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Informed Trading in Cryptocurrency Markets
This paper empirically estimates information asymmetry in cryptocurrency markets using the Probability of Informed Trading (PIN) and Adjusted PIN metrics . These markets, characterized by a high proportion of algorithmic trading and large volumes of high-frequency data, present a promising environment for analyzing informed trading behavior. We introduce a modified estimation procedure for Adjusted PIN, addressing floating-point errors and issues with local extrema, thereby improving its accuracy compared to the traditional naive approaches commonly used in the literature. Additionally, we propose an alternative trade aggregation method at higher frequencies than the conventional daily aggregation to enhance the efficiency of both PIN and Adjusted PIN models. Through analysis of both simulated and real data, we demonstrate that aggregating total buy and sell trades on a daily basis results in less meaningful estimates due to noisy input data, making it difficult to capture informed trader activity. The true optimal trade aggregation frequency is still to be further investigated, as increasing the frequency introduces heterogeneity in order imbalances, and the specific frequencies at which informed traders operate are still unknown. Finally, several empirical studies are conducted to evaluate the behavior of the metrics, revealing that illiquid cryptocurrencies exhibit relatively higher estimated probabilities of informed trading. This finding aligns with similar results observed in equity markets.