Investigating the Market Linkages between Cryptocurrencies and Conventional Assets

Abstract

Many investors include cryptocurrencies as potential investment tools in their portfolios. Previous studies have mostly analyzed Bitcoin regarding its hedge and safe haven features. Although the cryptocurrency market has expanded far beyond Bitcoin, few studies have examined the interaction among all other cryptocurrencies and conventional financial assets. For this purpose, as the dependent variable, we included the cryptocurrency index to represent the cryptocurrency market, whereas international stocks, bonds, United States (US) dollars, gold, and commodities as independent variables in the analysis. The interactions among the variables were analyzed using the Granger causality tests. The analysis results revealed a two-way causality relationship between the cryptocurrency market and the bond markets, indicating that the cryptocurrency index can be used to predict bond prices and vice versa.