TESTING OF HERD BEHAVIOR IN CRYPTO ASSETS MARKETS

Behavioral finance informs that investors will not always act rationally, and that they will act under the influence of various behavioral prejudices while making investment decisions. Whether it's the stock market or the crypto asset market, it has been demonstrated by a variety of research in which such behavior can be exhibited. In this context, the existence of herd behavior in crypto assets with close values in terms of transaction volume and size, especially Bitcoin, which is one of the important assets of crypto asset markets, constitutes the subject of this study. For this purpose, the market capitalization (dependent variable) of Crypto assets, Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple, Binance Coin, Tether, Cardano, Dogecoin, Tron (Independent variables) were used as variables of the study. The study covers the period between 01.01.2018-27.11.2023. The Horizontal Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation (CSAD) method developed by Chrisrie and Huang (1995) and Chang, Cheng and Khorona (2000) was used to test herd behavior. The daily opening values of the variables used in the study were used in the analysis. As a result of the study, it was concluded that anti-herd behavior was exhibited in the specified period in crypto asset markets.