Currency or commodity competition? Bitcoin price trends in the post-pandemic era

Abstract

In the post-pandemic era, two issues including the currency competition between BTC and the US dollar and the competition between the commodity and monetary medium functions of BTC are critical. By applying the Markov switching model, the cyclical nature of the numbers of additional confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths are verified on daily basis. So, these two factors are assumed to follow the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process. Then, we estimate parameters to establish the structural characteristics of post-pandemic era and the start of post-pandemic era. In order to clarify these two issues, we use vector autoregression for testing the related macrocosmic and financial variables and BTC. Systematic evidences are provided regarding the relationships among BTC, related macrocosmic, related financial variables, related COVID-19 variables. Our findings provide a useful insight into currency competition and commodity competition on the basis of the impulse response of BTC to US dollar fluctuation and the impulse response of BTC to expected inflation and volatility in the post-pandemic era. These findings indicate increased currency competition between Bitcoin and the US dollar in the post-pandemic era. Therefore, currency competition should be more valued than Commodity Competition in the post-pandemic era. This provides a useful guideline for Bitcoin’s management.