It might seem like Bitcoin’s ties to broader financial markets are strengthening as other risky assets also sell off, but cryptocurrencies are still dancing to their own tune -- even if the song is starting to sound like a requiem.
Enthusiasts often say fund managers who want to diversify should buy digital coins since they’re uncorrelated to other assets. That lack of a relationship has proven true even in the roiled markets of recent days but, unfortunately for crypto investors, it’s not because digital assets have gained while the broader market sells off. Rather, it’s because the cryptocurrency selloff has dragged on for longer and sunk even deeper.
“Non-correlation is not the same as inverse correlation so there’s no guarantee that when the market goes down crypto will go up,” said Matt Hougan, vice president of research and development at Bitwise Asset Management Inc. “Over the long term, we think the fundamental drivers of crypto are different from the fundamental driver of equities and other assets, and we would expect the low correlation to persist.”
When testing Bitcoin’s correlation against major stocks, currencies and commodities indexes, the coefficient rarely swings above 0.5, where 1 signals a strong positive correlation (assets moving in the same directions), and -1 signals a strong negative correlation (asset moving in opposite directions).
That’s not to say there are no connections between the general market and cryptos. Economic crises and especially deeply devalued currencies often prompt people suffering the consequences to buy Bitcoin and other digital coins. Trading volume in Turkey’s cryptocurrency exchanges jumped on Monday as the lira plummeted, according to data on CoinMarketCap, a website which tracks crypto markets data, but that wasn’t enough to boost digital assets.
Even with Wednesday’s rally, Bitcoin is down about 10 percent in August, briefly dipping below $6,000 for the first time since June, compared with declines of less than 10 percent in emerging markets stocks and currencies, according to MSCI Inc. indexes. The largest cryptocurrency is down almost 70 percent from its all time high in December. While steep, it’s done better than most smaller coins which are down 90 percent from their all time high, according to the Bitwise 70 Small Cap Crypto Index.
The cryptocurrency’s swoon has more to do with a correction after the market soared almost 50 times last year, regulators’ latest rejection of efforts to introduce a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund and ongoing concern that it’s so far shown little practical use as a currency.
Recent academic research backs up the notion that Bitcoin isn’t linked to any other major financial assets. A study conducted by Western Carolina University concluded that even though it’s not correlated, “the short-term price fluctuations may make Bitcoin a better candidate for portfolio construction at the institutional level rather than the individual investor level,” professors Lawrence Trautman and Taft Dorman wrote in the July paper.
While cryptocurrencies aren’t correlated with other asset classes, they’re strongly correlated among themselves. Bitcoin has held a correlation of over 0.7 with Bitwise’s 70 Small Cap and 10 Large Cap crypto indexes for most of the year. This means that while a traditional portfolio manager might add cryptocurrencies for diversification, investors really in need to diversify are those holding mostly digital assets.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.