When bitcoin lost its position: Cryptocurrency uncertainty and the dynamic spillover among cryptocurrencies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the dynamic spillovers among the major cryptocurrencies under different market conditions and accounts for the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. We also investigate whether cryptocurrency policy (CCPO) uncertainty and cryptocurrency price (CCPR) uncertainty affect the dynamic connectedness. We adopt the Quantile-VAR approach to capture the left and right tails of the distributions corresponding to return spillovers under different market conditions. Generally, cryptocurrencies show heterogeneous responses to the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the total spillover index (TCI) varies across quantiles and rises widely during extreme market conditions, with a noticeable impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bitcoin lost its position as a dominant “hedger” during the health crisis, while Litecoin became the most dominant “hedger” and/or “safe-haven” asset before and during the pandemic period. Moreover, our analysis shows a significant impact of market uncertainties on total and net connectedness among the five cryptocurrencies. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic crisis plays a vital role on the relationship between CCPO as well as CCPR and the dynamic connectedness across all market conditions.