arXiv subjects

Kundan Mukhia

Publications and source records attributed to Kundan Mukhia.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Scaling laws of Stablecoin Transactions: Evidence from USDT and USDC on the Ethereum blockchain

Stablecoins have rapidly emerged as an important class of digital assets and a component of the digital financial ecosystem. Despite their growing importance, the statistical properties of stablecoin transaction activity remain largely unexplored. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate scaling behavior in stablecoin transaction data, focusing on USDT and USDC. We analyze approximately 370 million USDT and USDC transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain across six periods spanning June 2024 to February 2026. Based on interactions between Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) and Smart Contracts (SCs), we classify transactions into four categories: EOA-EOA, EOA-SC, SC-EOA, and SC-SC. Using maximum-likelihood estimation of power-law exponents, we find that transaction value distributions exhibit heavy-tailed scaling for both stablecoins across all periods and interaction categories. We identify two distinct scaling regimes: EOA-involved categories cluster around 1.45-1.60, whereas SC-SC transactions exhibit higher exponents of approximately 1.72-1.73. Sensitivity analysis confirms that this separation is robust across periods, stablecoins, and fitting sample sizes. Counterfactual analysis shows that changes in category weights alone cannot explain the observed variation in the overall exponent. Across different sample sizes, the counterfactual path accounts for only about 10%-35% of the total temporal range observed in the actual data. Overall, our results indicate two broadly differentiated scaling regimes in the tail of stablecoin transaction values. Power-law tail behavior is observed throughout stablecoin transaction activity, but the exponent depends on whether transactions are driven by EOAs or SCs. These findings provide a basis for further research on scaling behavior and transaction heterogeneity in blockchain-based financial systems.

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arXiv2026

Structural Dynamics of G5 Stock Markets During Exogenous Shocks: A Random Matrix Theory-Based Complexity Gap Approach

We identify a robust structural signature of stock markets during exogenous shock events by analyzing collective return dynamics across G5 countries. Using Random Matrix Theory, we introduce the complexity gap, defined as the difference between the normalized largest eigenvalue and the average pairwise correlation, to quantify changes in market structure. This measure reveals a consistent three-phase pattern across multiple shocks, including the 2025 U.S. tariff event, the COVID-19 crisis, and country-specific shocks in Japan and China during 2024. Before a shock, markets show a positive complexity gap, reflecting a rich structure with multiple interacting factors. During shocks, the gap collapses to near zero, signaling strong synchronization under a single dominant mode. Post-shock recovery follows a nonmonotonic path: an initial widening (a false recovery), a temporary recollapse, and final sustained restoration. This pattern holds at both market and sector levels and across global and local shocks. Ordinal entropy analysis confirms the same sequence of collapse and false recovery in directional diversity. We further demonstrate that lower complexity gap values predict higher future portfolio volatility, especially after shocks, establishing its value as a state-dependent risk indicator. For investors, initial gap widening may mislead, while sustained widening signals genuine structural stabilization. These findings reveal a robust structural signature governing financial market dynamics during crisis and recovery periods.

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arXiv2026

Regime Discovery and Intra-Regime Return Dynamics in Global Equity Markets

Financial markets alternate between tranquil periods and episodes of stress, and return dynamics can change substantially across these regimes. We study regime-dependent dynamics in developed and developing equity indices using a data-driven Hilbert--Huang-based regime identification and profiling pipeline, followed by variable-length Markov modeling of categorized returns. Market regimes are identified using an Empirical Mode Decomposition-based Hilbert--Huang Transform, where instantaneous energy from the Hilbert spectrum separates Normal, High, and Extreme regimes. We then profile each regime using Holo--Hilbert Spectral Analysis, which jointly resolves carrier frequencies, amplitude-modulation frequencies, and amplitude-modulation energy (AME). AME, interpreted as volatility intensity, declines monotonically from Extreme to High to Normal regimes. This decline is markedly sharper in developed markets, while developing markets retain higher baseline volatility intensity even in Normal regimes. Building on these regime-specific volatility signatures, we discretize daily returns into five quintile states $\mathtt{R}_1$ to $\mathtt{R}_5$ and estimate Variable-Length Markov Chains via context trees within each regime. Unconditional state probabilities show tail states dominate in Extreme regimes and recede as regimes stabilize, alongside persistent downside asymmetry. Entropy peaks in High regimes, indicating maximum unpredictability during moderate-volatility periods. Conditional transition dynamics, evaluated over contexts of length up to three days from the context-tree estimates, indicate that developed markets normalize more effectively as stress subsides, whereas developing markets retain residual tail dependence and downside persistence even in Normal regimes, consistent with a coexistence of continuation and burst-like shifts.

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arXiv2026

Intraday Limit Order Price Change Transition Dynamics Across Market Capitalizations Through Markov Analysis

Quantitative understanding of stochastic dynamics in limit order price changes is essential for execution strategy design. We analyze intraday transition dynamics of ask and bid orders across market capitalization tiers using high-frequency NASDAQ100 tick data. Employing a discrete-time Markov chain framework, we categorize consecutive price changes into nine states and estimate transition probability matrices (TPMs) for six intraday intervals across High ($\mathtt{HMC}$), Medium ($\mathtt{MMC}$), and Low ($\mathtt{LMC}$) market cap stocks. Element-wise TPM comparison reveals systematic patterns: price inertia peaks during opening and closing hours, stabilizing midday. A capitalization gradient is observed: $\mathtt{HMC}$ stocks exhibit the strongest inertia, while $\mathtt{LMC}$ stocks show lower stability and wider spreads. Markov metrics, including spectral gap, entropy rate, and mean recurrence times, quantify these dynamics. Clustering analysis identifies three distinct temporal phases on the bid side -- Opening, Midday, and Closing, and four phases on the ask side by distinguishing Opening, Midday, Pre-Close, and Close. This indicates that sellers initiate end-of-day positioning earlier than buyers. Stationary distributions show limit order dynamics are dominated by neutral and mild price changes. Jensen-Shannon divergence confirms the closing hour as the most distinct phase, with capitalization modulating temporal contrasts and bid-ask asymmetry. These findings support capitalization-aware and time-adaptive execution algorithms.

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arXiv2026

Core-Periphery Dynamics in Market-Conditioned Financial Networks: A Conditional P-Threshold Mutual Information Approach

This study investigates how financial market structure reorganizes during the COVID-19 crash using a conditional p-threshold mutual information (MI) based Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) framework. We analyze nonlinear dependencies among the largest stocks from four diverse QUAD countries: the US, Japan, Australia, and India. Crashes are identified using the Hellinger distance and Hilbert spectrum; a crash occurs when HD = mu\_H + 2*sigma\_H, segmenting data into pre-crash, crash, and post-crash periods. Conditional p-threshold MI filters out common market effects and applies permutation-based significance testing. Resulting validated dependencies are used to construct MST networks for comparison across periods. Networks become more integrated during the crash, with shorter path lengths, higher centrality, and lower algebraic connectivity, indicating fragility. Core-periphery structure declines, with increased periphery vulnerability, and disassortative mixing facilitates shock transmission. Post-crash networks show only partial recovery. Aftershock analysis using the Gutenberg-Richter law indicates higher relative frequency of large volatility events following the crash. Results are consistent across all markets, highlighting the conditional p-threshold MI framework for capturing nonlinear interdependencies and systemic vulnerability.

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arXiv2025

Early-Warning Signals of Political Risk in Stablecoin Markets: Human and Algorithmic Behavior Around the 2024 U.S. Election

We study how the 2024 U.S. presidential election, viewed as a major political risk event, affected cryptocurrency markets by distinguishing human-driven peer-to-peer stablecoin transactions from automated algorithmic activity. Using structural break analysis, we find that human-driven Ethereum Request for Comment 20 (ERC-20) transactions shifted on November 3, two days before the election, while exchange trading volumes reacted only on Election Day. Automated smart-contract activity adjusted much later, with structural breaks appearing in January 2025. We validate these shifts using surrogate-based robustness tests. Complementary energy-spectrum analysis of Bitcoin and Ethereum identifies pronounced post-election turbulence, and a structural vector autoregression confirms a regime shift in stablecoin dynamics. Overall, human-driven stablecoin flows act as early-warning indicators of political stress, preceding both exchange behavior and algorithmic responses.

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arXiv2025

Universal Patterns in the Blockchain: Analysis of EOAs and Smart Contracts in ERC20 Token Networks

Scaling laws offer a powerful lens to understand complex transactional behaviors in decentralized systems. This study reveals distinctive statistical signatures in the transactional dynamics of ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain by examining over 44 million token transfers between July 2017 and March 2018 (9-month period). Transactions are categorized into four types: EOA--EOA, EOA--SC, SC-EOA, and SC-SC based on whether the interacting addresses are Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) or Smart Contracts (SCs), and analyzed across three equal periods (each of 3 months). To identify universal statistical patterns, we investigate the presence of two canonical scaling laws: power law distributions and temporal Taylor's law (TL). EOA-driven transactions exhibit consistent statistical behavior, including a near-linear relationship between trade volume and unique partners with stable power law exponents ($γ\approx 2.3$), and adherence to TL with scaling coefficients ($β\approx 2.3$). In contrast, interactions involving SCs, especially SC-SC, exhibit sublinear scaling, unstable power-law exponents, and significantly fluctuating Taylor coefficients (variation in $β$ to be $Δβ= 0.51$). Moreover, SC-driven activity displays heavier-tailed distributions ($γ< 2$), indicating bursty and algorithm-driven activity. These findings reveal the characteristic differences between human-controlled and automated transaction behaviors in blockchain ecosystems. By uncovering universal scaling behaviors through the integration of complex systems theory and blockchain data analytics, this work provides a principled framework for understanding the underlying mechanisms of decentralized financial systems.

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arXiv2024

Complex network analysis of cryptocurrency market during crashes

This paper identifies the cryptocurrency market crashes and analyses its dynamics using the complex network. We identify three distinct crashes during 2017-20, and the analysis is carried out by dividing the time series into pre-crash, crash, and post-crash periods. Partial correlation based complex network analysis is carried out to study the crashes. Degree density ($ρ_D$), average path length ($\bar{l}$), and average clustering coefficient ($\overline{cc}$) are estimated from these networks. We find that both $ρ_D$ and $\overline{cc}$ are smallest during the pre-crash period, and spike during the crash suggesting the network is dense during a crash. Although $ρ_D$ and $\overline{cc}$ decrease in the post-crash period, they remain higher than pre-crash levels for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 crashes suggesting a market attempt to return to normalcy. We get $\bar{l}$ is minimal during the crash period, suggesting a rapid flow of information. A dense network and rapid information flow suggest that during a crash uninformed synchronized panic sell-off happens. However, during the 2019-20 crash, the values of $ρ_D$, $\overline{cc}$, and $\bar{l}$ did not vary significantly, indicating minimal change in dynamics compared to other crashes. The findings of this study may guide investors in making decisions during market crashes.

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