IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chf/rpseri/rp2238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On The Quality Of Cryptocurrency Markets: Centralized Versus Decentralized Exchanges

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Barbon

    (University of St. Gallen)

  • Angelo Ranaldo

    (University of St. Gallen)

Abstract

Despite the growing adoption of decentralized exchanges, little is known about their market quality. Using a comprehensive dataset, we compare decentralized blockchain-based venues (DEXs) to centralized crypto exchanges (CEXs) assessing two aspects of market quality: price efficiency and market liquidity. We find that CEXs provide better market quality and identify the main friction dampening DEX efficiency as the high gas price stemming from proof-of-work blockchains. We propose and empirically validate a stylized model of DEX liquidity provision, linking trading volume, protocol fees, and liquidity. We identify quantitative conditions needed for DEXs to overtake CEXs in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Barbon & Angelo Ranaldo, 2022. "On The Quality Of Cryptocurrency Markets: Centralized Versus Decentralized Exchanges," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 22-38, Swiss Finance Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2238
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3984897
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Urquhart, Andrew, 2016. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 80-82.
    2. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100409, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Bariviera, Aurelio F., 2017. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin revisited: A dynamic approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 1-4.
    4. Makarov, Igor & Schoar, Antoinette, 2020. "Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 293-319.
    5. Brauneis, Alexander & Mestel, Roland & Riordan, Ryan & Theissen, Erik, 2021. "How to measure the liquidity of cryptocurrency markets?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    6. Alex Evans & Guillermo Angeris & Tarun Chitra, 2021. "Optimal Fees for Geometric Mean Market Makers," Papers 2104.00446, arXiv.org.
    7. Foucault, Thierry & Pagano, Marco & Roell, Ailsa, 2013. "Market Liquidity: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199936243.
    8. Nadarajah, Saralees & Chu, Jeffrey, 2017. "On the inefficiency of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 6-9.
    9. Brauneis, Alexander & Mestel, Roland, 2018. "Price discovery of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and beyond," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 58-61.
    10. Alex Evans, 2020. "Liquidity Provider Returns in Geometric Mean Markets," Papers 2006.08806, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2020.
    11. Dyhrberg, Anne H. & Foley, Sean & Svec, Jiri, 2018. "How investible is Bitcoin? Analyzing the liquidity and transaction costs of Bitcoin markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 140-143.
    12. Hautsch, Nikolaus & Scheuch, Christoph & Voigt, Stefan, 2018. "Limits to arbitrage in markets with stochastic settlement latency," CFS Working Paper Series 616, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    13. Agostino Capponi & Ruizhe Jia, 2021. "The Adoption of Blockchain-based Decentralized Exchanges," Papers 2103.08842, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yutong Quan & Xintong Wu & Wanlin Deng & Luyao Zhang, 2023. "Decoding Social Sentiment in DAO: A Comparative Analysis of Blockchain Governance Communities," Papers 2311.14676, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.
    2. Quan, Yutong & Wu, Xintong & Deng, Wanlin & Zhang, Luyao, 2023. "Decoding Social Sentiment in DAO: A Comparative Analysis of Blockchain Governance Communities," OSF Preprints bq6tu, Center for Open Science.
    3. Austin Adams & Benjamin Y Chan & Sarit Markovich & Xin Wan, 2023. "Don't Let MEV Slip: The Costs of Swapping on the Uniswap Protocol," Papers 2309.13648, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Takahiro Hattori & Ryo Ishida, 2021. "The relationship between arbitrage in futures and spot markets and Bitcoin price movements: Evidence from the Bitcoin markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(1), pages 105-114, January.
    2. Lepomäki, Laura & Kanniainen, Juho & Hansen, Henri, 2021. "Retaliation in Bitcoin networks," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    3. Dunbar, Kwamie & Owusu-Amoako, Johnson, 2022. "Cryptocurrency returns under empirical asset pricing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    5. Stefano Martinazzi & Daniele Regoli & Andrea Flori, 2020. "A Tale of Two Layers: The Mutual Relationship between Bitcoin and Lightning Network," Risks, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Ángeles Cebrián-Hernández & Enrique Jiménez-Rodríguez, 2021. "Modeling of the Bitcoin Volatility through Key Financial Environment Variables: An Application of Conditional Correlation MGARCH Models," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-16, January.
    7. Duan, Kun & Li, Zeming & Urquhart, Andrew & Ye, Jinqiang, 2021. "Dynamic efficiency and arbitrage potential in Bitcoin: A long-memory approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Muhammad Owais Qarni & Saiqb Gulzar, 2021. "Portfolio diversification benefits of alternative currency investment in Bitcoin and foreign exchange markets," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-37, December.
    9. Shimeng Shi & Jia Zhai & Yingying Wu, 2024. "Informational inefficiency on bitcoin futures," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 642-667, April.
    10. Aurelio F. Bariviera & Ignasi Merediz‐Solà, 2021. "Where Do We Stand In Cryptocurrencies Economic Research? A Survey Based On Hybrid Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 377-407, April.
    11. Ahmed, Walid M.A., 2022. "Robust drivers of Bitcoin price movements: An extreme bounds analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    12. Andrea Flori, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies In Finance: Review And Applications," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(05), pages 1-22, August.
    13. Brauneis, Alexander & Mestel, Roland & Riordan, Ryan & Theissen, Erik, 2022. "Bitcoin unchained: Determinants of cryptocurrency exchange liquidity," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 106-122.
    14. Cynthia Weiyi Cai & Rui Xue & Bi Zhou, 2023. "Cryptocurrency puzzles: a comprehensive review and re-introduction," Journal of Accounting Literature, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 26-50, June.
    15. Bedi, Prateek & Nashier, Tripti, 2020. "On the investment credentials of Bitcoin: A cross-currency perspective," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    16. Parthajit Kayal & Purnima Rohilla, 2021. "Bitcoin in the economics and finance literature: a survey," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    17. Pal, Debdatta & Mitra, Subrata K., 2019. "Hedging bitcoin with other financial assets," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 30-36.
    18. Carmen López-Martín & Sonia Benito Muela & Raquel Arguedas, 2021. "Efficiency in cryptocurrency markets: new evidence," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 11(3), pages 403-431, September.
    19. Kajtazi, Anton & Moro, Andrea, 2019. "The role of bitcoin in well diversified portfolios: A comparative global study," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 143-157.
    20. Böyükaslan, Adem & Ecer, Fatih, 2021. "Determination of drivers for investing in cryptocurrencies through a fuzzy full consistency method-Bonferroni (FUCOM-F’B) framework," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralized Exchanges; Automated Market Making; Blockchain; Decentralized Finance; Market Quality; Limit Order Book;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2238. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ridima Mittal (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fameech.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.