IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/epolin/v47y2020i1d10.1007_s40812-019-00135-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The bitcoin: a sparkling bubble or price discovery?

Author

Listed:
  • Imad A. Moosa

    (RMIT)

Abstract

The phenomenal rise in the price of bitcoin, prior to the trend reversal of early 2018, resembles a bubble as spectacular as any other bubble. A mere observation of the price rise and a comparison with the common characteristics of a bubble provide anecdotal evidence for the bitcoin bubble. Based on price and volume data up to the end of November 2017, formal empirical evidence is presented by using procedures that do not require the estimation of a fundamental value for bitcoin. The empirical evidence shows that (i) the volume of trading can be explained predominantly in terms of price dynamics; (ii) trading in bitcoin is based exclusively on technical considerations pertaining to past price movements, particularly positive price changes; and (iii) the price of bitcoin is an explosive process. These findings are interpreted to imply a price bubble.

Suggested Citation

  • Imad A. Moosa, 2020. "The bitcoin: a sparkling bubble or price discovery?," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 47(1), pages 93-113, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:epolin:v:47:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s40812-019-00135-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s40812-019-00135-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40812-019-00135-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40812-019-00135-9?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. David Garcia & Claudio Juan Tessone & Pavlin Mavrodiev & Nicolas Perony, 2014. "The digital traces of bubbles: feedback cycles between socio-economic signals in the Bitcoin economy," Papers 1408.1494, arXiv.org.
    2. Peter C. B. Phillips & Jun Yu, 2011. "Dating the timeline of financial bubbles during the subprime crisis," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(3), pages 455-491, November.
    3. Peter C. B. Phillips & Yangru Wu & Jun Yu, 2011. "EXPLOSIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE 1990s NASDAQ: WHEN DID EXUBERANCE ESCALATE ASSET VALUES?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 201-226, February.
    4. Olivier J. Blanchard & Mark W. Watson, 1982. "Bubbles, Rational Expectations and Financial Markets," NBER Working Papers 0945, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Robert J. Shiller, 1984. "Stock Prices and Social Dynamics," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 15(2), pages 457-510.
    6. Bariviera, Aurelio F. & Basgall, María José & Hasperué, Waldo & Naiouf, Marcelo, 2017. "Some stylized facts of the Bitcoin market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 484(C), pages 82-90.
    7. Diba, Behzad T & Grossman, Herschel I, 1988. "Explosive Rational Bubbles in Stock Prices?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 520-530, June.
    8. Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2018. "Datestamping the Bitcoin and Ethereum bubbles," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 81-88.
    9. Andr Tomfort, 2017. "Detecting Asset Price Bubbles: A Multifactor Approach," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 46-55.
    10. Gandal, Neil & Hamrick, JT & Moore, Tyler & Oberman, Tali, 2018. "Price manipulation in the Bitcoin ecosystem," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 86-96.
    11. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    12. Frankel, Jeffrey A & Froot, Kenneth A, 1990. "Chartists, Fundamentalists, and Trading in the Foreign Exchange Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 181-185, May.
    13. Blau, Benjamin M., 2018. "Price dynamics and speculative trading in Bitcoin," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 15-21.
    14. Cheah, Eng-Tuck & Fry, John, 2015. "Speculative bubbles in Bitcoin markets? An empirical investigation into the fundamental value of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 32-36.
    15. Kenneth D. West, 1987. "A Specification Test for Speculative Bubbles," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 553-580.
    16. David Garcia & Claudio Tessone & Pavlin Mavrodiev & Nicolas Perony, "undated". "The digital traces of bubbles: feedback cycles between socio-economic signals in the Bitcoin economy," Working Papers ETH-RC-14-001, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
    17. Detken, Carsten & Adalid, Ramón, 2007. "Liquidity shocks and asset price boom/bust cycles," Working Paper Series 732, European Central Bank.
    18. Adrian (Wai-Kong) Cheung & Eduardo Roca & Jen-Je Su, 2015. "Crypto-currency bubbles: an application of the Phillips-Shi-Yu (2013) methodology on Mt. Gox bitcoin prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(23), pages 2348-2358, May.
    19. C. Baek & M. Elbeck, 2015. "Bitcoins as an investment or speculative vehicle? A first look," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 30-34, January.
    20. Imad A. Moosa, 2017. "Econometrics as a Con Art," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 17257.
    21. Imad A. Moosa & Vikash Ramiah, 2017. "The Financial Consequences of Behavioural Biases," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-69389-7, January.
    22. LeRoy, Stephen F & Porter, Richard D, 1981. "The Present-Value Relation: Tests Based on Implied Variance Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 555-574, May.
    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. Andrew Phiri, 2022. "Can wavelets produce a clearer picture of weak-form market efficiency in Bitcoin?," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(3), pages 373-386, September.
    2. Saji Thazhungal Govindan Nair, 2021. "On extreme value theory in the presence of technical trend: pre and post Covid-19 analysis of cryptocurrency markets," Journal of Financial Economic Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(4), pages 533-561, December.
    3. Bao Doan & Huy Pham & Binh Nguyen Thanh, 2022. "Price discovery in the cryptocurrency market: evidence from institutional activity," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 49(1), pages 111-131, March.
    4. Ludovic Tangpi & Shichun Wang, 2022. "Optimal Bubble Riding: A Mean Field Game with Varying Entry Times," Papers 2209.04001, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    5. Andrei Dragos Popescu, 2021. "Macroeconomic Forces That Influence Alternative Assets Pricing," Management Strategies Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 52(2), pages 52-60.
    6. Giancarlo Giudici & Alistair Milne & Dmitri Vinogradov, 2020. "Cryptocurrencies: market analysis and perspectives," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, March.

    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. Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2018. "Datestamping the Bitcoin and Ethereum bubbles," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 81-88.
    2. Parthajit Kayal & Purnima Rohilla, 2021. "Bitcoin in the economics and finance literature: a survey," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    3. Zheng-Zheng Li & Ran Tao & Chi-Wei Su & Oana-Ramona Lobonţ, 2019. "Does Bitcoin bubble burst?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 91-105, January.
    4. Su, Chi-Wei & Li, Zheng-Zheng & Tao, Ran & Si, Deng-Kui, 2018. "Testing for multiple bubbles in bitcoin markets: A generalized sup ADF test," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 56-63.
    5. Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian & Urquhart, Andrew & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 182-199.
    6. Andrea Flori, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies In Finance: Review And Applications," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(05), pages 1-22, August.
    7. Yuchao Fan, 2022. "Dissecting the dot-com bubble in the 1990s NASDAQ," Papers 2206.14130, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    8. Assaf, Ata & Demir, Ender & Ersan, Oguz, 2024. "Detecting and date-stamping bubbles in fan tokens," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 98-113.
    9. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    10. Su, Chi-Wei & Li, Zheng-Zheng & Chang, Hsu-Ling & Lobonţ, Oana-Ramona, 2017. "When Will Occur the Crude Oil Bubbles?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 1-6.
    11. Yao, Can-Zhong & Li, Hong-Yu, 2021. "A study on the bursting point of Bitcoin based on the BSADF and LPPLS methods," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    12. Kyriazis, Nikolaos & Papadamou, Stephanos & Corbet, Shaen, 2020. "A systematic review of the bubble dynamics of cryptocurrency prices," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    13. Tolhurst, Tor N., 2018. "A Model-Free Bubble Detection Method: Application to the World Market for Superstar Wines," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274387, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Christie Smith & Aaron Kumar, 2018. "Crypto‐Currencies – An Introduction To Not‐So‐Funny Moneys," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(5), pages 1531-1559, December.
    15. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Stengos, Thanasis & Vravosinos, Orestis, 2019. "The effects of markets, uncertainty and search intensity on bitcoin returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 220-242.
    16. Gutierrez, Luciano, 2011. "Bootstrapping asset price bubbles," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2488-2493.
    17. Efthymios Pavlidis & Alisa Yusupova & Ivan Paya & David Peel & Enrique Martínez-García & Adrienne Mack & Valerie Grossman, 2016. "Episodes of Exuberance in Housing Markets: In Search of the Smoking Gun," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 419-449, November.
    18. Enoksen, F.A. & Landsnes, Ch.J. & Lučivjanská, K. & Molnár, P., 2020. "Understanding risk of bubbles in cryptocurrencies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 129-144.
    19. Zhao, Yanping & Chang, Hsu-Ling & Su, Chi-Wei & Nian, Rui, 2015. "Gold bubbles: When are they most likely to occur?," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34, pages 17-23.
    20. Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Tsionas, Efthymios G. & Konstantakis, Konstantinos N., 2016. "Non-linearities in financial bubbles: Theory and Bayesian evidence from S&P500," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 61-70.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bitcoin; Cryptocurrencies; Bubbles price discovery; Fundamental value;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:spr:epolin:v:47:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s40812-019-00135-9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.