Dynamic spillovers and portfolio implication between green cryptocurrencies and fossil fuels

PLoS One. 2023 Aug 3;18(8):e0288377. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288377. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Are green investments decoupled from the dirty investment such as the fossil fuel markets? We address this issue by extending the literature on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) assets by examining the dynamic relationship between fossil fuels and digital ESG assets proxied by green cryptocurrencies using the TVP-VAR(Time-varying parameter vector auto regression) spillover framework. Furthermore, we analyze the hedging attributes of green cryptocurrencies and fossil fuels in a minimum connectedness framework. The main findings are as follows: First, green cryptocurrencies are the main shock transmitters in all asset systems. Second, the dynamic connectedness between green cryptocurrencies and fossil fuels increased during the COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine conflicts. Third, green cryptocurrencies have shown considerable hedging effectiveness against the fossil fuels. Our study has important implications for investors, regulators, and policy makers, such as shifting to green cryptocurrencies, regulation of carbon footprint, and promoting eco-friendly assets.

MeSH terms

  • Administrative Personnel
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • Carbon Footprint
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Humans
  • Investments

Substances

  • Fossil Fuels

Grants and funding

The results of Sections 2, 4.2, 4.3 were supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant 23-28-00740, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-00740/. The rest of the results and S.-Y Choi’s work were supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. 2021R1F1A1046138). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.