Estimation and Effectiveness of Optimal Hedge Ratios of Cryptocurrencies Based on Static and Dynamic Methodologies

The emergence of cryptocurrencies futures market is an innovative platform for prudent investors to hedge risk contained in their portfolio. However, the dicey environment of cryptocurrencies and mandatory requirement of Ind AS 39 has aroused the need for estimating hedging effectiveness of their futures market. This treatise is an attempt to investigate the hedging effectiveness of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Bitcoin Cash covering the period from June 2018 to May 2022. The interconnectedness of their spot and futures markets is initially studied using Johansen cointegration test, dynamic conditional correlation model, vector error correction model and block exogeneity Wald test. Their empirical results indicate interconnectedness in these markets having significant long-term relationship; persistent volatility correlations; significant unidirectional long-term causality from futures to spot; and bidirectional short-term causality in all cryptocurrencies. So, investors can hedge their risk by engaging position in cryptocurrencies’ futures. The OLS, VECM, GARCH and TARCH methodologies are applied to estimate static optimal hedge ratios and their estimates indicate that all cryptocurrencies have negative and significant ratios except XRP. The symmetric as well as asymmetric diagonal VECH and diagonal BEKK methodologies are applied to estimate dynamic-hedge ratios and their estimates depict negative mean dynamic-hedge ratios of all cryptocurrencies except XRP. These estimations imply that investors having long position in spot contracts of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash should hedge by taking short position in their futures contracts, respectively. However, XRP investors should hedge by taking long position in XRP future contracts. The empirical results clearly indicate the outperformance of static hedge strategies over dynamic hedge strategies as variance reduction framework of Ederington favours static OLS hedge strategy and the risk–return framework of Howard and D’Antonio favours static VECM hedge strategy for all cryptocurrencies. So, the long-run considerations have played a more crucial role as compared to short-run information. These findings may guide investors having different objective functions in understanding the effectiveness of different hedge strategies and their usage for achieving their objective functions. Policymakers, treasurers and auditors may also be benefitted from the insights provided in the present treatise on different estimation methodologies for hedging effectiveness.