Cryptocurrency network factors and gold

Both cryptocurrencies and gold are scarce, expensive for extraction, and less affected by money supply. We focus on these similarities and investigate whether cryptocurrency network affects impact on expected return on gold. Our results show that the number of cryptocurrency wallet users is positively related to the expected return on gold. Moreover, we employed a machine-learning approach and considered the interactions among predictors. We reveal that network factors have a greater impact on gold than returns on Bitcoin and other macroeconomic and financial variables.