Evaluating Asset Bubbles within Cryptocurrencies using the LPPL Model
By Rafal Rokosz
The advent of blockchain technology has created a new asset class named cryptocurrencies that have experienced tremendous price appreciation leading to speculation that the asset class is experiencing an asset bubble. This paper examines the novelty and functionality of cryptocurrencies and potential factors that may lead to conclude the existence of an asset bubble. To empirically evaluate whether the asset class is experiencing an asset bubble the LPPL model is used. The LPPL model was able to successfully identify two of the four crashes within the data set signifying that cryptocurrencies are within an asset bubble.
Advisors: Ed Tiryakian and Grace Kim | JEL Codes: G12, Z00, C60
Effect of Sentiment on Bitcoin Price Formation
By Brian Perry-Carrera
With the recent growth in the investment of cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, it has become increasingly relevant to understand what drives price formation. Given that investment in bitcoin is greatly determined by speculation, this paper seeks to find the econometric relationship between public sentiment and the price of bitcoin. After scraping over 500,000 tweets related to bitcoin, sentiment analysis was performed for each tweet and then aggregated for each day between December 1st, 2017 and December 31st, 2017. This study found that both gold futures and market volatility are negatively related to the price of bitcoin, while sentiment demonstrates a positive relationship.
Advisor: Grace Kim | JEL Codes: G12, G41, Z00
