Policy Shocks, Crypto Swings: Asymmetric Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Cryptocurrency Returns

This study investigates how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) innovations shape the daily returns of major cryptocurrencies, namely ADA, USDT, ETH, USDC, BTC, BCH, XRP, BNB, DOGE, and LTC. Using daily data from 07/06/2020 to 01/01/2026, the study applies symmetric and asymmetric wavelet quantile regression to capture state dependence across the conditional return distribution and horizon dependence across short-, medium-, and long-run components. The symmetric results reveal that the EPU—cryptocurrency nexus is heterogeneous, time-varying, and strongly dependent on both investment horizon and return quantile. In the short term, EPU generally has weak or insignificant effects across most cryptocurrencies. However, the medium-term results show stronger and more diverse responses, with ADA, LTC, DOGE, USDC, and BNB displaying positive effects at extreme lower and higher quantiles, while negative effects are mostly concentrated around middle quantiles. Conversely, BCH, USDT, ETH, and BTC exhibit stronger negative medium-term responses across most quantiles. In the long term, EPU mainly exerts adverse effects on ADA, LTC, DOGE, USDC, BNB, ETH, and BTC. The asymmetric findings further confirm that positive and negative EPU shocks transmit differently into cryptocurrency returns. Positive EPU shocks often generate negative medium- or long-term effects, whereas negative shocks frequently produce positive medium-term responses, particularly for LTC, DOGE, BCH, BNB, XRP, and USDT. Based on these findings, policy recommendations are proposed.