Characterizing the Cryptocurrency Market During Crisis

摘要

We conduct a network analysis with centrality measures, using historical daily close prices of top 120 cryptocurrencies between 2013 and 2020. to analyze the dynamic evolution and characteristics of the current cryptocurrency market. Our study has two primary findings: (1) the overall return correlation among the cryptocurrencies is weakening from 2013 to 2016 and then strengthening thereafter; (2) cryptocurrencies that are primarily used for transaction payment, notably BTC, dominate the market until mid-2016, followed by those developed for applications using blockchain as the underlying technology, particularly data storage and recording such as MAID and FCT, between mid-2016 and mid-2017. Since then, ETH has replaced BTC to become the benchmark cryptocurrencies. Interestingly, during the outbreak of COVID-19. QTUM and BNB have intermittently replaced ETH to take the leading positions, possibly due to their active community engagement during the pandemic.