# Bitcoin as a Safe Haven during COVID-19 Disease
## 4 Discussion and Conclusions  
During the COVID 19 pandemic, the price of Bitcoin underwent large fluctuations from around USD 10 to around USD 4100 in the first quarter of 2020, and now, at the time of writing (22 February 2021) it stands at around USD 48,000. Many have wondered if Bitcoin is a safe haven and if this cryptocurrency will become a store of value. This is also the research question of our work. By performing a regression analysis, we studied the safe-haven properties of Bitcoin against losses of the major stock market indices, oil, gold, general commodity index and US dollar index. We performed the regression analysis using dummy variables defined around the COVID-19 pandemic events. In addition, a dynamic conditional correlation analysis based on the DCC-Garch model was performed to try giving more robust results. The results suggest the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Bitcoin's status as a safe haven. They highlight negative relations between the movements of the Bitcoin returns and those of some financial indexes that do not emerge studying the model without considering the COVID-19 event. The same considerations can be made for Ether. So for this last cryptocurrency, a negative relation between the movements of its returns and those of some financial indexes can also be highlighted. All this emerges studying the regression model around fifteen _event windows_ within which crucial events linked to the COVID-19 spread have been individuated. In many _event windows_, the coefficients of some interaction terms, formed by the dummy variable _Covid_ (set to 1 in the _event window_), and by a variable representing a financial index, are statistically significant and negative, showing effects of safe haven for these two cryptocurrencies against downward movements of the indexes taken into account. The coefficient of the interaction term, composed of the variable _Vol_, representing the volatility in the FX market, and the dummy variable _Covid_ does not emphasize effects of safe haven for Bitcoin and Ether against the movements of the _Volatility_. It always is negative, but for Ether in the three _event windows_ defined around the 14 January +14 date. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline  & **MEDIAN** & **BTC** & **ETH** & B & **BND** & **BZ** & **GD** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{_July-March 4_} & min & 0.782 & 1 & 0.052 & \(-\)0.020 & \(-\)0.075 & \(-\)0.055 \\  & median & 0.846 & 1 & 0.226 & 0.111 & 0.144 & 0.157 \\  & max & 0.883 & 1 & 0.295 & 0.244 & 0.229 & 0.252 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{5 March +14} & min & 0.841 & 1 & 0.227 & 0.099 & 0.114 & 0.133 \\  & median & 0.859 & 1 & 0.310 & 0.131 & 0.253 & 0.252 \\  & max & 0.930 & 1 & 0.415 & 0.428 & 0.292 & 0.290 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{16 August+14} & min & 0.820 & 1 & 0.225 & 0.052 & 0.122 & 0.165 \\  & median & 0.830 & 1 & 0.229 & 0.081 & 0.138 & 0.170 \\  & max & 0.837 & 1 & 0.243 & 0.112 & 0.153 & 0.184 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{20 October +14} & min & 0.835 & 1 & 0.247 & 0.113 & 0.141 & 0.169 \\  & median & 0.839 & 1 & 0.257 & 0.131 & 0.168 & 0.188 \\  & max & 0.845 & 1 & 0.269 & 0.151 & 0.189 & 0.218 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{12 November +14} & min & 0.801 & 1 & 0.223 & 0.082 & 0.125 & 0.140 \\  & median & 0.814 & 1 & 0.244 & 0.130 & 0.129 & 0.145 \\  & max & 0.829 & 1 & 0.279 & 0.145 & 0.269 & 0.261 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{14 January +14} & min & 0.809 & 1 & 0.176 & 0.115 & 0.041 & 0.030 \\  & median & 0.835 & 1 & 0.214 & 0.133 & 0.120 & 0.122 \\ \cline{1-1}  & max & 0.842 & 1 & 0.241 & 0.160 & 0.148 & 0.154 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 13: Statistics of dynamic conditional correlations between the pairs Ether and the remaining stock indexes. It is worth underlining that safe-haven assets generally have some specific characteristics. The activity related to them must be easily convertible into cash at any time. The growth in supply must never exceed the demand. The assets are unlikely to become obsolete or replaced, and must not degrade or deteriorate over time.