# Signatures of the Crypto-Currency Market Decoupling from the Forex
## 1 Introduction  
When [PERSON] proposed the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) based on peer-to-peer network and encryption techniques [1] in 2008, the blockchain technology was born. The idea behind this was providing, for the first time in human history, a tool thanks to which people anywhere could entrust each other and transact within an extensive network not requiring centralized management. The methods on which the Bitcoin is based, as regards information storage, encryption technologies, and consensus protocols, were already established beforehand [2]. Nevertheless, as is often the case, for innovation to take place someone needs to combine existing technology in a new way and this must land on fertile ground, which was provided in 2009 by the aftermath of the financial crisis and resulted in the Bitcoin network as a distributed secure database. At that time, the Bitcoin quickly started getting wider recognition, not only within communities of tech geeks but also within the broader financial industry and, due to the anonymity of the transactions, even in the \"underworld\" of traders involved in dubious, when not outright illegal, businesses. The first fiat-to-bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was launched in July 2010 and soon afterwards in February 2011 the first rules-free decentralized marketplace, called Silk Road, where one could buy nearly any conceivable good using BTC, was launched. These events resulted in a drastically increased demand, leading to the first BTC bubble [3], which burstin the beginning of 2014 after the closure of Silk Road in October 2013 and the Mt. Gox trading suspension in February 2014. As the public awareness recognition of the Bitcoin increased, and more players developed an interest in the blockchain technology, it became apparent that the distributed ledger could be used not only as a basis for digital currencies but also for passing information and executing computer code on the blockchain. The idea of a globally-distributed cloud computing network, Ethereum, was proposed in late 2013 and then launched in July 2015. It allows anyone to create decentralized applications and own tokens by using smart contracts on the network. This capability provided the ground for the Initial Coin Offer (ICO) mania in 2017, which led to bubble engulfing the entire cryptocurrency market and eventually bursting in January 2018. The current state of the blockchain technology could be compared to the dot-com bubble, which unfolded at the turn of the last century. At that time, nearly everyone saw generic potential in internet technology, but it was not precisely known towards which direction the same would develop. In those times of euphoria, even rumors that a company started dealing with web technology would cause an increase in share price [4]. Predictably, after the bubble burst, only a fraction of the leading companies survived. Financial markets, especially the Forex market, due to their huge transactions volume, widely diversified participants and high speed of information processing, possess many of the emergent features that hallmark complex systems [5]. A multitude of studies have analyzed the properties of the Forex market in terms of the returns distribution and volatility clustering [6; 7], persistence [8; 9], multifractality [7; 10] and cross-correlations [11; 12]. Recently, largely owing to its drastically higher volatility, the cryptocurrency market also gained research attention [13]. The studies published to date encompass market efficiency analysis [14; 15], multifractal analysis [16; 17] and cross-correlations analysis [18; 19]; see Ref. [20] for additional references. However, mainly data with a temporal granularity (resolution) of one day have as yet been considered: evidently, this is inadequate given the high, and ever increasing, speed of information transmission. Here, the Forex market and the cryptocurrency market are compared, the latter represented at a more appropriate fine granularity of 10 s, as supported by the Kraken exchange data.