Cryptocurrencies are still relatively new in the market and are growing daily, Bitcoin and Ethereum have an average trading volume of 22.5 and 10.496 billion $ per day from May 2023 to May 2024.

The research will look at whether changes of Bitcoin and Ethereum can be explained by S&P500 and in more details by 11 sectoral funds as well as a risk-free government bond, pre and post covid. Previous research is looking at the market through one market fund, however GICS divides the market into 11 sectoral funds, which creates the gap for this research. A Granger causality can be established between the different industry funds, the government bond and the cryptocurrencies. Pre-covid there was no causal explanation for Bitcoin, however post-covid, the risk-free rate, telecommunication, healthcare and consumer staples granger caused changes in Bitcoin. Ethereum changes Granger causality between both periods, with pre-covid having more explanatory variables, the risk-free rate, lags of Ethereum and the financial sector being in both periods and the sole explanatory variables post-covid.

The results of this research show that there is not only a high difference between the first and second period, but also between the assets that Granger caused ETH and BTC.