UPM Institutional Repository

The dragon king phenomenon (super-extreme outliers) in cryptocurrency. Is Bitcoin the riskier one? Fenomena raja naga (pencilan super-ekstrem) dalam mata wang kripto. Adakah Bitcoin lebih berisiko?


Citation

Retnam, Levan Raj Selva and Hussain, Saiful Izzuan and Ruza, Nadiah (2025) The dragon king phenomenon (super-extreme outliers) in cryptocurrency. Is Bitcoin the riskier one? Fenomena raja naga (pencilan super-ekstrem) dalam mata wang kripto. Adakah Bitcoin lebih berisiko? Sains Malaysiana, 54 (11). pp. 2785-2796. ISSN 0126-6039

Abstract

This study was conducted to identify the existence of the phenomenon of Dragon Kings (DKs) in five notable cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple. DKs are meaningful extreme outliers that occasionally fall outside the Pareto or power-law distribution. These examples have been statistically identified as extreme of extreme returns that occur more frequently than the power law distribution predicts. The study uses the Pareto distribution, usually associated with extreme data, to examine the upper and lower tails of returns. The result shows that the upper and lower tails of the returns of all the cryptocurrencies studied prove the existence of the Dragon Kings mechanism. Contrary to expectations, Bitcoin has seen the most unpreditable of extreme returns compared to other cryptocurrencies. This characteristic causes Bitcoin notably challenging to forecast. The results of this study are crucial for investors to evaluate and understand the Dragon King events, which represent returns that are exceptionally extreme even among other extreme values (super-extreme) observed in these financial assets.


Download File

[img] Text
124868.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to Repository staff only

Download (898kB)

Additional Metadata

Item Type: Article
Subject: Multidisciplinary
Divisions: School of Business and Economics
DOI Number: https://doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2025-5411-17
Publisher: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Dragon kings; Extreme outliers
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
Depositing User: MS. HADIZAH NORDIN
Date Deposited: 30 Apr 2026 15:49
Last Modified: 30 Apr 2026 15:49
Altmetrics: http://www.altmetric.com/details.php?domain=psasir.upm.edu.my&doi=10.17576/jsm-2025-5411-17
URI: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/124868
Statistic Details: View Download Statistic

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item