IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v52y2023ics1544612322007498.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The instability of stablecoins

Author

Listed:
  • Duan, Kun
  • Urquhart, Andrew

Abstract

This paper examines the stability of the five largest stablecoins in terms of market capitalization through a fractional time series analysis. By using hourly data of Tether, USDC, Binance USD, DAI and PAX Dollar, we find strong evidence of instability of stablecoins, although these deviations from the $1 mark are gradually corrected at different speeds for all stablecoins except for DAI. For the latter, the deviations do not converge even in the long-run due to non-stationarity of the differentiated series between its price and the $1 mark. BUSD is found as the most stable stablecoin with the fastest correction speed. Further rolling-window analysis shows that stability of different stablecoins exhibits strong co-movement and time-variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Duan, Kun & Urquhart, Andrew, 2023. "The instability of stablecoins," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:52:y:2023:i:c:s1544612322007498
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.103573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612322007498
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2022.103573?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kristoufek, Ladislav, 2021. "Tethered, or Untethered? On the interplay between stablecoins and major cryptoassets," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    2. Duan, Kun & Li, Zeming & Urquhart, Andrew & Ye, Jinqiang, 2021. "Dynamic efficiency and arbitrage potential in Bitcoin: A long-memory approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Manmohan S. Kumar & Tatsuyoshi Okimoto, 2007. "Dynamics of Persistence in International Inflation Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(6), pages 1457-1479, September.
    4. Berk, Ales S. & Cummins, Mark & Dowling, Michael & Lucey, Brian M., 2017. "Psychological price barriers in frontier equities," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-14.
    5. Grobys, Klaus & Junttila, Juha & Kolari, James W. & Sapkota, Niranjan, 2021. "On the stability of stablecoins," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 207-223.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthias Hafner & Marco Henriques Pereira & Helmut Dietl & Juan Beccuti, 2023. "The four types of stablecoins: A comparative analysis," Papers 2308.07041, arXiv.org.
    2. David Vidal-Tom'as & Antonio Briola & Tomaso Aste, 2023. "FTX's downfall and Binance's consolidation: The fragility of centralised digital finance," Papers 2302.11371, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    3. Vidal-Tomás, David & Briola, Antonio & Aste, Tomaso, 2023. "FTX's downfall and Binance's consolidation: the fragility of centralised digital finance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119902, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhong, Meirui & Zhang, Rui & Ren, Xiaohang, 2023. "The time-varying effects of liquidity and market efficiency of the European Union carbon market: Evidence from the TVP-SVAR-SV approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    2. Sood, Kirti & Singh, Simarjeet & Behl, Abhishek & Sindhwani, Rahul & Kaur, Sandeepa & Pereira, Vijay, 2023. "Identification and prioritization of the risks in the mass adoption of artificial intelligence-driven stable coins: The quest for optimal resource utilization," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Yousaf, Imran & Jareño, Francisco & Esparcia, Carlos, 2022. "Tail connectedness between lending/borrowing tokens and commercial bank stocks," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    4. Jin, Feng & Li, Jingwei & Xue, Yi, 2023. "Preferring stablecoin over dollar: Evidence from a survey of Ethereum platform traders," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    5. Gadzinski, Gregory & Castello, Alessio & Mazzorana, Florie, 2023. "Stablecoins: Does design affect stability?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    6. Łęt, Blanka & Sobański, Konrad & Świder, Wojciech & Włosik, Katarzyna, 2023. "What drives the popularity of stablecoins? Measuring the frequency dynamics of connectedness between volatile and stable cryptocurrencies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    7. Okimoto, Tatsuyoshi & Shimotsu, Katsumi, 2010. "Decline in the persistence of real exchange rates, but not sufficient for purchasing power parity," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 395-411, September.
    8. Boubaker Heni & Canarella Giorgio & Miller Stephen M. & Gupta Rangan, 2017. "Time-varying persistence of inflation: evidence from a wavelet-based approach," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(4), pages 1-18, September.
    9. Juan José Echavarría & Enrique López & Martha Misas, 2011. "La persistencia estadística de la inflación en Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 29(65), pages 224-266, June.
    10. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Luis Alberiko Gil‐Alana & Tommaso Trani, 2022. "On the persistence of UK inflation: A long‐range dependence approach," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 439-454, January.
    11. Chen, Shyh-Wei & Hsu, Chi-Sheng, 2016. "Threshold, smooth transition and mean reversion in inflation: New evidence from European countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 23-36.
    12. Lanne Markku, 2015. "Noncausality and inflation persistence," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(4), pages 469-481, September.
    13. Canarella, Giorgio & Miller, Stephen M., 2017. "Inflation targeting and inflation persistence: New evidence from fractional integration and cointegration," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 45-62.
    14. Josu Arteche, 2012. "Standard and seasonal long memory in volatility: an application to Spanish inflation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 693-712, June.
    15. Juan Carlos Cuestas & Estefanía Mourelle, 2009. "Inflation persistence and asymmetries: evidence for African countries," NBS Discussion Papers in Economics 2009/2, Economics, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University.
    16. Holmes, Mark J. & Otero, Jesús, 2023. "Psychological price barriers, El Niño, La Niña: New insights for the case of coffee," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    17. Christos Alexakis & Mark Cummins & Michael Dowling & Vasileios Pappas, 2018. "A High-Frequency Analysis of Price Resolution and Pricing Barriers in Equities on the Adoption of a New Currency," Post-Print hal-01994666, HAL.
    18. Dora Almeida & Andreia Dionísio & Paulo Ferreira & Isabel Vieira, 2023. "Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cryptocurrency Markets: A DCCA Analysis," FinTech, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-17, May.
    19. Noriega, Antonio E. & Ramos-Francia, Manuel, 2009. "The dynamics of persistence in US inflation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 168-172, November.
    20. Ulrike Busch & Dieter Nautz, 2010. "Controllability and Persistence of Money Market Rates along the Yield Curve: Evidence from the Euro Area," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(3), pages 367-380, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:52:y:2023:i:c:s1544612322007498. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.