IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2601.20336.html

Are Whitepaper Claims Reflected in Market Structure? A Contamination-Aware Pipeline and a Power-Limited Null

Author

Listed:
  • Murad Farzulla

Abstract

Do the functional narratives in cryptocurrency whitepapers correspond to their tokens' market behaviour? We compare ten-category topical-emphasis profiles for 43 screened documents with seven market statistics calculated from 2023--2024 exchange data. The primary specification reconstructs USD notional turnover from hourly bars. Dimension-matched Procrustes congruence is $\phi=0.280$ (permutation $p=0.507$), slightly below its permutation-null mean of $0.284$; the zero-padded statistic gives the same non-detection. A four-leg comparison separates document replacement from changes in the assets included. Replacing documents on the 34 common assets changes padded congruence by $-0.014$ under USD turnover and $-0.009$ under base-token volume. Entity rankings and threshold crossings depend on both composition and specification, so an earlier contamination-only attribution is withdrawn. The documents are not a verified historical corpus: at least two postdate the market window. Excluding these documents, or excluding all seven assets with shorter histories, does not produce a significant alignment. Fresh numerical simulations distinguish injected signal from fitted congruence and compare noise restricted to the market subspace with noise throughout the text space. At the lowest classifier-agreement scenario, detection remains below $43\%$ even at the largest injected signal. These are conditional checks of the alignment stage, not validation of the text instrument or exclusion bounds on economic effects. The contribution is an auditable non-detection and a specification-sensitive corpus diagnosis, with the inferential limits made explicit.

Suggested Citation

  • Murad Farzulla, 2026. "Are Whitepaper Claims Reflected in Market Structure? A Contamination-Aware Pipeline and a Power-Limited Null," Papers 2601.20336, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2026.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2601.20336
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20336
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Korniotis, George & Bhambhwani, Siddharth & Delikouras, Stefanos, 2019. "Blockchain Characteristics and the Cross-Section of Cryptocurrency Returns," CEPR Discussion Papers 13724, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    2. Yuefeng Han & Dan Yang & Cun-Hui Zhang & Rong Chen, 2021. "CP Factor Model for Dynamic Tensors," Papers 2110.15517, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    3. Momtaz, Paul P., 2021. "Entrepreneurial Finance and Moral Hazard: Evidence from Token Offerings," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(5).
    4. G. Livan & S. Alfarano & E. Scalas, 2011. "The fine structure of spectral properties for random correlation matrices: an application to financial markets," Papers 1102.4076, arXiv.org.
    5. Tomaso Aste, 2019. "Cryptocurrency market structure: connecting emotions and economics," Papers 1903.00472, arXiv.org.
    6. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    7. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.
    8. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    9. Tomaso Aste, 2019. "Cryptocurrency market structure: connecting emotions and economics," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 5-21, November.
    10. Dobrynskaya, Victoria, 2024. "Is downside risk priced in cryptocurrency market?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    11. Paul C. Tetlock, 2007. "Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1139-1168, June.
    12. Frank Brokken, 1983. "Orthogonal procrustes rotation maximizing congruence," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 343-352, September.
    13. Kearney, Colm & Liu, Sha, 2014. "Textual sentiment in finance: A survey of methods and models," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 171-185.
    14. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2007. "Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 129-152, Spring.
    15. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    16. Bruce Korth & Ledyard Tucker, 1975. "The distribution of chance congruence coefficients from simulated data," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 40(3), pages 361-372, September.
    17. Sabrina T Howell & Marina Niessner & David Yermack & Jiang Wei, 2020. "Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(9), pages 3925-3974.
    18. Daniele Bianchi & Mykola Babiak, 2021. "A Factor Model for Cryptocurrency Returns," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp710, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    19. Ozkan Haykir & Ibrahim Yagli, 2022. "Speculative bubbles and herding in cryptocurrencies," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 1-33, December.
    20. Antonio Briola & Tomaso Aste, 2022. "Dependency structures in cryptocurrency market from high to low frequency," Papers 2206.03386, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2022.
    21. P. Robert & Y. Escoufier, 1976. "A Unifying Tool for Linear Multivariate Statistical Methods: The RV‐Coefficient," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 25(3), pages 257-265, November.
    22. Yukun Liu & Aleh Tsyvinski & Xi Wu, 2022. "Common Risk Factors in Cryptocurrency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(2), pages 1133-1177, April.
    23. 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.
    24. Kemal Kirtac & Guido Germano, 2025. "Large language models in finance : what is financial sentiment?," Papers 2503.03612, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2025.
    25. 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.
    26. Thewissen, James & Shrestha, Prabal & Torsin, Wouter & Pastwa, Anna M., 2022. "Unpacking the black box of ICO white papers: A topic modeling approach," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    27. Florysiak, David & Schandlbauer, Alexander, 2022. "Experts or charlatans? ICO analysts and white paper informativeness," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Wolfgang Drobetz & Lars Hornuf & Paul P. Momtaz & Niclas Schermann, 2025. "Token-Based Crowdfunding: Investor Choice and the Optimal Timing of Initial Coin Offerings," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 49(1), pages 232-282, January.
    2. Hadhri, Sinda & Younus, Mehak & Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2025. "Listening to the Market: Music sentiment and cryptocurrency returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Wang, Yuyuan, 2026. "Investor attention, investor sentiment and media in stock market: A literature review and research agenda," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. Seok, Sang Ik & Cho, Hoon & Ryu, Doojin, 2019. "Firm-specific investor sentiment and daily stock returns," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    5. Prajwal Eachempati & Praveen Ranjan Srivastava, 2021. "Accounting for unadjusted news sentiment for asset pricing," Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 13(3), pages 383-422, May.
    6. Moser, Stefanie, 2025. "Do whitepapers matter? Investigating the long-term effects of cryptocurrency whitepapers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PB).
    7. Qingyuan Han, 2025. "Understanding price momentum, market fluctuations, and crashes: insights from the extended Samuelson model," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-37, December.
    8. Erdinc Akyildirim & Ahmet Faruk Aysan & Oguzhan Cepni & Özge Serbest, 2024. "Sentiment matters: the effect of news-media on spillovers among cryptocurrency returns," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(14), pages 1577-1613, September.
    9. Daniele Ballinari & Simon Behrendt, 2021. "How to gauge investor behavior? A comparison of online investor sentiment measures," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 169-204, June.
    10. Baker, Malcolm & Wurgler, Jeffrey & Yuan, Yu, 2012. "Global, local, and contagious investor sentiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 272-287.
    11. Carolina Camassa, 2023. "Legal NLP Meets MiCAR: Advancing the Analysis of Crypto White Papers," Papers 2310.10333, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    12. Lachana, Ioanna & Schröder, David, 2025. "Investor sentiment and stock returns: Wisdom of crowds or power of words? Evidence from Seeking Alpha and Wall Street Journal," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    13. Zhang, Yaojie & Tian, Linxing & Zhang, Zhikai, 2025. "Petroleum volatility spillover index and stock return predictability," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    14. Wang, Wenzhao & Duxbury, Darren, 2021. "Institutional investor sentiment and the mean-variance relationship: Global evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 415-441.
    15. Utku Uygur & Oktay Taş, 2014. "The impacts of investor sentiment on returns and conditional volatility of international stock markets," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1165-1179, May.
    16. An, Suwei, 2023. "Essays on incentive contracts, M&As, and firm risk," Other publications TiSEM dd97d2f5-1c9d-47c5-ba62-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Ramiah, Vikash & Xu, Xiaoming & Moosa, Imad A., 2015. "Neoclassical finance, behavioral finance and noise traders: A review and assessment of the literature," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 89-100.
    18. Zhou, Liyun & Yang, Chunpeng, 2019. "Stochastic investor sentiment, crowdedness and deviation of asset prices from fundamentals," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 130-140.
    19. Antonio Sánchez Serrano, 2018. "EU banks after the crisis: sinners in the hands of angry markets," Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(9), pages 24-51, May.
    20. Shiyang Huang & Xin Liu & Dong Lou & Christopher Polk, 2024. "The Booms and Busts of Beta Arbitrage," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(8), pages 5367-5385, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2601.20336. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    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.