Cryptocurrency Factor Model

Do simple factor models help explain future return variations across different cryptocurrencies, as they do for stocks? In their April 2019 paper entitled “Common Risk Factors in Cryptocurrency”, Yukun Liu, Aleh Tsyvinski and Xi Wu examine performances of cryptocurrency (coin) counterparts for 25 price-related and market-related stock market factors, broadly categorized as size, momentum, volume and volatility factors. They first construct a coin market index based on capitalization-weighted returns of all coins in their sample. They then each week sort coins into fifths based on each factor and calculate average excess return for a portfolio that is long (short) coins in the highest (lowest) quintile. Finally, they investigate whether any small group of factors accounts for returns of all significant factors. Using daily prices in U.S. dollars and non-return variables (excluding top and bottom 1% values as potential errors/outliers) for all coins with market capitalizations over $1 million dollars from Coinmarketcap.com during January 2014 through December 2018 (a total of 1,707 coins, growing from 109 in 2014 to 1,583 in 2018), they find that:

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