Efficient Market Hypothesis

So I'm currently working on my Bachelor Thesis trying to analyze the viability of the effiient market hypothesis, comparing a cryptocurrency to a hard basket. How would I go about getting proper data for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin? I've stumbled upon a couple of websites, but am having a bitch of a time working my head around the jargon.

So, is there anything in particular I should watch out for? I wanna do tick-by-tick analysis on price volatilty (against the USD), but am having a hard time.

wow it's almost like you found and extremely inefficient, low volume, highly speculative market that isn't actually worth shit!

well yes, but a relatively unregulated one for that matter; EMH basically advocates that.

...what?
EMH only works in a transparent market where information is readily available
that is only made possible through regulation

don't you think it's ironic that you're having trouble finding information on this particular market?

I'll tell you right now that presenting your thesis as evaluating the "viability" of the EMH is going to open it up for gutting. It's already well argued that the EMH is not invalidated by individual examples of inefficiencies, in fact, it is individual speculators capitalizing on perceived inefficiencies that drive the market towards efficiency. It's not unlike the law of entropy, in that over time entropy tends to increase with complete certainty, but it's not impossible find moments of decreasing entropy.
If anything, you'd be better served by presenting cryptos as an example of a market that's in an unstable transition state and explore how we might be able to study those markets to determine the qualities, like those in
that let us identify such a state. In that context, your original question about the difficulty of finding and/or identifying proper data might itself turn out to be a notable quality.

>EMH only works in a transparent market where information is readily available
>that is only made possible through regulation
I'd argue that the specific level of transparency or information is less relevant than the requirement that all participants possess the same access to information.

The market is efficient even if it is not transparent, or well understood, because it is likely not transparent and well understood for the majority involved, hence higher volatility.

EMH basically implies the value being correctly reflected by the stock price because it is this price people are willing to engage in trade. Any change in information will be reflected by the change of stock price.

Hm, interesting point man. Lemme clarify what I mean a little bit more then.

Basically, I was gonna approach it from the starting point that both cryptos and currency baskets are essentially currency. Then, I was going to look at what central bank objectives are with regards to currency. Whilst the Fed and ECB have different mandates, the one they have in common is that of price stability (the ECB has a boner for an annual 2% increase in HICP, but mas o menos both central banks agree on that.)

Given that primary objective, I wanted to analyze the efficacy of purpose-built regulatory institutions vs. the free market in maintaining the objective of price stability.

What did you mean by your proposal though? I would've imagined it to be difficult to draw equivalencies because you really don't have similar markets to things like cryptocurriencies. I could be very wrong though obviously, in which case if you'd clarify what you mean it'd be much appreciated.

Oh, I see the irony in it a lot. Of course, I'm approaching this with a predisposition though, hence my choice of topic. When I say EMH, I mean it in it's semi-strong form, as that's the most widely peddled "realistic" equivalent of it, where all publicly available information is taken into account. Of course, you'd have to be able to use it, but everyone who trades in bitcoin knows how to do that. People who don't participate in a market aren't really part of it.

I don't really understand the point you're making. As far as I understand it, if markets are not transparent there's always opportunities for arbitrage, which are inefficiencies.

>the specific level of transparency or information is less relevant than the requirement that all participants possess the same access to information.
you naive rube, access to information means noting when 99% of people are total morons [which is the case] and won't even bother analysing what's right in front of them
someone's going to have more information and they're going to use it to their benefit

>I don't really understand the point you're making. As far as I understand it, if markets are not transparent there's always opportunities for arbitrage, which are inefficiencies.

Well I had the market of cryptocurrencies in mind, where the only real "value" of the products is their speculative nature, and not the kind of ulility (please don't start arguing about this point - it is a given fact that cryptos have been of little use except buying drugs). Therefore, even if some insiders percieve some coins to be of higher value - maybe because they know the underlying security algorithms that the general public does not know, or they know some major company will allow payments - EMH still holds because the speculative nature is not affected by the underlying utility of owning coins, and this is what drives the price.