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Trade informativeness and liquidity in Bitcoin markets

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  • J Christopher Westland

Abstract

Liquid markets are driven by information asymmetries and the injection of new information in trades into market prices. Where market matching uses an electronic limit order book (LOB), limit orders traders may make suboptimal price and trade decisions based on new but incomplete information arriving with market orders. This paper measures the information asymmetries in Bitcoin trading limit order books on the Kraken platform, and compares these to prior studies on equities LOB markets. In limit order book markets, traders have the option of waiting to supply liquidity through limit orders, or immediately demanding liquidity through market orders or aggressively priced limit orders. In my multivariate analysis, I control for volatility, trading volume, trading intensity and order imbalance to isolate the effect of trade informativeness on book liquidity. The current research offers the first empirical study of Glosten (1994) to yield a positive, and credibly large transaction cost parameter. Trade and LOB datasets in this study were several orders of magnitude larger than any of the prior studies. Given the poor small sample properties of GMM, it is likely that this substantial increase in size of datasets is essential for validating the model. The research strongly supports Glosten’s seminal theoretical model of limit order book markets, showing that these are valid models of Bitcoin markets. This research empirically tested and confirmed trade informativeness as a prime driver of market liquidity in the Bitcoin market.

Suggested Citation

  • J Christopher Westland, 2021. "Trade informativeness and liquidity in Bitcoin markets," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-14, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0255515
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255515
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    2. Glosten, Lawrence R, 1994. "Is the Electronic Open Limit Order Book Inevitable?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1127-1161, September.
    3. Seppi, Duane J, 1997. "Liquidity Provision with Limit Orders and a Strategic Specialist," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(1), pages 103-150.
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    Cited by:

    1. Yannis Bakos & Hanna Halaburda, 2022. "Overcoming the Coordination Problem in New Marketplaces via Cryptographic Tokens," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(4), pages 1368-1385, December.
    2. Wang, Yaqi & Wang, Chunfeng & Sensoy, Ahmet & Yao, Shouyu & Cheng, Feiyang, 2022. "Can investors’ informed trading predict cryptocurrency returns? Evidence from machine learning," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

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