Regime Heteroskedasticity in Bitcoin: A Comparison of Markov Switching Models

Abstract

In response to Molnár and Thies (2018) demonstrating that the price data of Bitcoin contained structural breaks, we identify the optimal number of states for a Markov regime-switching (MRS) model to capture the regime heteroskedasticity of Bitcoin. We determined that the restricted 5-state MRS model provided the best goodness-of-fit scores (-AIC, -BIC, -HQIC) for the fitted sample. In addition, we found evidence of stylised characteristics in the price data of Bitcoin, namely: volatility clustering; volatility jumps; asymmetric volatility transitions; and the persistence of shocks.

Keywords: Bitcoin; Markov regime-switching; regime heteroskedasticity; volatility transitions

JEL Classification: C01; C22; C50; C58