Input: What type of distribution do the tail distributions of price returns follow?

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Paper Info

Title: Age and market capitalization drive large price variations of cryptocurrencies
Publish Date: 23 Feb 2023
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Figure

Figure 3. Illustration of different effects of age and market capitalization on power-law exponents of cryptocurrencies.(a) Posterior probability distributions of the linear coefficients associated with the effects of age [p(A)] and (b) the effects of market capitalization [p(C)] on power-law exponents related to large positive returns.Panels (c) and (d) show the analogous distributions for the association with power-law exponents related to large negative returns.In all panels, the different curves show the distributions for each of the top 20 cryptoassets by market capitalization.Cryptocurrencies significantly affected by age or market capitalization are highlighted in boldface, and the numbers between brackets show their positions in the market capitalization rank.
Figure S5.There is more probability mass in the positive tail than in the negative tail of price returns.(a) Probability distributions of the lower cut-offs (r min ) obtained by applying the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method to positive (blue) and negative (red) returns.The vertical dashed lines indicate the median values of r min for positive and negative returns.(b) Probability distributions of 90th percentiles (r 90 ) estimated from the power-law models adjusted to positive (blue) and negative (red) returns.The vertical dashed lines indicate the median values of r 90 for positive and negative returns.(c) Probability distributions of the fraction of weeks that r 90 estimated from positive returns (r + 90 ) is larger than r 90 estimated from negative returns (r − 90 ).This fraction is calculated only for weeks in which the power-law hypothesis is not rejected for both tails.The percentage of cryptoassets for which r + 90 > r − 90 is shown in the panels.The first column of panels depicts the results when considering data from all cryptocurrencies, while the second and third columns present the results for the top 2000 and top 200 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, respectively.
Figure S7.Robustness of the results of Fig. 2(b)-(d) against considering only cryptocurrencies with fraction of rejection f r < 0.1.Panels (a) and (b) show the same distributions of Fig. S4 but after filtering out all time series of cryptocurrencies with fraction of rejections f r ≥ 0.1.As in the case related to sampling issues, we observe that these distributions barely change when considering only cryptocurrencies with f r < 0.1.Indeed, the distributions in this figure are not significantly distinguishable from their counterparts in Fig. S4 (two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, p > 0.05).

abstract

Cryptocurrencies are considered the latest innovation in finance with considerable impact across social, technological, and economic dimensions. This new class of financial assets has also motivated a myriad of scientific investigations focused on understanding their statistical properties, such as the distribution of price returns.
However, research so far has only considered Bitcoin or at most a few cryptocurrencies, whilst ignoring that price returns might depend on cryptocurrency age or be influenced by market capitalization. Here, we therefore present a comprehensive investigation of large price variations for more than seven thousand digital currencies and explore whether price returns change with the coming-of-age and growth of the cryptocurrency market.
We find that tail distributions of price returns follow power-law functions over the entire history of the considered cryptocurrency portfolio, with typical exponents implying the absence of characteristic scales for price variations in about half of them. Moreover, these tail distributions are asymmetric as positive returns more often display smaller exponents, indicating that large positive price variations are more likely than negative ones.
Our results further reveal that changes in the tail exponents are very often simultaneously related to cryptocurrency age and market capitalization or only to age, with only a minority of cryptoassets being affected just by market capitalization or neither of the two quantities. Lastly, we find that the trends in power-law exponents usually point to mixed directions, and that large price variations are likely to become less frequent only in about 28% of the cryptocurrencies as they age and grow in market capitalization.
Since the creation of Bitcoin in 2008 , various different cryptoassets have been developed and are now considered to be at the cutting edge of innovation in finance . These digital financial assets are vastly diverse in design characteristics and intended purposes, ranging from peer-to-peer networks with underlying cash-like digital currencies (e.g.
Bitcoin) to general-purpose blockchains transacting in commodity-like digital assets (e.g. Ethereum), and even to cryptoassets that intend to replicate the price of conventional assets such as the US dollar or gold (e.g. Tether and Tether Gold) . With more than nine thousand cryptoassets as of 2022 , the total market value of cryptocurrencies has grown massively to a staggering $2 trillion peak in 2021 .
Despite long-standing debates over the intrinsic value and legality of cryptoassets , or perhaps even precisely due to such controversies, it is undeniable that cryptocurrencies are increasingly attracting the attention of academics, investors, and central banks, around the world . Moreover, these digital assets have been at the forefront of sizable financial gains and losses in recent years , they have been recognized as the main drivers of the brand-new phenomena of cryptoart and NFTs , but also as facilitators of illegal activities, such as money laundering and dark trade .
Financial research dedicated Our results are based on daily price time series of 7111 cryptocurrencies that comprise a significant part of all currently available cryptoassets (see Methods for details). From these price series, we have estimated their logarithmic returns 2/16 Log-return, r ). The black horizontal arrow represents a given position of the expanding time window (at t = 2004 days) used to sample the return series over the entire history of Bitcoin.
This time window expands in weekly steps (seven time series observations), and for each position, we separate the positive (blue) from the negative (red) price returns. The gray line illustrates observations that will be included in future positions of the expanding time window (t > 2004). (b) Survival functions or the complementary cumulative distributions of positive (blue) and negative (red) price returns within the expanding time window for t = 2004 days and above the lower bound of the power-law regime estimated from the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method .
The dashed lines show the adjusted power-law functions, p(r) ∼ r −α , with α = 4.5 for positive returns and α = 3.0 for negative returns. (c) Time series of the power-law exponents α t for the positive (blue) and negative (red) return distributions obtained by expanding the time window from the hundredth observation (t = 100) to the latest available price return of Bitcoin.
The circular markers represent the values for the window position at t = 2004 days and the dashed lines indicate the median of the power-law exponents ( α+ = 4.50 for positive returns and α− = 2.99 for negative returns). (d) Time series of the p-values related to the power-law hypothesis of positive (blue) and negative (red) price returns for every position of the expanding time window.
The dashed line indicates the threshold (p = 0.1) above which the power-law hypothesis cannot be rejected. For Bitcoin, the power-law hypothesis is never rejected for positive returns (fraction of rejection f r = 0) and rejected in only 4% of the expanding time window positions (fraction of rejection f r = 0.04).
where x t represents the price of a given cryptocurrency at day t. All return time series in our analysis have at least 200 observations (see Supplementary Figure for the length distribution). Figure (a) illustrates Bitcoin's series of daily returns. To investigate whether and how returns have changed over the aging and growing processes of all cryptocurrencies, we sample all time series of log-returns using a time window that expands in weekly steps (seven time series observations), starting from the hundredth observation to the latest return observation.
In each step, we separate the positive from the negative return values and estimate their power-law behavior using the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method . Figure (a) further illustrates this procedure, where the vertical dashed line represents a given position of the time window (t = 2004 days), the blue and red lines indicate positive and negative returns, respectively, and the gray lines show the return observations that will be included in the expanding time window in future steps.
Moreover, Fig. (b) shows the corresponding survival functions (or complementary cumulative distributions) for the positive (blue) and negative (red) returns of Bitcoin within the time window highlighted in Fig. (a). These survival functions correspond to return values above the lower bound of the power-law regime (r min ) and dashed lines in Fig. (b) show the power-law functions adjusted to data, that is,
with α = 4.5 for the positive returns and α = 3.0 for the negative returns in this particular position of the time window (t = 2004 days). We have further verified the goodness of the power-law fits using the approach proposed by Clauset et al. (see also Preis et al. ). As detailed in the Methods section, this approach consists in generating several synthetic samples under the power-law hypothesis, adjusting these simulated samples, and estimating the fraction of times the Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance between the adjusted power-law and the synthetic samples is larger than the value calculated from the empirical data.
This fraction defines a p-value and allows us to reject or not the power-law hypothesis of the return distributions under a given confidence level. Following Refs. we consider the more conservative 90% confidence level (instead of the more lenient and commonly used 95% confidence level), rejecting the power-law hypothesis when p-value ≤ 0.1.
For the particular examples in Fig. (b), the p-values are respectively 1.00 and 0.17 for the positive and negative returns, and thus we cannot reject the power-law hypotheses. After sampling the entire price return series, we obtain time series for the power-law exponents (α t ) associated with positive and negative returns as well as the corresponding p-values time series for each step t of the expanding time window.
These time series allow us to reconstruct the aging process of the return distributions over the entire history of each cryptoasset and probe possible time-dependent patterns. Figures ) and 1(d) show the power-law exponents and p-values time series for the case of Bitcoin. The power-law hypothesis is never rejected for positive returns and rarely rejected for negative returns (about 4% of times).
Moreover, the power-law exponents exhibit large fluctuations at the beginning of the time series and become more stable as Bitcoin matures as a financial asset (a similar tendency as reported by Begušić et al. ). The time evolution of these exponents further shows that the asymmetry between positive and negative returns observed in Fig. ) is not an incidental feature of a particular moment in Bitcoin's history.
Indeed, the power-law exponent for positive returns is almost always larger than the exponent for negative returns, implying that large negative price returns have been more likely to occur than their positive counterparts over nearly the entire history of Bitcoin covered by our data. However, while the difference between positive and negative exponents has approached a constant value, both exponents exhibit an increasing trend, indicating that large price variations are becoming less frequent with the coming-of-age of Bitcoin.
The previous analysis motivates us to ask whether the entire cryptocurrency market behaves similarly to Bitcoin and what other common patterns digital currencies tend to follow. To start answering this question, we have considered the p-values series of all cryptocurrencies to verify if the power-law hypothesis holds in general.
Figure (a) shows the percentage of cryptoassets rejecting the power-law hypothesis in at most a given fraction of the weekly positions of the expanding time window ( f r ). Remarkably, the hypothesis that large price movements (positive or negative) follow a power-law distribution is never rejected over the entire history of about 70% of all digital currencies in our dataset.
This analysis also shows that only ≈2% of cryptocurrencies reject the power-law hypothesis in more than half of the positions of the expanding time window ( f r ≥ 0.5). For instance, considering a 10% threshold as a criterion ( f r ≤ 0.1), we find that about 85% of cryptocurrencies have return distributions adequately modeled by power laws.
Increasing this threshold to a more lenient 20% threshold ( f r ≤ 0.2), we find large price movements to be power-law distributed for about 91% of cryptocurrencies. These results thus provide strong evidence that cryptoassets, fairly generally, present large price movements quite well described by power-law distributions.
Moreover, this conclusion is robust when starting the expanding window with a greater . Large price movements are power-law distributed over the entire history of most cryptocurrencies with median values typically smaller than those found for traditional assets. (a) Percentage of cryptoassets rejecting the power-law hypothesis for large positive (blue) or negative (red) price returns in at most a given fraction of the weekly positions of the expanding time window ( f r ) used to sample the return series.
Remarkably, 68% of all 7111 digital currencies are compatible with the power-law hypothesis over their entire history, and about 91% of them reject the power-law hypothesis in less than 20% of the positions of the expanding time window ( f r ≤ 0.2). (b) Probability distributions obtained via kernel density estimation of the median values of the power-law exponents along the history of each digital currency.
The blue curve shows the distribution of the median exponents related to positive returns ( α+ ) and the red curve does the same for negative returns ( α− ). The medians of α+ and α− are indicated by vertical dashed lines. Panels (c) and (d) show the distributions of these median exponents when considering the top 2000 and the top 200 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, respectively.
We observe that the distributions of α+ and α− tend to shift toward larger values when considering the largest cryptoassets. number of return observations (between 100 and 300 days) and filtering out cryptoassets with missing observations (Supplementary Figures ). Still, it is worth noticing the existence of a few cryptoassets (9 of them) with relatively small market capitalization (ranking below the top 1000) for which the power-law hypothesis is always rejected (Supplementary Table ).
Having verified that large price movements in the cryptocurrency market are generally well-described by powerlaw distributions, we now focus on the power-law exponents that typically characterize each cryptoasset. To do so, we select all exponent estimates over the entire history of each digital asset for which the power-law hypothesis is not rejected and calculate their median values for both the positive ( α+ ) and negative ( α− ) returns.
The dashed lines in Fig. ) show these median values for Bitcoin where α+ = 4.50 and α− = 2.99. It is worth noticing that the variance of large price movements σ 2 is finite only for α > 3, as the integral σ 2 ∼ ∞ r min r 2 p(r)dr diverges outside this interval. Thus, while the typical variance of large positive returns is finite for Bitcoin, negative returns are at the limit of not having a typical scale and are thus susceptible to much larger variations.
Figure shows the probability distribution for the median power-law exponents of all cryptoassets grouped by large positive and negative returns. We note that the distribution of typical power-law exponents associated with large positive returns is shifted to smaller values when compared with the distribution of exponents related to large negative returns.
The medians of these typical exponents are respectively 2.78 and 3.11 for positive and negative returns. This result suggests that the asymmetry in large price movements we have observed for Bitcoin is an overall feature of the cryptocurrency market. By calculating the difference between the typical exponents related to positive and negative large returns (∆α = α+ − α− ) for each digital currency, we find that about 2/3 of cryptocurrencies have α+ < α− (see Supplementary Figure for the probability distribution of ∆α).
Thus, unlike Bitcoin, most cryptocurrencies have been more susceptible to large positive price variations than negative ones. While this asymmetry in the return distributions indicates that extremely large price variations tend to be positive, it does not necessarily imply positive price variations are more common for any threshold in the return values.
This happens because the fraction of events in each tail is also related to the lower bound of the power-law regime (r min ). However, we have found the distribution of r min to be similar among the positive and negative returns [Supplementary Figure ]. The distribution of high percentile scores (such as the 90th percentile) is also shifted to larger values for positive returns [Supplementary Figure ].
Moreover, this asymmetry in high percentile scores related to positive and negative returns is systematic along the evolution of the power-law exponents [Supplementary Figure ]. These results thus indicate that there is indeed more probability mass in the positive tails than in the negative ones, a feature that likely reflects the current expansion of the cryptocurrency market as a whole.
The distributions in Fig. ) also show that large price variations do not have a finite variance for a significant part of cryptoassets, that is, α+ ≤ 3 for 62% of cryptocurrencies and α− ≤ 3 for 44% of cryptocurrencies. A significant part of the cryptocurrency market is thus prone to price variations with no typical scale.
Intriguingly, we further note the existence of a minority group of cryptoassets with α+ ≤ 2 (7%) or α− ≤ 2 (3%). These cryptocurrencies, whose representative members are Counos X (CCXX, rank 216) with α − = 1.96 and α + = 1.84 and Chainbing (CBG, rank 236) with α + = 1.87, are even more susceptible to extreme price variations as one cannot even define the average value µ for large price returns, as the integral µ ∼ ∞ r min rp(r)dr diverges for α ≤ 2. We have also replicated the previous analysis when considering cryptocurrencies in the top 2000 and top 200 rankings of market capitalization (as of July 2022).
Figures ) and 2(d) show the probability distribution for the median power-law exponents of these two groups. We observe that these distributions are more localized (particularly for the top 200) than the equivalent distributions for all cryptocurrencies. The fraction of cryptocurrencies with no typical scale for large price returns ( α+ ≤ 3 and α− ≤ 3) is significantly lower in these two groups compared to all cryptocurrencies.
In the top 2000 cryptocurrencies, 51% have α+ ≤ 3 and 26% have α− ≤ 3. These fractions are even smaller among the top 200 cryptocurrencies, with only 44% and 15% not presenting a typical scale for large positive and negative price returns, respectively. We further observe a decrease in the fraction of cryptoassets for which the average value for large price returns is not even finite, as only 2% and 1% of top 2000 cryptoassets have α+ ≤ 2 and α− ≤ 2. This reduction is more impressive among the top 200 cryptocurrencies as only the cryptoasset Fei USD (FEI, rank 78) has α+ = 1.97 and none is characterized by α− ≤ 2. The medians of α+ and α− also increase from 2.78 and 3.11 for all cryptocurrencies to 2.98 and 3.35 for the top 2000 and to 3.08 and 3.58 for the top 200 cryptocurrencies.
Conversely, the asymmetry between positive and negative large price returns does not differ much among the three groups, with the condition α+ < α− holding only for a slightly larger fraction of top 2000 (69.1%) and top 200 (70.6%) cryptoassets compared to all cryptocurrencies (66.4%). Moreover, all these patterns are robust when filtering out time series with sampling issues or when considering only cryptoassets that stay compatible with the power-law hypothesis in more than 90% of the positions of the expanding time window (Supplementary Figures ).
We also investigate whether the patterns related to the median of the power-law exponents differ among groups of cryptocurrencies with different designs and purposes. To do so, we group digital assets using the 50 most common tags in our dataset (e.g. "bnb-chain", "defi", and "collectibles-nfts") and estimate the probability distributions of the median exponents α+ and α− (Supplementary Figures ).
These results show that design and purpose affect the dynamics of large price variations in the cryptocurrency market as the medians of typical exponents range from 2.4 to 3.7 among the groups. The lowest values occur for cryptocurrencies tagged as "doggone-doggerel" (medians of α+ and α− are 2.38 and 2.83), "memes" (2.41 and 2.87), and "stablecoin" (2.65 and 2.79).
Digital currencies belonging to the first two tags overlap a lot and have Dogecoin (DOGE, rank 9) and Shiba Inu (SHIB, rank 13) as the most important representatives. Cryptoassets with these tags usually have humorous characteristics (such as an Internet meme) and several have been considered as a form of pump-and-dump scheme , a type of financial fraud in which false statements artificially inflate asset prices so the scheme operators sell their overvalued cryptoassets.
Conversely, cryptoassets tagged as "stablecoin" represent a class of cryptocurrencies designed to have a fixed exchange rate to a reference asset (such as a national currency or precious metal) . While the price of stablecoins tends to stay around the target values, their price series are also marked by sharp variations, which in turn are responsible for their typically small power-law exponents.
This type of cryptoasset has been shown to be prone to failures , such as the recent examples of TerraUSD (UST) and Tron's USDD (USDD) that lost their pegs to the US Dollar producing large variations in their price series. The asymmetry between positive and negative large returns also emerges when grouping the cryptocurrencies using their tags.
All 50 tags have distributions of α+ shifted to smaller values when compared with the distributions of α− , with differences between their medians ranging from −0.74 ("okex-blockdream-ventures-portfolio") to −0.14 ("stablecoin"). Indeed, only four ('stablecoin", "scrypt", "fantom-ecosystem" and "alameda-research-portfolio") out of the fifty groupings have both distributions indistinguishable under a two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (p-value > 0.05).
Focusing now on the evolution of the power-law exponents quantified by the time series α t for positive and negative returns, we ask whether these exponents present particular time trends. For Bitcoin [Fig. )], α t seems to increase with time for both positive and negative returns. At the same time, the results of Fig. also suggest that market capitalization affects these power-law exponents.
To verify these possibilities, we assume the power-law exponents (α t ) to be linearly associated with the cryptocurrency's age (y t , measured in years) and the logarithm of market capitalization (log c t ). As detailed in the Methods section, we frame this problem using a hierarchical Bayesian model.
This approach assumes that the linear coefficients associated with the effects of age (A) and market capitalization (C) of each digital currency are drawn from distributions with means µ A and µ C and standard deviations σ A and σ C , which are in turn distributed according to global distributions representing the overall impact of these quantities on the cryptocurrency market.
The Bayesian inference process consists of estimating the posterior probability distributions of the linear coefficients for each cryptocurrency as well as the posterior distributions of µ A , µ C , σ A , and σ C , allowing us to simultaneously probe asset-specific tendencies and overall market characteristics.
Moreover, we restrict this analysis to the 2140 digital currencies having more than 50 observations of market capitalization concomitantly to the time series of the power-law exponents in order to have enough data points for detecting possible trends. When considering the overall market characteristics, we find that the 94% highest density intervals for µ A ([-0.01, 0.06] for positive and [-0.02, 0.03] for negative returns) and µ C ([-0.02, 0.03] for positive and [-0.001, 0.04] for negative returns) include the zero (see Supplementary Figure for their distributions).
Thus, there is no evidence of a unique overall pattern for the association between the power-law exponents and age or market capitalization followed by a significant part of the cryptocurrency market. Indeed, the 94% highest density intervals for σ A ([0.87, 0.93] for positive and [0.63, 0.70] for negative returns) and σ C ([0.57, 0.61] for positive and [0.49, 0.52] for negative returns) indicate that the cryptocurrency market is highly heterogeneous regarding the evolution of power-law exponents associated with large price variations (see Supplementary Figure for the distributions of σ A and σ C ). Figure illustrates these heterogeneous behaviors by plotting the posterior probability distributions for the linear coefficients associated with the effects of age (A) and market capitalization (C) for the top 20 digital assets, where cryptocurrencies which are significantly affected (that is, the 94% highest density intervals for A or C do not include the zero) by these quantities are highlighted in boldface.
Even this small selection of digital  currencies already presents a myriad of patterns. First, we observe that the power-law exponents of a few top 20 cryptocurrencies are neither correlated with age nor market capitalization. That is the case of Shiba Inu (SHIB, rank 13) and Dai (DAI, rank 11) for both positive and negative returns, UNUS SED LEO (LEO, rank 18) and Polkadot (DOT, rank 12) for the positive returns, and USDCoin (USDC, rank 4) and Solana (SOL, rank 9) for negative returns.
There are also cryptocurrencies with exponents positively or negatively correlated only with market capitalization. Examples include Tether (USDT, rank 3) and Dogecoin (DOGE, rank 10), for which the power-law exponents associated with positive returns increase with market capitalization, and Binance USD (BUSD, rank 6), for which power-law exponents associated with positive and negative returns decrease with market capitalization.
We also observe cryptocurrencies for which age and market capitalization simultaneously affect the power-law exponents. Polygon (MATIC, rank 14) is an example where the power-law exponents associated with positive returns tend to increase with age and decrease with market capitalization. Finally, there are also cryptocurrencies with power-law exponents only associated with age.
That is the case of Bitcoin (BTC, rank 1), Ethereum (ETH, rank 2), and Cardano (ADA, rank 8), for which the power-law exponents related to positive and negative returns increase with age, but also the case of Uniswap (UNI, rank 19), for which the exponents decrease with age. Figure systematically extends the observations made for the top 20 cryptoassets to all 2140 digital currencies for which we have modeled the changes in the power-law exponents as a function of age and market capitalization.
First, we note that only 10% of cryptocurrencies have power-law exponents not significantly affected by age and market capitalization. The vast majority (90%) displays some relationship with these quantities. However, these associations are as varied as the ones we have observed for the top 20 cryptoassets.
About 52% of cryptocurrencies have power-law exponents simultaneously affected by age and market capitalization. In this group, these quantities simultaneously impact the exponents related to positive and negative returns of 34% of cryptoassets, whereas the remainder is affected only in the positive tail (9%) or only in the negative tail (9%).
Moving back in the hierarchy, we find that the power-law exponents of 32% of cryptocurrencies are affected only by age while a much minor fraction (6%) is affected only by market capitalization. Within the group only affected by age, we observe that the effects are slightly more frequent only on the exponents related to negative returns (12%), compared to cases where effects are restricted only to positive returns (10%) or simultaneously affect both tails (10%).
Finally, within the minor group only affected by market capitalization, we note that associations more frequently involve only exponents related to negative returns (3%) compared to the other two cases (2% only positive returns and 1% for both positive and negative returns). Beyond the previous discussion about whether positive or negative returns are simultaneously or individually affected by age and market capitalization, we have also categorized the direction of the trend imposed by these two quantities on the power-law exponents.
Blue rectangles in Fig. represent the fraction of relationships for which increasing age or market capitalization (or both) is associated with a raise in the power-law exponents. About 28% of all cryptocurrencies exhibit this pattern in which large price variations are expected to occur less frequently as they grow and age.
Conversely, the red rectangles in Fig. depict the fraction of relationships for which increasing age or market capitalization (or both) is associated with a reduction in the power-law exponents. This case comprises about 25% of all cryptocurrencies for which large price variations are likely to become more frequent as they grow in market capitalization and age.
Still, the majority of associations represented by green rectangles refer to the case where the effects of age and market capitalization point in different directions (e.g. exponents increasing with age while decreasing with market capitalization). About 36% of cryptocurrencies fit this condition which in turn contributes to consolidating the cumbersome hierarchical structure of patterns displayed by cryptocurrencies regarding the dynamics of large price variations.
This complex picture is not much different when considering only cryptocurrencies in the top 200 market capitalization rank (Supplementary Figure ). However, we do observe an increased prevalence of patterns characterized by exponents that rise with age and market capitalization (37%), suggesting that large price variations are becoming less frequent among the top 200 cryptocurrencies than in the overall market.
). Each of the previous three levels is further classified regarding whether both positive and negative returns are simultaneously affected or whether the effect involves only positive or only negative returns. Finally, the former levels are classified regarding whether the power-law exponents increase, decrease or have a mixed trend with the predictive variables.
Overall, 36% of the associations are classified as mixed trends (green rectangles), 28% are increasing trends (blue rectangles), and 26% are decreasing trends (red rectangles). We have studied the distributions of large price variations of a significant part of the digital assets that currently comprise the entirety of the cryptocurrency market.
Unlike previous work, we have estimated these distributions for entire historical price records of each digital currency, and we have identified the patterns under which the return distributions change as cryptoassets age and grow in market capitalization. Similarly to conventional financial assets , our findings show that the return distributions of the vast majority of cryptoassets have tails that are described well by power-law functions along their entire history.
The typical power-law exponents of cryptocurrencies (α ∼ 3) are, however, significantly smaller than those reported for conventional assets (α ∼ 4) . This feature corroborates the widespread belief that cryptoassets are indeed considerably more risky for investments than stocks or other more traditional financial assets.
Indeed, we have found that about half of the cryptocurrencies in our analysis do not have a characteristic scale for price variations, and are thus prone to much higher price variations than those typically observed in stock markets. On the upside, we have also identified an asymmetry in the power-law exponents for positive and negative returns in about 2/3 of all considered cryptocurrencies, such that these exponents are smaller for positive than they are for negative returns.
This means that sizable positive price variations have generally been more likely to occur than equally sizable negative price variations, which in turn may also reflect the recent overall expansion of the cryptocurrency market. Using a hierarchical Bayesian linear model, we have also simultaneously investigated the overall market characteristics and asset-specific tendencies regarding the effects of age and market capitalization on the power-law exponents.
We have found that the cryptocurrency market is highly heterogeneous regarding the trends exhibited by each cryptocurrency; however, only a small fraction of cryptocurrencies (10%) have power-law exponents neither correlated with age nor market capitalization. These associations have been mostly ignored by the current literature and are probably related to the still-early developmental stage of the cryptocurrency market as a whole.
Overall, 36% of cryptocurrencies present trends that do not systematically contribute to increasing or decreasing their power-law exponents as they age and grow in market capitalization. On the other hand, for 26% of cryptocurrencies, aging and growing market capitalization are both associated with a reduction in their power-law exponents, thus contributing to the rise in the frequency of large price variations in their dynamics.
Only about 28% of cryptocurrencies present trends in which the power-law exponents increase with age and market capitalization, favoring thus large price variations to become less likely. These results somehow juxtapose with findings about the increasing informational efficiency of the cryptocurrency market .
In fact, if on the one hand the cryptocurrency market is becoming more informationally efficient, then on the other our findings indicate that there is no clear trend toward decreasing the risks of sizable variations in the prices of most considered cryptoassets. In other words, risk and efficiency thus appear to be moving towards different directions in the cryptocurrency market.
To conclude, we hope that our findings will contribute significantly to the better understanding of the dynamics of large price variations in the cryptocurrency market as a whole, and not just for a small subset of selected digital assets, which is especially relevant due to the diminishing concentration of market capitalization among the top digital currencies, and also because of the considerable impact these new assets may have in our increasingly digital economy.
Our results are based on time series of the daily closing prices (in USD) for all cryptoassets listed on CoinMar-ketCap (coinmarketcap.com) as of 25 July 2022 [see Supplementary Figure (a) for a visualization of the increasing number cryptoassets listed on CoinMarketCap since 2013]. These time series were automatically gathered using the cryptoCMD Python package and other information such as the tags associated with each cryptoasset were obtained via the CoinMarketCap API .
In addition, we have also obtained the daily market capitalization time series (in USD) from all cryptoassets which had this information available at the time. Earliest records available from CoinMarketCap date from 29 April 2013 and the latest records used in our analysis correspond to 25 July 2022. Out of 9943 cryptocurrencies, we have restricted our analysis to the 7111 with at least 200 price-return observations.
The median length of these time series is 446 observations [see the distribution of series length in Supplementary Figure . We have estimated the power-law behavior of the return distributions by applying the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method to the return time series r t . In particular, we have sampled each of these time series using an expanding time window that starts at the hundredth observation and grows in weekly steps (seven data points each step).
For each position of the expanding time window, we have separated the positive returns from the negative ones and applied the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method to each set. This approach consists of obtaining the maximum likelihood estimate for the power-law exponent, α = 1 + n/ (∑ n t=1 ln r t /r min ) , where r min is the lower bound of the power-law regime and n is the number of (positive or negative) return observations in the power-law regime for a given position of the expanding time window.
The value r min is estimated from data by minimizing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic between the empirical distribution and the power-law model. The Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method yields an unbiased and consistent estimator , in a sense that as the sample increases indefinitely, the estimated power-law exponent converges in distribution to the actual value.
Moreover, we have used the implementation available on the powerlaw Python package . In addition to obtaining the power-law exponents, we have also verified the adequacy of the power-law hypothesis using the procedure originally proposed by Clauset et al. as adapted by Preis et al. . This procedure consists of generating synthetic samples under the power-law hypothesis with the same properties of the empirical data under analysis (that is, same length and parameters α and r min ), adjusting the simulated data with the power-law model via the Clauset-Shalizi-Newman method, and calculating the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic (κ syn ) between the distributions obtained from the simulated samples and the adjusted power-law model.
Next, the values of κ syn are compared to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic calculated between empirical data and the power-law model (κ). Finally, a p-value is defined by calculating the fraction of times for which κ syn > κ. We have used one thousand synthetic samples for each position of the expanding time window and the more conservative 90% confidence level (instead of the more lenient and commonly used 95% confidence level), such that the power-law hypothesis is rejected whenever p-value ≤ 0.1.
We have estimated the effects of age and market capitalization on the power-law exponents associated with positive or negative returns of a given cryptocurrency using the linear model where α t represents the power-law exponent, log c t is the logarithm of the market capitalization, and y t is the age (in years) of the cryptocurrency at t-th observation.
Moreover, K is the intercept of the association, while C and A are linear coefficients quantifying the effects of market capitalization and age, respectively. Finally, N (µ, σ ) stands for the normal distribution with mean µ and standard deviation σ , such that the parameter ε accounts for the unobserved determinants in the dynamics of the power-law exponents.
We have framed this problem using the hierarchical Bayesian approach such that each power-law exponent α t is nested within a cryptocurrency with model parameters considered as random variables normally distributed with parameters that are also random variables. Mathematically, for each cryptocurrency, we have
12/16 where µ K , σ K , µ C , σ C , µ A , and σ A are hyperparameters. These hyperparameters are assumed to be distributed according to distributions that quantify the overall impact of age and market capitalization on the cryptocurrency market as a whole. We have performed this Bayesian regression for exponents related to positive and negative returns separately, and used noninformative prior and hyperprior distributions in order not to bias the posterior estimation .
Specifically, we have considered and ε ∼ U (0, 10 2 ) , where U (a, b) stands for the uniform distribution in the interval [a, b] and Inv−Γ(θ , γ) represents the inverse gamma distribution with shape and scale parameters θ and γ, respectively. For the numerical implementation, we have relied on the PyMC Python package and sampled the posterior distributions via the gradient-based Hamiltonian Monte Carlo no-U-Turn-sampler method.
We have run four parallel chains with 2500 iterations each (1000 burn-in samples) to allow good mixing and estimated the Gelman-Rubin convergence statistic (R-hat) to ensure the convergence of the sampling approach (R-hat was always close to one). In addition, we have also verified that models describing the power-law exponents as a function of only age (C → 0 in Eq. 3) or only market capitalization (A → 0 in Eq. 3) yield significantly worse descriptions of our data as quantified by the Widely Applicable Information Criterion (WAIC) and the Pareto Smoothed Importance Sampling Leave-One-Out cross-validation (PSIS-LOO) (see Supplementary Table ). ) is larger than r 90 estimated from negative returns (r − 90 ).
This fraction is calculated only for weeks in which the power-law hypothesis is not rejected for both tails. The percentage of cryptoassets for which r + 90 > r − 90 is shown in the panels. The first column of panels depicts the results when considering data from all cryptocurrencies, while the second and third columns present the results for the top 2000 and top 200 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, respectively.
Sampling issues refer to missing data and problems caused by prices of cryptoassets decreasing to zero. We note that these distributions barely change when considering only cryptocurrencies without any sampling issue. Indeed, the distributions in this figure are not significantly distinguishable from their counterparts in Fig. (two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, p > 0.05).
). Each of the previous three levels is further classified regarding whether both positive and negative returns are simultaneously affected or whether the effect involves only positive or only negative returns. Finally, the former levels are classified regarding whether the power-law exponents increase, decrease or have a mixed trend with the predictive variables.
Overall, 35% of the associations are classified as mixed trends (green rectangles), 37% are increasing trends (blue rectangles), and 18% are decreasing trends (red rectangles).

Answer: Power-law functions.


Input: What is the main topic of the text?

Context:
Ann's Mega Dub: 12/19/10 - 12/26/10
Got o have a penis to be an expert
Thursday on NPR's Fresh Air, Terry Gross wanted to talk film and music. Since women don't know a thing about either and aren't interested in either, Terry had to find men who were 'experts.'This is C.I.'s " Iraq snapshot Friday, December 24, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri's incomplete Cabinet continues to receive criticism, a father offers an 'excuse' for killing his own daughter, and more.Marci Stone (US Headlines Examiner) reports, "Friday afternoon, Santa is currently in Baghdad, Iraq and on his next stop is Moscow, Russia, according to the 2010 NORAD Santa Tracker. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Santa as he makes his annual journey throughout the world." Gerald Skoning (Palm Beach Post) quotes Santa saying, "We send our special wishes for peace and goodwill to all. That includes the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea." Please note that this is Santa's seventh trip to Iraq since the start of the Iraq War and, as usual, his journey was known in advance. No waiting until he hit the ground to announce he was going to Iraq -- the way George The Bully Boy Bush had to and the way US President Barack Obama still has to. In the lead up to Santa's yearly visit, many 'authorities' in Iraq began insisting that Christmas couldn't be celebrated publicly, that even Santa was banned. Gabriel Gatehouse (BBC News) quotes Shemmi Hanna stating, "I wasn't hurt but I wish that I had been killed. I wish I had become a martyr for this church, but God kept me alive for my daughters." Shemmi Hanna was in Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad when it was assaulted October 31st and she lost her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law and her infant grandson in the attack. The October 31st attack marks the latest wave of violence targeting Iraqi Christians. The violence has led many to flee to northern Iraq (KRG) or to other countries. Zvi Bar'el (Haaretz) notes, "This week the Iraqi legislature discussed the Christians' situation and passed a resolution in principle to help families who fled. However, the parliament does not know where the Christians are, how many are still in Iraq, in their homes, and how many have found asylum in Iraqi Kurdistan." John Leland (New York Times) reports:The congregants on Friday night were fewer than 100, in a sanctuary built for four or five times as many. But they were determined. This year, even more than in the past, Iraqi's dwindling Christian minority had reasons to stay home for Christmas. "Yes, we are threatened, but we will not stop praying," the Rev. Meyassr al-Qaspotros told the Christmas Eve crowd at the Sacred Church of Jesus, a Chaldean Catholic church. "We do not want to leave the country because we will leave an empty space." Raheem Salman (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Rimon Metti's family will go to Christian services on Christmas Day, but his relatives will be praying for their own survival and wondering whether this is their last holiday season in Baghdad. If they had any grounds for optimism about the future of their faith in Iraq, it vanished this year amid repeated attacks on fellow believers." Shahsank Bengali (McClatchy Newspapers) adds, "Nearly two months after a shocking assault by Islamist militants, Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church will commemorate Christmas quietly, with daytime mass and prayers for the dead, under security fit more for a prison than a house of worship. It is the same at Christian churches across Baghdad and northern Iraq, where what's left of one of the world's oldest Christian communities prepares to mark perhaps the most somber Christmas since the start of the Iraq war."Meanwhile Taylor Luck (Jordan Times) reports on Iraqi refugees in Jordan:Although the calendar will say December 25, for Theresa, Saturday will not be Christmas. There will be no cinnamon klecha cooling on the dining room table, no outdoor ceramic nativity scene, no readings of hymns with relatives. The 63-year-old Iraqi woman has even refused to put up Christmas lights in the crowded two-room Amman hotel apartment she has called home since fleeing Baghdad last month."There is no holiday spirit. All we have is fear," she said.This holiday will instead mark another year without news from her 46-year-old son, who was kidnapped outside Baghdad in late 2006.From Turkey, Sebnem Arsu (New York Times -- link has text and video) notes the increase in Iraq refugees to the country since October 31st and quotes Father Emlek stating, "I've never seen as many people coming here as I have in the last few weeks. They also go to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria but it seems that Turkey is the most popular despite the fact that they do not speak the language." Jeff Karoub (AP) reports on the small number of Iraqi refugees who have made it to the US and how some of them "struggle with insomnia, depression and anxiety."One group in Iraq who can openly celebrate Christmas are US service members who elect to. Barbara Surk (AP) reports that tomorrow Chief Warrant Officer Archie Morgan will celebrate his fourth Christmas in Iraq and Captain Diana Crane is celebrating her second Christmas in Iraq: "Crane was among several dozen troops attending a Christmas Eve mass in a chapel in Camp Victory, an American military base just outside Baghdad." Marc Hansen (Des Moines Reigster) speaks with six service members from Iowa who are stationed in Iraq. Sgt 1st Class Dennis Crosser tells Hansen, "I certainly understand from reading the paper what's going on in Afghanistan and the attention definitely needs to be on the troops there. But everyone serving here in Operation New Dawn appreciates a little bit of attention as we finish this up."Today Jiang Yu, China's Foreign Minister, issued the following statement, "We welcome and congratulate Iraq on forming a new government. We hope that the Iraqi Government unite all its people, stabilize the security situation, accelerate economic reconstruction and make new progress in building its country." James Cogan (WSWS) reports:US State Department official Philip Crowley declared on Wednesday that Washington had not "dictated the terms of the government". In reality, constant American pressure was applied to Maliki, Allawi, Kurdish leaders and other prominent Iraqi politicians throughout the entire nine-month process to form a cabinet. The US intervention included numerous personal phone calls and visits to Baghdad by both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.The key objective of the Obama administration has been to ensure that the next Iraqi government will "request" a long-term military partnership with the US when the current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) expires at the end of 2011. The SOFA is the legal basis upon which some 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq, operating from large strategic air bases such as Balad and Tallil and Al Asad. US imperialism spent billions of dollars establishing these advanced bases as part of its wider strategic plans and has no intention of abandoning them.Cogan's only the second person to include the SOFA in his report. Some are impressed with the 'feat' of taking nearly ten months to form a government, stringing the country along for ten months while no decisions could go through. The editorial board of the Washington Post, for example, was full of praise yesterday. Today they're joined by Iran's Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaiifar. The Tehran Times reports that Danaiifar was full of praise today hailing the "positive and final step which ended the 10-month political limbo in Iraq." However, Danaiifar was less pie-in-the-sky than the Post editorial board because he can foresee future problems as evidenced by his statement, "We may witness the emergence of some problems after one and half of a year -- for example, some ministers may be impeached." Of course, there are already many clouds on the horizon, even if Iranian diplomats and Post editorial boards can't suss them out. For example, Ben Bendig (Epoch Times) noted the objection of Iraq's female politicians to Nouri al-Maliki's decision to nominate only one woman (so far) to his Cabinet: "Some 50 female lawmakers went to the country's top leadership, the United Nations and the Arab League to voice their concern and desire for increased representation." BNO notes that protest and also that a group of Iraqi MPs are alleging that Iraqiya bought seats in the Cabinet via money exchanged in Jordan. UPI adds, "Maliki, a Shiite who has a long history of working with Tehran, has named himself acting minister of defense, interior and national security, three most powerful and sensitive posts in the government he is stitching together. Although Maliki appears to be bending over backward to accommodate rivals among Iraq's Shiite majority as well as minority Sunnis and Kurds in his administration in a spirit of reconciliation, he is unlikely to relinquish those ministries that dominate the security sector." DPA reports, "Sheikh Abdel-Mahdi al-Karbalaei, a confident of influential Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said that the new cabinet is 'below the standards' Iraqi citizens had hoped for and suggested it could prove to be weaker than the previous government." Ranj Alaaldin (Guardian) also spots clouds on the horizon:Lasting peace and stability depends on resolving outstanding disputes with the Kurds on oil, revenue-sharing, security and the disputed territories (Kirkuk in particular). The Kurds, rather than exploiting their kingmaker position to take a stronger proportion of ministries in Baghdad (they are taking just one major portfolio – the foreign ministry), are instead banking on guarantees from Maliki to implement their list of 19 demands that includes resolving the above disputes in their favour.They may have been naive, though. With their historical and federalist partners, the Islamic supreme council of Iraq in decline, the Kurds may be isolated in the new government – a government dominated by the nationalistic and centrist characteristics of the INM, the Sadrists and indeed State of Law.Maliki may, therefore, turn out to be unable to grant concessions even if he wanted to and could use Osama Nujayfi, the new ultra-nationalist speaker of parliament and Kurdish foe, to absorb the Kurdish criticism and insulate himself from any attacks.AP reports that Iraqi police sought out a 19-year-old woman because of rumors that she was working with al Qaida in Mesopotamia only to be greeted with the news that her father allegedly killed her and the father showed the police where he buried the woman . . . last month. The story begs for more than it offers. The most obvious observation is: what does it say that a woman's allegedly killed by her father and no one says a word for over a month? After that, it should probably be noted that there are many men in Iraq killing women who, no doubt, would love to also be able to pin the blame on al Qaida. In other violence, Reuters notes a house bombing in Haswa which claimed the life of Mohammed al-Karrafi, "his wife, two sons and a nephew" -- as well as injuring four more people, and a Samarra roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 2 police officers. DPA notes it was two homes bombed in Haswa and that the Samarra roadside bombing also injured four Iraqi soldiers. Jomana Karadsheh (CNN) reports, "Another policeman was wounded in Baghdad Friday night when a roadside bomb detonated by a police patrol, an Interior Ministry official told CNN."And we'll close with this from Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan's latest Al Jazeera column:The recent repeal of the US military policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" is far from being the human rights advancement some are touting it to be. I find it intellectually dishonest, in fact, illogical on any level to associate human rights with any military, let alone one that is currently dehumanising two populations as well as numerous other victims of it's clandestine "security" policies.Placing this major contention aside, the enactment of the bill might be an institutional step forward in the fight for "equality"; however institutions rarely reflect reality.Do we really think that the US congress vote to repeal the act and Obama signing the bill is going to stop the current systemic harassment of gays in the military?While I am a staunch advocate for equality of marriage and same-sex partnership, I cannot - as a peace activist - rejoice in the fact that now homosexuals can openly serve next to heterosexuals in one of the least socially responsible organisations that currently exists on earth: The US military.It is an organisation tainted with a history of intolerance towards anyone who isn't a Caucasian male from the Mid-West. Even then I'm sure plenty fitting that description have faced the terror and torment enshrined into an institution that transforms the pride and enthusiasm of youth into a narrow zeal for dominating power relations.And we'll close with this from Francis A. Boyle's "2011: Prospects for Humanity?" (Global Research):Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley's military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America's economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the "open door" policy. But over the next four decades America's aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the "Pacific" would ineluctably pave the way for Japan's attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America's precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III. By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled "humanitarian intervention." Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world's hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated "unlimited imperialism" in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53): The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination--a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror's lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind…. On 10 November 1979 I visited with Hans Morgenthau at his home in Manhattan. It proved to be our last conversation before he died on 19 July 1980. Given his weakened physical but not mental condition and his serious heart problem, at the end of our necessarily abbreviated one-hour meeting I purposefully asked him what he thought about the future of international relations. iraqbbc newsgabriel gatehousethe new york timesjohn lelandhaaretzzvi bar'elthe jordan timestaylor luckthe associated pressjeff karoubthe los angeles timesraheem salmancnnjomana karadsheh
Terry thinks she's a man
Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air the hour went to a male TV critic. It's always a man with Terry. Always. And somebody tell her that a snotty, snooty TV critic really doesn't make for good programming.This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:" Thursday, December 23, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, Iraqi women make clear their displeasure over the Cabinet make up, Daniel Ellsberg and Veterans for Peace get some recognition, and more. Last Thursday a protest held outside the White House. One of the organizers was Veterans for Peace and Pentagon Papers whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg participated and spoke. Juana Bordas (Washington Post) advocates for both of them to be named persons of the year: Veterans for Peace and Daniel Ellsberg should be this year's person of the year because of their courage and bravery to stand up for all of us who believe that "war is not the answer." Moreover in a time of economic recession, the war machine is bankrupting our country. As John Amidon, a Marine Corps veteran from Albany asked at the White House protest, "How is the war economy working for you?"While unemployment rates hover near 10 percent, there is no doubt that the U.S. economy and quality of life is faltering. Worldwide we are 14th in education, 37th in the World Health Organization's ranking on medical systems, and 23rd in the U.N. Environmental Sustainability Index on being most livable and greenest benefits. There is one place we take the undeniable world lead. The US military spending accounts for a whopping 46.5 percent of world military spending--the next ten countries combined come in at only 20.7 percent. Linda Pershing (Truthout) reports, "Responding to a call from the leaders of Stop These Wars(1) - a new coalition of Veterans for Peace and other activists - participants came together in a large-scale performance of civil resistance. A group of veterans under the leadership of Veterans for Peace members Tarak Kauff, Will Covert and Elaine Brower, mother of a Marine who has served three tours of duty in Iraq, sponsored the event with the explicit purpose of putting their bodies on the line. Many participants were Vietnam War veterans; others ranged from Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in their 20s and 30s to World War II vets in their 80s and older. They were predominately white; men outnumbered women by at least three to one. After a short rally in Lafayette Park, they formed a single-file procession, walking across Pennsylvania Avenue to the solemn beat of a drum. As they reached the police barricade (erected to prevent them from chaining themselves to the gate, a plan they announced on their web site), the activists stood shoulder to shoulder, their bodies forming a human link across the 'picture postcard' tableau in front of the White House." Maria Chutchian (Arlington Advocate) quotes, participant Nate Goldshlag (Vietnam veteran) stating, ""There was a silent, single file march around Lafayette Park to a drum beat. Then we went in front of the White House,. There were barricades set up in front of white house fence. So when we got there, we jumped over barricades and were able to get right next to the White House fence." Participant Linda LeTendre (Daily Gazette) reports: At the end of the rally, before the silent, solemn procession to the White House fence, in honor of those killed in Iraq and Afghan wars of lies and deceptions, the VFP played taps and folded an American flag that had been left behind at a recent funeral for the veteran of one of those wars. Two attendees in full dress uniform held and folded the flag. I had the image of all of the people who stood along the roads and bridges when the bodies of the two local men, Benjamin Osborn and David Miller, were returned to the Capital District. I thought if all of those people were here now or spoke out against war these two fine young men might still be with us.I was blessed enough to be held in custody with one of those in uniform; a wonderful young man who had to move from his hometown in Georgia because no one understood why as a veteran he was against these wars. Even his family did not understand. (He remains in my prayers.)Our plan was to attach ourselves to the White House fence until President Obama came out and talked to us or until we were arrested and dragged away. I don't have to tell you how it ended.Mr. Ellsberg was one of 139 people arrested at that action. We've noted the protest in pretty much every snapshot since last Thursday. If something else comes out that's worth noting on the protest, we'll include it. We will not include people who don't have their facts and it's really sad when they link to, for example, Guardian articles and the links don't even back them up. It's real sad, for example, when they're trashing Hillary (big strong men that they are) and ripping her apart and yet Barack? "Obama's inaccurate statements"??? What the hell is that? You're inferring he lied, say so. Don't be such a little chicken s**t. It's especially embarrasing when you're grandstanding on 'truth.' Especially when you're the little s**t that clogged up the public e-mail account here in the summer of 2008 whining that you were holding Barack to a standard, then admitting that you weren't, then whining that if you did people would be mean to you. Oh, that's sooooooo sad. Someone might say something bad about you. The horror. You must suffer more than all the people in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. While the action took place in DC, actions also took place in other cities. We've already noted NYC's action this week, Doug Kaufmann (Party for Socialism & Liberation) reports on the Los Angeles action: Despite heavy rain, over 100 people gathered in Los Angeles on the corner of Hollywood and Highland to demand an end to the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. People came from as far as Riverside to protest, braving what Southern California media outlets have dubbed the "storm of the decade." The demonstration, initiated and led by the ANSWER Coalition, broke the routine of holiday shopping and garnered support from activists and even passers by, who joined in chanting "Money for jobs and education -- not for war and occupation!" and "Occupation is a crime -- Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine!" Protesters held banners reading, "U.S./NATO Out of Afghanistan!" and "Yes to jobs, housing and education -- no to war, racism and occupation!"Speakers at the demonstration included representatives of Korean Americans for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, KmB Pro-People Youth, Veterans for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation and National Lawyers Guild. Tuesday, Nouri al-Maliki managed to put away the political stalemate thanks to a lot of Scotch -- tape to hold the deal together and booze to keep your eyes so crossed you don't question how someone can claim to have formed a Cabinet when they've left over ten positions to be filled at a later date. One group speaking out is women. Bushra Juhi and Qassmi Abdul-Zahra (AP) report, "Iraq's female lawmakers are furious that only one member of the country's new Cabinet is a woman and are demanding better representation in a government that otherwise has been praised by the international community for bringing together the country's religious sects and political parties." As noted Tuesday, though represenation in Parliament is addressed in Iraq's Constitution, there is nothing to address women serving in the Cabinet. Aseel Kami (Reuters) notes one of the most damning aspects of Nouri's chosen men -- a man is heaing the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Iraqiya's spokesperson Maysoon Damluji states, "There are really good women who could do wel . . . they cannot be neglected and marginalized." Al-Amal's Hanaa Edwar states, "They call it a national (power) sharing government. So where is the sharing? Do they want to take us back to the era of the harem? Do they want to take us back to the dark ages, when women were used only for pleasure." Deborah Amos (NPR's All Things Considered) reports that a struggle is going on between secular impulses and fundamentalist ones. Gallery owner Qasim Sabti states, "We know it's fighting between the religious foolish man and the civilization man. We know we are fighting like Gandhi, and this is a new language in Iraqi life. We have no guns. We do not believe in this kind of fighting." Deborah Amos is the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East. Meanwhile Nizar Latif (The National) reports that distrust is a common reaction to the new government in Baghdad and quotes high school teacher Hussein Abed Mohammad stating, "Promises were made that trustworthy, competent people would be ministers this time around, but it looks as if everything has just been divided out according to sectarian itnerests. No attention has been paid to forming a functioning government, it is just a political settlement of vested interests. I'm sure al Maliki will have the same problems in his next four years as he had in the last four years." Days away from the ten months mark, Nouri managed to finally end the stalemate. Some try to make sense of it and that must have been some office party that the editorial board of the Washington Post is still coming down from judging by "A good year in Iraq." First up, meet the new Iraqi Body Count -- an organization that provides cover for the war and allows supporters of the illegal war to point to it and insist/slur "Things aren't so bad!" Sure enough, the editorial board of the Post does just that noting the laughable "civilian deaths" count at iCasualities. As we noted -- long, long before we walked away from that crap ass website, they're not doing a civilian count. They're noting how many deaths Reuters reports.

Answer: The main topic of the text is Iraq's politics and current situation.