Predicting Crypto-asset Returns with Past Returns-Volume

Do crypto-asset trading volumes usefully predict returns? In the August 2018 draft of their paper entitled “Trading Volume in Cryptocurrency Markets”, Daniele Bianchi and Alexander Dickerson investigate the power of crypto-asset trading volumes to predict future returns. They calculate volumes and returns based on either 12-hour or 24-hour intervals. They process these inputs as follows:

• To detect volume abnormalities, they estimate its log deviation from trend over a rolling 21-interval window. To put different crypto-assets on an equal footing, they then standardized by dividing by its log standard deviation over the same window.
• They measure past returns over the same interval, denominated in bitcoins, (thereby including Bitcoin only indirectly). To emphasize the most liquid exchanges, they weight returns by volume when aggregating.

To assess economic significance of findings, they double-sort crypto-assets first into two to four groups ranked by the return metric and then within each group into three or four subgroups ranked by the volume metric. Using intraday (10-minute) price and volume data for 26 crypto-assets from over 150 exchanges (90% of total crypto-asset market capitalization), each denominated in bitcoins, during January 1, 2017 through May 10, 2018, they find that:

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