Hur kryptovalutor påverkas av centralbankers räntebesked - Är kryptovalutamarknadens prisutveckling oberoende av globala penningpolitiska beslut?

Abstract

There are currently almost 5,000 listed cryptocurrencies with a market value of over $200 billion, claiming to be independent of governmental decisions (Coinmarketcap, 2019). The aim with this study was to investigate whether today's cryptocurrencies are independent of governmental decisions by seeing how their prices are affected by interest rate announcements. This was done with the help of a number of different OLS models that compared the daily returns of Bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum with the announcement of raising, lowering or leaving the interest rate unchanged of the following central banks; Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan. In addition, control variables such as stock market developments, gold prices and oil prices were included in the regressions. The report concludes that all central banks except Federal Reserve had an impact on the development of the three cryptocurrencies. Differences between the effects from some central banks on some cryptocurrencies can be explained by chosen time period, available data and that other factors are more important as value drivers than interest rate decisions. One conclusion of this is that cryptocurrencies are moving towards becoming more decentralized and independent of governmental decisions. It also appears that despite its distinctive properties as an intermediary currency in the exchange of fiat currencies, Ripple is not affected to a greater extent by interest rate announcements than Bitcoin and Ethereum are. Since no uniform effect on interest rate increases or interest rate cuts could be discerned from this study, nothing can be said about how central banks can conceivably control the cryptocurrency market's price development.