Transaction activity and bitcoin realized volatility

Abstract

We study the predictive value of transaction activity in the bitcoin network for the realized volatility of bitcoin returns constructed by high-frequency data. As an alternative modeling approach to the popular linear heterogeneous autoregressive model, we provide out-of-sample forecasts for realized volatility of bitcoin returns employing machine learning algorithms, and in particular by Random Forests. Our findings reveal that on-blockchain transaction activity does improve the out-of-sample forecast accuracy at all the forecast horizons considered.