Empirical Crypto Asset Pricing

Abstract: We motivate the study of the crypto asset class with eleven empirical facts, and study the drivers of crypto asset returns through the lens of univariate factors. We argue crypto assets are a new, attractive, and independent asset class. In a novel and rigorously built panel of crypto assets, we examine pricing ability of sixty three asset characteristics to find rich signal content across the characteristics and at several future horizons. Only univariate financial factors (i.e., functions of previous returns) were associated with statistically significant long-short strategies, suggestive of speculatively driven returns as opposed to more fundamental pricing factors.