How Cryptocurrency Markets Process Infrastructure vs Regulatory Shocks
We investigate differential liquidity responses to infrastructure versus regulatory events in cryptocurrency markets using perpetual futures funding rates and computed liquidity metrics (Amihud illiquidity, Roll spread, Corwin-Schultz spread). Analyzing five major events (2021-2024) for BTC and ETH, we find that infrastructure events (exchange failures, protocol collapses) produce significantly larger liquidity deterioration than regulatory events (enforcement actions, policy announcements). The Corwin-Schultz spread increases 65.1% following infrastructure events versus decreasing 11.4% following regulatory events (p = 0.0009). These findings extend prior volatility asymmetry results to market microstructure: cryptocurrency markets respond to infrastructure disruptions through both volatility and liquidity channels, while regulatory events primarily affect sentiment without triggering structural liquidity responses.
@misc{farzulla2025sentimentwithoutstructure,
author = {Farzulla, Murad},
title = {Same Returns, Different Risks},
year = {2025},
howpublished = {Farzulla Research Working Paper DAI-2507},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.18099609},
url = {https://farzulla.org/papers/sentiment-without-structure}
}