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Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

2022

Cryptocurrency

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The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang Aug 2022

The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that ongoing zero portfolio weights in cryptocurrency are surprisingly difficult to generate in a standard Bayesian portfolio theory framework. With ten years of prior data, equity market investors would need very pessimistic priors on mean returns to justify never having bought cryptocurrency: -10.6% per month for Bitcoin, and -19.6% per month for a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, most priors that involve never purchasing cryptocurrency imply that investors should short cryptocurrency. Optimal absolute weights are generally small but non-trivial (1-5%), frequently positive, and fairly smooth despite returns being volatile. Under a wide range of priors, the certainty equivalent …


Flight To Bitcoin, Yang Yu, Jinyuan Zhang Feb 2022

Flight To Bitcoin, Yang Yu, Jinyuan Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper uncovers an overlooked motivation of Bitcoin investment: investors hold Bitcoin as an asset on which government authorities have limited influence. Consistent with this motivation, we document a flight-to-Bitcoin (FTB) phenomenon whereby local demand for Bitcoin increases with local economic policy uncertainties and Bitcoin ownership shifts from centralized exchanges to decentralized wallets amid such turbulence. FTB is driven by investors’ lack of confidence in government as FTB is stronger in countries where the confidence in government is low and corruption incidents surge. Finally, a comparison with safe-haven assets further differentiates FTB from flight-to-safety.