The Effect of Countries' Independent Regulation on Cryptocurrency Markets

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have increasingly been traded against fiat currencies and as a result, governments globally have been trying to regulate these largely decentralized currencies. In this study, event study methodology has been used to evaluate the effect of regulatory announcements made by 25 countries. Based on cryptocurrency usage and returns of three major cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP, this study finds that regulatory news results in significant abnormal returns for Bitcoin and Ether, but not for XRP. The authors find that irrespective of the type of news, abnormal returns are almost always negative. The countries have also been clustered based on their abnormal returns and it has been found that country characteristics such as income level, technological readiness and innovation potential affect the magnitude of abnormal returns. Thus, cryptocurrencies being global in essence, their regulatory oversight in countries do not exist in isolation, but they are also affected by the countries' development.