricillia Sekar Tamtomo, Nanda Farhanah, Doddy Setiawan

This article aims to explain the effect of overconfidence, emotion, and experience on risk perception, using SEM-PLS Method. The expected findings are a negative relationship between overconfidence on risk perception, a positive relationship between emotion on risk perception, also a positive relationship between experience on risk perception. This study explains whether the unusual behaviors of generation Z cryptocurrency investors, during the COVID-19 pandemic, have a correlation with their risk perception. Researchers hope that this research can provide investors and practitioners with an understanding to better understand individual investor interests and consumer behavior toward generation Z cryptocurrency investors in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ştefan Cristian Gherghina, Liliana Nicoleta Simionescu

This paper explores the asymmetric effect of COVID-19 pandemic news, as measured by the coronavirus indices (Panic, Hype, Fake News, Sentiment, Infodemic, and Media Coverage), on the cryptocurrency market. Using daily data from January 2020 to September 2021 and the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model, the results revealed that both adverse and optimistic news had the same effect on Bitcoin returns, indicating fear of missing out behavior does not prevail. Furthermore, when the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model is estimated, both positive and negative shocks in pandemic indices promote Bitcoin's daily changes; thus, Bitcoin is resistant to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic crisis and may serve as a hedge during market turmoil. The analysis of frequency domain causality supports a unidirectional causality running from the Coronavirus Fake News Index and Sentiment Index to Bitcoin returns, whereas daily fluctuations in the Bitcoin price Granger affect the Coronavirus Panic Index and the Hype Index. These findings may have significant policy implications for investors and governments because they highlight the importance of news during turbulent times. The empirical results indicate that pandemic news could significantly influence Bitcoin's price.

Slah Bahloul, Mourad Mroua, Nader Naifar

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the hedge, safe-haven and diversifier properties of Islamic indexes, Bitcoin and gold for ten of the most affected countries by the coronavirus, which are the USA, Brazil, the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Russia, China and Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach This research uses the Ratner and Chiu (2013) methodology based on the dynamic conditional correlation models to improve Baur and McDermott (2010). The authors adopt a careful investigation of the features of a diversifier, hedge and safe haven using the dynamic conditional correlation–GARCH and quantile regression models. Findings Empirical results indicate that Islamic indexes are not considered as hedge assets for the conventional market for all studied countries during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis period. However, gold works as a strong hedge in all countries, except for Brazil and Malaysia. Bitcoin is a strong hedge in the USA and a strong hedge and safe haven in China. Practical implications International investors in China and the US stock markets should replace Islamic ‎indexes with Bitcoin in their conventional portfolio of securities during the pandemic. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that re-evaluates the hedge, safe-haven and diversifier properties of Islamic indexes, Bitcoin and gold for ten of the most affected countries by the coronavirus.

Lin Li

No abstract is available for this record.

Maya F. Farah, Muhammad Naveed, Shoaib Ali

No abstract is available for this record.