The impact of Russian-Ukrainian Conflict on the Dynamics of Bitcoin

Abstract

On February 24, 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked a full-scale escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict into war. The global economy and finance were affected by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which most obvious is that crude oil prices continued to rise rapidly. With the development of the times, cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more important and cannot be ignored. Cryptocurrency may serve as an effective alternative or balancing asset to cash, which may depreciate over time due to inflation. In addition to the real commodity market, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict would certainly have a certain impact on the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and can represent the changes in the entire cryptocurrency market to a certain extent. This paper examines the dynamic impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on Bitcoin returns and volatility. There are two main results in this paper: the increase in the futures crude oil price has a significant dynamic correlation with the Bitcoin yield, but this relationship is short-term and will disappear over time; the increase in futures crude oil prices will not lead to greater fluctuations in Bitcoin yields. This result can be generalized to the entire cryptocurrency market, which means the Russian-Ukrainian conflict would have a short-term impact on the entire cryptocurrency, but this effect won’t continue for the long-term. Also, this research shows that the cryptocurrency market is independent to some extent.