The Economics of Cryptocurrency Mining

What is Cryptocurrency Mining? What are Mining Rigs? How do miners make money and are they consistently profitable? What is Proof of Stake and how does it differ from Proof of Work? Read this transcript of an interview with a seasoned investment manager and Cryptocurrency proponent, Murray Stahl, and learn more about the economics of Cryptocurrency Mining. 

Consensus Money

Horizon Kinetics is one of the first conventional asset management companies to get actively involved in the field of Cryptocurrency and Cryptocurrency mining. Since 2015, the company lead by Murray Stahl and Steve Bregman has been publishing research on Cryptocurrency.

Last year, they started publishing podcasts in Q&A format, under the name Consensus Money. In the third episode of Consensus Money, published in April 2018, Murray Stahl answers question on the intricacies of Cryptocurrency Mining. The podcast is delightfully insightful and lays out the economics of cryptocurrency mining in simple and understandable terms.

What follows is a transcript of the podcast. We have changed the text slightly for a better reading experience. You can listen to the full Q&A session on the dedicated Consensus Money page on the Horizon Kinetics website.

What is Cryptocurrency Mining?

Hugh Ross: Welcome to another episode of consensus money, a podcast series with Horizon Kinetics about cryptocurrencies. I’m Hugh Ross, COO of Horizon Kinetics and today I’m joined by Murray Stahl, the chairman and chief investment officer of Horizon Kinetics. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the topic of Cryptocurrency Mining in general and also Horizon Kinetics’s approach to mining. So Murray, with that, why don’t we talk a little bit about mining? Can you tell us what Cryptocurrency Mining is?

Murray Stahl: Okay. Well, Cryptocurrency Mining refers to the process of validating transactions on the blockchain. So, essentially the so-called miners are really operating servers, which are endeavoring to validate transactions that are happening over, what’s called, a block interval. A block is basically the transactions that have happened over the course of 10 minutes and the validation process are things like making sure the public keys and private keys match and have the privilege of writing that to the blockchain.

You’re trying to solve an equation, a branch of mathematics known as elliptical functions. It is not really important what elliptical functions are, but more that people are competing to solve that problem. And whoever’s the first person to solve it within a 10-minute span, or the first entities, get the block reward.  Which, at the moment, is 12.5 Bitcoin, in the case of Bitcoin. In the case of other coins, there are different block amounts of awards.

Different Types of Miners

Hugh Ross: Gotcha. So, I know there are different kinds of miners and mining rigs. Can you perhaps explain the difference between what an ASIC and what a GPU rig is and what does ASIC stand for? What does GPU stand for and why do you even need different kinds of rigs?

Murray Stahl: Okay, ASIC stands for application specific integrated circuit. GPU stands for graphics processing unit. Basically, the coins, the logic behind the Cryptocurrencies were designed to operate on different machines. And that’s why you need different kinds of machines for different kinds of currencies.

Now, with ASIC you’re using that for currencies like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. GPU is used for currencies like Etherium, Etherium Classic, Zcash and oddly enough, Bitcoin Gold and there are some others as well. So you need different kinds of machines to essentially mine or validated transactions of different kinds of Cryptocurrencies, depending on how they were designed.

Owning Rigs vs Cloud Mining

Hugh Ross: Right. Okay, perfect. What is the difference between – you hear the term cloud mining a lot and then when you own the rigs, you’re mining with your own rig. So what’s the difference between mining with your own rigs and cloud mining?

Murray Stahl: Well, essentially what you’re doing in cloud mining, is that you’re leasing capacity.  The same way as you want to store music or pictures or data on the cloud. Basically, you’re leasing someone else’s equipment and you’re not responsible for the operation of the equipment whatsoever.

You pay a certain fee and you get a certain revenue. And presumably, the revenue you get is greater than the fees you pay. The idea is similar, in the case of the mining that you do yourself, except you are responsible for the operations of the machines. There is no one to turn to other than your own faculties

Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake

Hugh Ross: Right. Perfect. Okay. Now, a couple of terms that are out there that I think it is important that people understand. So, there is what’s called Proof of Work and there’s Proof of Stake. Perhaps you could explain to everybody what is the difference between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake?

Murray Stahl: Okay. Well, it can be a little convoluted. So, to begin with, Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency. They wanted to have a certain issuance rate from its inception – which was roughly in 2009 – until the last Bitcoin was going to be mined, in the year 2140.

The idea was to make the issuance rate a little bit analogous to gold. So, why was gold, for the course of 5,000 years, frequently used as a currency? Because you could always get some gold. But it became progressively harder and harder to find gold. So, the amount of gold that entered the monetary system in any given year was, generally speaking, a small amount.

The idea of Proof of Work that came up, it was to make you do some work to validate the transactions. Basically, you have to get a rig, you have to consume copious amount of electric power and operate equipment and so on and so forth. And basically, you have an operating cost. The idea was to put an impediment upon issuance, (a) so it would be a controlled amount, and (b) if you set up a program like Bitcoin did, there would be a certain difficulty rate.

Difficulty refers to the probability of solving these equations or elliptical functions. And that can be actually fairly predictable. You can have a predictable issuance rate to the year 2140. Which means you will know what the inflation rate is going to be up to the year 2140. Beyond 2140 there is no inflation whatsoever because there is no net currency issuance whatsoever. And that would be discounted in the price. That’s the idea of Proof of Work.

Proof of Stake came up or was invented because a lot of people thought the Proof of Work concept is wasteful of things like electric power. It uses copious amounts of electric power. Some people feel it’s bad for the environment. So they understand that you want to put an impediment upon instruments.

So, instead of using electrical power and calculations, the idea was to actually put up Cryptocurrency and Cryptocurrency, presumably, is valuable. You put up a Cryptocurrency and the block awards are allocated randomly, pro rata, based on how much cryptocurrency you put up.

The only Proof of Stake system which might be issued, of which I am aware, is Etherium, which is currently Beta testing their Proof of Stake system . We’ll see if it actually operates or not.

Hugh Ross: Do you have a view of whether one is better than the other?

Murray Stahl: Well, no one has actully operated Proof of Stake. So, it has a good side and a bad side. Theoretically, or practically speaking, we can’t make an assertion because we don’t know Proof of Work. We’re all familiar with or we know how it works.

Here is the good side of Proof of stake and I’ll give you the bad side. So, we mine Etherium with GPU servers. Let’s assume that Proof of Stake is a valid concept. From our point of view, we’ve held a certain amount of Etherium that we´ve mined. We continue to mine every day.

In theory, we could put up that asset and then liberate the servers that are currently mining Etherium to mine something else, like Zcash or Etherium Classic, for example. Actually turning our Etherium into a doubly productive asset. It appreciates or has appreciated thus far. That’s one vector of productivity. And then we could actually earn more Etherium.

So theoretically, if Etherium has, let’s say, somewhere between a 14 to 15% inflation rate and 10% of all the people who own Etherium then put up Etherium for the Proof of Stake. That 10% would own the entirety of the inflation rate. So, the inflation rate spread among the currency is 15% but spread among the 10% who prove a stake, 150%.

So, theoretically, if 10% of people chose to participate in the Proof of Stake and we were one of them, we would earn a 150% rate of return, or nearly so, on our Etherium. Which would be pretty good. That’s the good side.

The bad side, in theory, is that if everyone thought that was so alluring, and you can clearly see – and this is why I said the good side first – if everyone saw that there are certain people that are making 150% on their Etherium cryptocurrency by just leaving it in a wallet – or in some cold storage or on the server – then a lot of people might want to do it.

So, you can have a situation where if enough of people who own Etherium posted for Proof of Stake, you can come very close to demonetizing all the system. Meaning Etherium wouldn’t circulate. Everybody would just, it would be one of these Gresham’s law situations. People would rather have the return than actually transact in the currency. So it can be very reflexive in the sense that it created a bad situation. No one knows what’s going to happen because no one has tried it.

Hash Power Supply and Demand

Hugh Ross: Could there be a massive amount of Hash Power that shifts from Etherium to, for example, Zcash, in the event that we go to Proof of Stake? Because then what do they mine? They’re not be mining any Ethirioum on it anymore.

Murray Stahl: Yes. That could well happen. And even more the case, there might be GPU equipment right now that’s still being used for Etherium that is nearly obsolete. And if it moves to a currency like Zcash, Zcash has a much lower difficulty rating. So, what might be is that that equipment might be much more productive in a Zcash mode. Or maybe, there are some other forks of  Zcash that have even lower difficulty ratings, where it might be doubly productive.

A lot of interesting things can happen. So from our point of view, we might be able to take our Etherium-based servers and move them to something like Zcash and increase the productivity of our mining activities. Might be very interesting.

Hugh Ross: Gotcha. As I know that you know, there was recently an ASIC miner released by Bitmain for Etherium and I wanted to just touch on how you think having an ASIC miner – which in theory is kind of a next-gen miner – will impact the mining of Etherium and Etherium Classic? How do you think this whole ASIC versus GPU hardware will play out and especially in the context of Etherium?

Murray Stahl: Well, the GPU miners clearly wouldn’t like that. And why wouldn’t they like it? Because if there is ASIC equipment that can mine Etherium as easy using that currency, it’s going to get a certain market share and it reduces productivity. It will make the GPU equipment worth less. Not worthless in the sense of zero but worth less money than it otherwise would be.

So, the natural impulse of the GPU miners is to fork the currency in such manner as it comes ASIC resistant. You can’t use it for that. Of course, it’s not necessarily a robust defence. Because just like you can fork the currency to be ASIC resistant, you can fork Etherium to be ASIC tolerant or ASIC sympathetic. Because all the code is open source. So you might end up having an Etherium fork which is ASIC compatible and you might have an Ethirium fork, rigid, ASIC resistant as possible.

Hugh Ross: Which is crazy considering Etherium has already forked once.

Murray Stahl: That’s right. So, it could theoretically happen. We just don’t know.

Cryptocurrencies without Mining

Hugh Ross: Right. Okay. So just for a kind of a compare and contrast: There are Cryptocurrencies that are not mineable. I thought we should touch on one or two examples of that, like Ripple. So if they are not minable and you, in theory, to quote-unquote, operate the system, in the world of Bitcoin, for example, there is an incentive to operate the system, right? Because you’re getting mining rewards. So what’s the incentive to operate the system in a Cryptocurrency where there is no mining?

Murray Stahl: Okay. So in order to discuss a Cryptocurrency with no mining, we have to introduce a little bit of new terminology. It’s not hard to use. It’s not hard to understand. There’s the dichotomy between a permission system and a non-permission system.

A non-permission system is like Bitcoin. If you have the money and go out and buy a server, you to can mine Bitcoin. So a non-permission system means; anybody who feels like it can take part in mining.

A permission system is; the group of people who are currently operating it have to collectively give their consent to admit you to join the network. If they don’t give you consent, you can’t operate the system. Now if they give their consent, you have an operating system, you have a cost of operating the system, but there’s no block reward to give out. So then the question becomes, to get back to the original question, why would you have the operating expenses and not have any reward whatsoever?

So, Ripple otherwise known as XRP was introduced to be a substitute to what is called the SWIFT network. Basically, it’s a global bank money transfer system. It’s actually not even a money transfer system. What it really is, is a notification that money is going to be transferred. So it’s cumbersome, it’s slow, it’s difficult to use. And then it also has the faculty that it operates in a variety of currencies.

So the idea behind XRP or Ripple as it’s sometimes called is that there will be this one currency. And you could pay any bank you wanted to in that currency on behalf of any correspondent, or any client. So it eliminates a lot of currency transactions and also eliminates a lot of accounting expenses. Because you’re only accounting in one currency as opposed to 180 currencies that are in the world. And there’s also, you don’t need trading in 180 squared pairs caused by any of the 180 currencies can be traded versus another currency.

So, if someone in Argentina wanted to pay someone in Sweden, you have to make a market. Argentine Pesos for Swedish Kroner. And that in itself is a great deal of work. So what you would be doing is – if you’re a bank or a global brokerage system and you are participating in this – you’re offering the service to your clients.

Presumably, it’s going to be faster and it’s going to cut your expenses and cut your errors. So, on the one hand, your expenses go up because you are operating the system. On the other hand, your expenses are going down for a number of reasons.

You’re not operating the SWIFT system anymore. It’s displacing it. You’re not having all of the accounting problems and tracking problems working in 180 currencies. And you also don’t have to maintain what’s called in banking Nostro and Vostro accounts. So, Nostro and Vostro accounts refer to kinds of accounts that balances other currencies you have to maintain in different countries.

So, when you’re paying someone in another country, on behalf of one of your clients, what’s really happening is that they are taking the money out of the account you maintain with a foreign bank and then eventually you reconcile with your client and get paid. There is enormous accounting expense and you’re also leading balances around the world in different currencies. And some of them may shift in value and you have significant hedging expenses.

Hugh Ross: So, so using Ripple as an example, it sounds like there are financial or economic incentives to use that currency, that don’t revolve around money. You don’t necessarily need money, but there are just, basically, another set of incentives.

Murray Stahl: There are other incentives. You can create other incentives to do it. And it is possible. There’s one other incentive. It’s minor, but it may not be a minor one day. The minor meaning m-i-n-o-r as opposed to a miner. Minor meaning of little significance right now.

There’s a tiny insignificant transaction fee for transacting in Ripple or XRP. That transaction fee doesn’t go to a banker or a brokerage firm. It just currency, it gets burned. So, Ripple started out with 100 billion units. Now it has 99.9 billion units. It does no transactional activity. The supply of the currency may decline a lot. So the higher the velocity of the currency goes, the faster the supply of money is going to shrink. And therefore, all things being equal, the greater the value of the currency itself.

Mining Approaches

Hugh Ross: So, why don’t we turn to Horizon Kinetics’ approach to mining. Why don’t we start off just by asking you when and why did Horizon Kinetics first get involved in mining?

Murray Stahl: When we got involved was late April, early May of 2017. Why we got involved was because it seemed like a very robust return was available. But it wasn’t only that. This plays a role in asset allocation.

So, mining in asset allocation should be known as Seniorage. Seniorage is basically the profit you make from printing money. So, historically when the United States Bureau of Printing and Engraving creates a $1 bill, it costs them 5.4 cents to print up the $1 bill. So they get a dollar out of it. The profits of mining aren’t quite as good, but they’re very robust. So it’s a way of earning a profit.

But it also plays a role in asset allocation because when you mine, the value of your equipment is being depreciated over the course of three years, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. So assuming you hold back the cash for depreciation, you’re unit value, month by month should be basically stable. What’s going to change is your profit. Or your dividend, if you decided to pay it out. Because the Cryptocurrency fluctuates.

So it plays a major role in asset allocation because of the problem right now with bonds, which are much more stable than equities. The lower the interest rates go, the greater the convexity you have in the bond portfolios. So if rates were to go up, you might take mark-to-market losses in bonds. And you don’t get a high yield anyway.

You get a much higher yield by mining cryptocurrencies and you also have a stable unit value. And that is real diversification versus publicly traded securities, that don’t have stable valuations. So I think it’s very important to asset allocation. I eventually think it’s going to be a major-sized asset class.

Choosing What to Mine

Hugh Ross: That’s great. So obviously I know we mine a bunch of different Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Etherium, Etherium Classic, Zcash and so on. What is your approach to or how do you think about optimizing the mix of Cryptocurrencies that Horizon Kinetics is mining, in terms of profitability?

Murray Stahl: Well, the returns fluctuate dramatically. Week by week, month by month. So, basically, we’ve weighted them more or less in accordance with the inflation rates. So Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash have roughly 3.9%. I think it’s actually 3.94% inflation rates and that’s much lower than Litecoin right now. Litecoin right now I believe, right now, is over 10 per cent.

So, we mine much more Bitcoin than Litecoin and you could make an argument of saying that we really should do the reverse. Because the increase in value in Litecoin when the inflation rate drops, as it will about one of the third years. From let’s say 10 to 4.9% or whatever the number happens to be. That might lead to a greater percentage increase in value than you might get in Bitcoin. It’s possible, but at the moment we decided to do it the way it is.

Also, it’s arguable that Bitcoin Cash has a potentially greater profit than Bitcoin because a certain amount of mined Bitcoin Cash is going to be burned, very much like the way it’s burned in Ripple. So the supply of Bitcoin Cash will ultimately then be lower than the supply of Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is going to have a better monetary policy.

So all these things need to be taken into account. And there are some other Cryptocurrencies where when they forked – for example, Ethireum Classic, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Cash, there are some others – it’s not clear that very many people got their forks. And they may be out there in the ether and no one will ever have access to them. So the supply of money, it may be much less than we think it is.

So all those things have to be taken into account and we’re always reevaluating our mix. At the moment GPU miners are uniquely expensive. It might have something to do with the idea that Etherium is going to move to Proof of Stake, and therefore you might be able to get alternative uses of the equipment. That said, we just don’t know. So at the moment, we have had, at least for the last couple of weeks, we haven’t really bought any GPU miners.

Profit Maximization

Hugh Ross: So, I know a lot of miners out there definitely look at profitability. Let’s say, hour by hour, minute by minute and they’re probably shifting their resources around from one Cryptocurrency to another, pretty frequently. What’s your approach to shifting resources from one Crypto to another? Do you do it often? Do you do it daily? Do you do it weekly or what is your approach to that?

Murray Stahl: Well, we haven’t done it often yet. The reason is that we are still building up our supply of service. So, one way to do it is when we’re making the next order. That’s a way of shifting your mix. So, if I had a lot of ASIC equipment and I wanted some GPU because I had in mind to mine Zcash, let’s say. Well it’s very easy, I’ll just order some GPU servers and one order is ASICS servers and now my mix is going to change.

The prices as they have been – as anybody who’s looking at the currency exchanges would realize instantaneously – is that the prices fluctuate enormously. Therefore the profits fluctuate enormously. Sometimes in the space of hours, sometimes even the space of minutes. And I think one of the reasons they fluctuated is people are constantly making these shifts. They try to optimize.

And I think when they make these shifts, that’s part of the reason these things fluctuate as much. So I decided I didn’t want to add to the variability by trying to outguess everyone else. So I’ve left it alone more or less and we have been very happy with the result.

Investing in Mining Equipment

Hugh Ross: Gotcha. I’ve certainly experienced and I know you have, that at times equipment can be hard to come by. And I think there are people out there, that take the approach that when they raise capital to invest in mining equipment, that they’re basically just going to go all in when they raise that money. I know you have a different approach. Maybe you could explain why you think it’s maybe better to have more of a prolonged, shall we say, approach to acquiring mining equipment?

Murray Stahl: Okay. Well, the first point is just a minor point. When you have a go-all-in approach you buy a tremendous amount of equipment at one time. You have to believe that you are actually impacting the price of equipment. So you want to buy a lot. The supply is not changing based on what your motivations are at that minute. Because the mining equipment manufacturers have no idea what you’re going to do. And so from their point of view, these are totally random events. When you put in a big order, you might actually make the price higher, not lower.

More importantly, however, over time the chip sets are going to improve. The software is going to improve. Everything about it going to improve. And if you believe in Moore’s law, eventually the chip sets will generate less heat. It will use electricity more efficiently and the price is going to come down as the manufacturers learn how to make your chips get higher yields.

There is a certain rejection rate when you’re making these ships. So the lower the rejection rate, the more profitable a given fabrication batches and the better a deal they can get for you. So if you put in an order for everything at once, you have no ability to react to changes in technology and changes in pricing.

So now, sometimes, like what happened recently, ASIC miners dropped in price. In our case, we didn’t invest that much money up front. We were investing gradually. So, now we have cash flow as well as the initial capital to buy many more miners at lower prices than we had before. You just have to assume that you’re going to get a better deal in future than you have been getting in the past.

Scale versus Flexibility

Hugh Ross: Got it, that makes sense. So, in terms of physically housing the equipment or locating the equipment, do you think it’s better to, basically, put everything in one large facility because of Economies of Scale or do you think that it maybe makes sense to choose multiple locations to house all your equipment. And if so, why?

Murray Stahl: We’ve taken the approach of housing our equipment in a variety of locations and we are actually interested in increasing the number of locations. And the reason is you never know what’s going to happen. There can be electrical outages and given the area is totally beyond your control, there can be natural events that are totally out of your control. You can have one hosting facility that just decides it doesn’t want to operate the facility anymore. You have to move your equipment.

There are a variety of things are going to happen and there’s always the possibility of disruption. So if you have all your eggs in one basket and you watch that basket very carefully, no matter how carefully you watch it, something might happen to put all your servers out of operation simultaneously. You don’t want that because they are not productive until you (a) find another hosting facility, (b) negotiate proper terms, (c) move and install all your equipment, which may be cumbersome.

Especially if you have a lot of servers and so on so forth. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to put everything in one basket. Just as I don’t think it’s a good idea to order all your servers in one fell swoop, which apparently everybody wants to do.

The Cost of Mining

Hugh Ross: Gotcha. And then in terms of the of the income statement of a mining operation, what are the biggest components of expense when you’re running a mining business?

Murray Stahl: Well, there’s really two, and I’ll break them down. One is the hosting expense. The hosting expense is, basically, that you’re paying for the electric power marked up by some suitable quantity and you’re paying essentially rent to put your machine on a shelf and you get a little oversight. That someone at least is looking at it, making sure it’s operating properly. And there’s at least some security in it. That somebody is making sure the facility isn’t broken into. If somebody does something untoward, they will call the appropriate authorities and so on so forth. So that’s one expense.

The other expense is depreciation on equipment. So basically you have to assume that in 36 months, your equipment’s is going to be fully appreciated. Meaning that it may work, but there will be more productive models out there. So, you’re not getting a high return on it although they might have some salvage value. So your depreciation is really a function of how much you pay for the machine. So essentially you’re using machine ratably over its useful life.

And those are the two primary components and some other minor expenses of operating a company. And it applies to every company. There is a tax return and there are certain filings, administrative expenses that every business has and cryptocurrency mining operators are not immune for that, but they are relatively minor. Those are the two significant costs.

Mining Revenues

Hugh Ross: So let’s talk about the revenue and the net income side of the financial statement. The profit margin associated with crypto mining, is that something that’s fairly consistent or does it vary? What causes it to vary? Can there be times when mining actually becomes unprofitable and what happens then?

Because, if you think about it, using Bitcoin is as the example, the miners have to have an incentive, right? To operate the system. Their incentive is they’re making money from mining. So, if mining becomes unprofitable because of either the cost of machines going up or the price of bitcoin falls enough, what happens? If the miners are not incentivized to operate the system, what happens to the whole system?

Murray Stahl: Okay, so to begin with, profit margins are not consistent. They vary and they vary very greatly. And what makes it vary the most? Well, the most important thing is the price of Cryptocurrencies is constantly fluctuating. So, as a generalization, the higher the price of the Cryptocurrency, all things being equal, which they never are, the better it is for you. If your profit margins lower, it is the worse it is for you.

Of course, the other variables vary as well. The cost of the equipment can go up it or it can go down. The electricity prices don’t seem to vary all that much, but they can. At least in theory. And then you could also have some machines that don’t last the requisite 36 months. As with any piece of equipment, something can go wrong with it. Although, that doesn’t happen all that frequently. So, those are all ways of varying the profit margins.

Then you might say: Whoa, what causes all those things to vary? Look at it this way. If you want to have a given cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or Etherium, you basically have two choices. You can buy it or you can create it by mining it. Those are ways you can obtain a crypto.

So let’s look at the example of the end of 2017, beginning of 2018. There were, I think, well over a thousand initial coin offerings. A lot of people compare them with Initial Public Offerings. They have a salient difference from our perspective and the mining perspective, in as much as, if you want to buy one, they don’t want fiat currency. They don’t want Dollars or Pounds or Swiss francs, Euros. They want crypto. So you had a whole series of people that wanted to participate in the so-called ICOs, initial coin offerings, that went out and bought Etherium and bought Bitcoin.

They had no interest in owning Etherium. They had no interest in owning Bitcoin and therefore they were pricing different buyers. Bitcoin and Etherium were merely modalities by which they paid for initial coin offerings. The only way to participate was to buy one of those two currencies. The orchestrators of initial coin offerings, therefore, received either Bitcoin or Etherium. In some cases, both.

They have no interest in holding Bitcoin or Etherium. It’s merely to fund some project. In most cases to fund their cost of creating the next generation of Cryptocurrency itself and making themselves very wealthy. So, in almost all instances, they were still in Cryptocurrencies.

So you had a few months when there was enormous pressure to buy. Virtually everyone was buying and then there was an enormous pressure to sell because they want to liberate this capital and put it into their coffers. You might say there were some traders that would look at these trends and maybe added a little fuel to the fire. Or you could debate whether that happened.

So, there were times when cryptocurrency mining went to break even. It happens. But it’s not going to stay there very long because cryptocurrency mining is designed to equilibrate. So let’s just say that it was unprofitable for a number of weeks. Well, most of these companies were very poorly capitalized.

So they can’t operate without profitability. They didn’t have huge cash reserves to operate unprofitably. What they would do to save cash is that they would turn off their machines. Which you can do in 30 seconds. If they turn off their machines, what happens is that the difficulty rating? Which you will recall, is the probability of solving this equation. If they turn up their machines, the difficulty rating goes down because there are fewer machines trying to solve the problem.

So when difficulty rating goes down and you leave your machine on, your machine necessarily becomes more productive. The probability of earning a coin goes up. So ultimately the whole thing is designed to equilibrate.

So, I’ve never really seen it being, maybe I’ve seen it for a day or two, get modestly unprofitable. Of course, it really isn’t moderately unprofitable, even so. Because when people calculate the cost of mining a coin, remember they are adding in the hosting fee plus the depreciation. The depreciation is not a cash expense. So on a GAAP basis, you might not be profitable but on a cash basis, you’re very profitable.

So in theory, you don’t have to take your accumulated depreciation expense and buy another machine if you don’t want to. It’s entirely a discretionary item.

The Least Efficient Entity

In any event, the way cryptocurrency mining works, it is unlike normal business activity. Because remember, this is the most important point. This is a permissionless system. And what makes cryptocurrency valuable are two things: a network effect, which is all people using it and the robustness of the network, which is the difficulty of hacking it, which is a function of how many people are actually operating it. So the more people operating it, the more robust it happens to be.

Now all those people don’t have the same cost structure. In normal business, there’s going to be some company that happens to be the most efficient company. So in theory, whatever good they’re producing, whatever service they’re providing, in theory, they could lower their price to a level where that individual enterprise makes a very high return on investment capital, but nobody else can match it. So, they basically drive everybody out of business or nearly so and they become the dominant player.

And therefore in most businesses, a dominant player sets the ceiling on return on equity or return on capital. So that’s the highest and nobody can compete with that. And that’s why most businesses have a dominant company or sometimes two dominant companies.

In cryptocurrency, if that happened, no one would use the cryptocurrency because it is hackable. So what needs to happen is, to make it robust, a lot of entities or a lot of people if you prefer, have to be operating it. Meaning mining it.

So the return on invested capital or return equity has to be sufficiently alluring so that the least efficient entity, whichever entity that is, has to make enough of a return to be interested. Everybody else is, by definition, more efficient than the least efficient entity. So everybody else is making a higher return.

So unlike the situation in all business, where the most efficient company sets the ceiling, in the world of Cryptocurrency, the least efficient company or entity or person, sets the floor on return on invested capital. Everyone else is going to make a higher rate of return.

Hugh Ross: Okay. Well, um, we are, we’ve been talking for over 35 minutes so I think we should wrap it up now. So I want to thank Murray so much for having this discussion with us. And thank you to our listeners. If you have any questions about what you’ve heard today, please reach out to us on info@horizonkinetics.com and please stay tuned for future episodes of Consensus Money. Thanks, Murray. Thank you very much.

Murray Stahl: Thank you.

The Value of the Road Not Taken

In 1916 Robert Frost published his poem The Road Not Taken. It is a narrative poem, where the narrator describes a moment when he comes to a fork in the road while taking a walk through a forest. After mulling it over, the narrator decides to take the road that seems to be less travelled.

The poem is by many regarded as one of the most misunderstood poems in history. It is often quoted when expressing views of individualism and not conforming to general convention.

 

At the end of the poem, the narrator sighs as he tells the reader that he took the road less taken and that it made all the difference. But the sigh is left open to interpretation by Frost, as the reader does not know if the sigh is from relief or regret.

The Misinterpreted Message

“You have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem — very tricky,” Frost is known to have said about the poem. The story has it that he wrote it to tease a friend of his, Edward Thomas, who often had problems with coming to a decision over choices that were offered to him. Frost describes him as a person who, “whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other”.

An economist would tell you that the problem that Edward Thomas – just as the narrator in the poem – was battling with was the Opportunity Cost of the choices that he had.

Opportunity Cost

The Opportunity Cost of a decision basically equals the benefit of the best alternative option that you have to choose from. This means also means that the opportunity cost is dependent on the situation that you find yourself in at any given time. Furthermore, it means that your opportunity cost is not the same as my opportunity cost.

The concept of opportunity cost is well known in economics and finance, where it is relatively easier to measure the potential outcomes. The Opportunity Cost of Capital, for example, is the rate of return that could have been earned by putting the same money into a different investment with equal risk.

Mistakes of Omission

In The Road Less Taken, the narrator has two choices. Therefore, his opportunity cost is whichever road that he will not take. If he picks the wrong road, he will have made a Mistake of Omission. When asked about their biggest mistakes at the Berkshire Hathaway 2011 annual meeting, the legendary investors Warren Buffett and Charles Munger highlighted specifically about their Mistakes of Omission.

The Road Less Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

How to Value Stuff is a website dedicated to thinking about the value of everything and nothing. What us to value something? Let us know. 

 

Solving the Tragedy of the Commons

Common resources are resources which are both non-excludable and rival. Unlike public goods, common resources get depleted as more people use them. An example of a common resource is the Tuna in the ocean.

Tunas are non-excludable since there is no property right to fish in the ocean and no one can legally be prevented or fish for Tuna. The fish are also rival which means everybody fish for Tuna in the ocean which will then leads to the tragedy of the commons which is the depletion of the Tuna stock in the ocean.

Common Pool Resources

The definition of the tragedy of the commons is that the tendency of any resource that is unowned and non-excludable which leads the resource to be overused and under-maintained. A case study of the tragedy of the commons is the Tuna catch which is rapidly depleting by 75% since 1960.

Although nobody wants this to happen this happened because the fisherman has no incentives to conserve and maintain common goods because he/she doesn’t own the stock of resource.  There are three approaches to solving the tragedy of the commons:

  1. command and control,
  2. cultural norms,
  3. property rights

1. Command and Control

Command and control can be defined as rules and regulations which can be set to limit or avoid this tragedy but this method work for sometimes and it becomes inefficient and ineffective in the long run. For example, when fishing stocks start to collapse, some rules were made so as to improve the stock like a number of boats that can fish or the number of days to fish in a year. This then becomes ineffective as the fisherman starts to build advanced boats and fishing equipment which makes the regulation more and more complex over time.

2. Cultural Norms

The second approach is the cultural norms and this can evolve where people that overfish are socially disapproved while those that contribute the growth of the resource are honoured and this can help to develop procedures for managing natural resources but it can work on groups that are small and stable and it takes time to develop.

3. Property Rights

Another way to tackle the tragedy of common resources is by making the common resource excludable by creating property rights on them. This will make common resource behave more like a private group. For example, in New Zealand, an innovative solution was pioneered for the tragedy of the commons.

A tradable allowance in fish is created which means property right was created. New Zealand implement what is called Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) and this gives a property right to a certain tonnage of fish and the sum of the ITQ is the total allowable catch per year. This ITQs can be bought and sold by the fisherman and the best part is that there are no restrictions on boats or equipment.

This system is quite effective in New Zealand as it helps to increase the total catch dramatically since it was implemented in New Zealand and this is possible because a fisherman owns a right to a certain amount of fish year by year and he will try to preserve the values of his property over the long run which means that he will not overfish and he will also ensure that another fisherman obeys the ITQs. This means that under the right system the tragedy of the commons can be reduced.

William Forster Lloyd

In 1833, a British mathematician and economist by the name William Forster Lloyd published two lectures titled On the Checks to Population. In one of those lectures, Lloyd describes the phenomenon of the Tragedy of the Commons, with an analogy of a cattle herders that shared a common parcel of land, that they used for grazing.

As Lloyd describes, each individual herder is incentivised to add cattle to his herd as the herder will reap advantages for each additional cattle but the damage to the parcel of land will be shared by all herders. As all herders try to maximize their own benefit of the parcel, this eventually leads the parcel to be overgrazed and potentially destroyed.

Garrett Hardin

In 1968, the ecologist Garrett Hardin coined the phrase Tragedy of the Commons, when an article by the same name was published in the academic journal Science. The article derived its title from Lloyd’s lecture and further outlined the problem described by Lloyd of people being trapped in a tragedy of common resources being depleted, by actors rationally acting on their own incentives.

Prior to Hardin’s publication, terms such as the Commons, Common Pool Resources, or Common Property were very rare in the academic literature. Hardin’s article, however, was focused on the perils of population growth and did not focus directly on proposing a solution for the Tragedy of the Commons problem.

In fact, Hardin concludes his article by saying: “The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”–and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.”

Elinor Ostrom

It was Elinor Ostrom who pawed the ground for providing solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons. Ostrom was a political economist and a brilliant mind, who dedicated her life to the study of common goods and different systems used to manage common pool resources.

Both Lloyd and Hardin had asked the reader to “imagine a pasture open to anyone.” There was no empirical evidence or data to support the claim. It was a strictly theoretical exercise. The presumption that prevailed was that humans were helpless, trapped within this tragedy.

Elinor Ostrom, along with other scientists, disproved this idea by conducting a wide range of studies on how people in small, local communities manage shared natural resources, such as pastures, fishing waters, and forests.

In the Mid-Eighties, Ostrom and her colleagues started to review the empirical research written about common-pool resources. They discovered that much research had been done on the topic but that it was divided by disciplines, sectors, and regions.

Scholars studying inshore fisheries in Africa would be unaware of studies of resources in Africa. Sociologists would not be aware of the work done by economists and vice versa. Ostrom and others began to synthesize and map out the existing academic research.

In 2009, Elinor Ostrom along with Oliver E. Williamson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. She is the only woman to have received the prize.

Read More on Economics on How to Value Stuff

 

The Peltzman Effect & Risk Compensation

Peltzman effect is a theory which states that people tend to increasingly engage in risky behaviours once a security measure has been mandated. This effect is named after Sam Peltzman, an economist who postulated the theory with the use of seatbelts in automobiles.

The original context of the theory was the regulation of risk as the government tries to make things safer by issuing new regulations. Peltzman used auto safety as a case study, where the government made people wear seatbelts and also regulated various other features in the manufacturing of automobiles, such as pop-out windshields and other protective devices which are meant to make us safer.

The Economics of Risk

According to economic theory, when you make things cheaper then you will get more of them.  This is what led to Peltzman postulating that when you make a car safer in this way, drives will adjust their behaviour in response to the perceived level of risk.

In other words, if driving becomes safer, the drivers will become riskier when driving. Hence, the increase in safety measures will be compensated by riskier behaviour. This is what economists call Risk Compensation. In the case of auto safety, Peltzman predicted that the increase in risk behaviour would lead to more accidents, that would partly or completely offset the safety benefits of the regulation.

Later, Peltzman performed a study to see what the effects of the first generation of automobile safety regulations were auto-related accidents. The study did not focus on the first order effect (driver safety) but on the global effect (did more people survive on the road or did the automobile death rate goes down).

Risk Homeostasis

The conclusion of the study was that there was no effect on the death rate but there was a reduction in the probability that you would die in an accident which is the main purpose of the device. However, this benefit was completely offset by more accidents and many accidents involve people who weren’t in cars that are protected.

The Peltzman effect shows that people tend to drive recklessly and with less attention since they felt safer in the car which leads to more accidents than when these safety devices came out. The ratio of fatalities in accident went down but there was an increase in the accident which offset the decreased fatality rate.

He then concluded that if government regulates risk or anything, there is going to be an incentive created for behaviours that offset some part of what the government is trying to regulate and it could be a complete, partial, or more than complete offset. And the main thing that this regulation does is that it makes the consequences of an accident less severe.

Examples of Risk Compensation

Although the Peltzman study used the auto safety regulations as an example of risk compensation, this phenomenon has been observed in a range of activities. A few examples would be:

  • The use of helmets in skiing, snowboarding and rollerblades has been observed to increase risky behaviour.
  • A popular aphorism amongst skydivers, named Booth’s rule nr. 2 states that the safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take constant

The Water and Diamond Paradox

How can we know the true value of a thing? This has been a philosophical question that dates back to the times of Aristoteles. Philosopher throughout the ages have asked themselves why water which is vital for all life is cheap while diamonds are expensive even though we can easily do without them?

Diminishing Marginal Utility

The solution to the Water-Diamond Paradox is the economic law of diminishing utility. This can be defined as the economic law which states that when there is an input in the production of a community while the other factors are fixed, it is going to get to a point whereby any addition of the good to the consumer of the good is going to lead to low satisfaction with the diminishing increases in the output.

Supply and Demand

A case study is that assuming you are hungry and you find one apple then it is going to precious to you and you are going to eat it to satisfy your hunger and to stay alive. Then if you go for a walk and you see two more apples then you can eat one just for the fun of it and keep the second one till when you are hungry.

If you then happen to see an orchard with lots of apple fruit and you decide to stay close to the orchard, it will come to a time when you will grow tired of eating an apple as it will be nauseating to you. You can then trade some apple for some other commodities that other people will find it to be valuable to them while it is invaluable to you.

This case study shows that each additional value of a given good satisfies a less important need. You can see this as the first apple that you take is mainly for the appraisal of your hunger so as to survive while the second apple fills you up and the third apple was kept for later so as not to be hungry in the future.

This also implies that the first apple that you saw was priceless as you need it to avoid starvation while the second one was just a pleasurable snack while the value of other apples that you find keeps decreasing.

There is no such Thing as Fixed Value

The example above shows that no good has a fixed value. A good will always be considered valuable when people value them. For example, imagine that your parents would buy a sculpture which they really love. Later, once they once they are passed on, you inherit the sculpture. However, you have never liked the sculpture and you feel like it is taking up space.

You mean to throw it away but you’re reluctant to do so because of the sentimental value your parents attached to the sculpture. When discussing your predicament at a party, you discover to your amazement that there is an art collector in town that has been looking for this exact sculpture for years. Suddenly your perceived value of the sculpture has gone up and you are not willing to part with it unless the art collector submits a reasonable bid for the artwork.

In the context of the Water-Diamond Paradox:

  • During a drought, people would value water more than rare diamonds as they need it to survive.
  • As soon as there is enough water, they will tend to value diamonds more as they have the essential needs to satisfy their hunger and thirst then people try to satisfy their sophisticated needs.
  • This theory applies to all the needs in human lives.

How do Bankruptcies Work?

Did you know that bankruptcy affects a great number of people? One in ten persons is likely to file bankruptcy. In 2017 alone, 767,721 people have filed for bankruptcy in the United States.

Going through a bankruptcy is a painful and the process itself can be quite frustrating and stressful. In this article, we will try to address some of the main concerns you might have regarding bankruptcy and how they work.

Photo by Melinda Gimpel

Types of Insolvency

First things first: A bankruptcy is a procedure that aims at giving financial relief to a person who has reached a state of insolvency. This basically means that the person has reached a point where he or she is unable to pay back the debt that he or she owes. There are two types of insolvencies: cash-flow insolvency and balance sheet insolvency.

  • A cash flow insolvency means that a person is not able to meet debt repayments.
  • A balance sheet insolvency means that the debtor does not have assets to cover his liabilities.

Nonetheless, bankruptcy and insolvency or not synonyms. Bankruptcy is a legal status of a person. Not all insolvent persons are bankrupt. For a person to be bankrupt, a bankruptcy has to be filed with courts.

Declaring Bankruptcy

While a person can declare bankruptcy, often the bankruptcy process is initiated by a creditor. A bankruptcy process will differ between countries and states, but in general, the process is as follows:

  1. A petition is filed and approved within the judicial system.
  2. A trustee (most often a lawyer) is assigned to the estate and control over all assets moved under his control.
  3. The bankruptcy is announced in a public venue and creditors are asked to file claims on the estate.
  4. The trustee is tasked with monetizing the estate and distributing the proceeds to the claimants based on the seniority of their claims.
  5. Once claims have been settled and the estate has been wound down, the debtor is discharged. The timing of the discharge after the wind-down of the estate can differ greatly between countries.

Bankruptcy in the United States

In the United States, there are two main options to choose from when it comes to personal bankruptcy, namely Chapter 7 straight bankruptcy and Chapter 13 repayment plan case.

Chapter 7

The first option – namely chapter 7 – it enables you to have all your outstanding debt discharged, granted that some liquid assets have been utilized in order to repay part of the debt. The only situation in which you can file for this type of bankruptcy is if you can demonstrate that your current income is lower than the average income for a family in your home state.

Chapter 13

In case you don’t qualify for this, then you will have to choose chapter 13. This plan entails paying a specific portion of your debt in a payment plan of three to five years. As a rule of thumb, these payments are made to the courts.

In the position of a business, then you might file Chapter 1 bankruptcy. Through this option, you have the opportunity of restructuring and reorganizing through a court-appointed trustee. More specifically, you will have to follow a given plan to cope with your creditors.

Note that bankruptcy will remain on your file for five years – at the very least. Therefore, make sure you think this through before resorting to it.

Benefits of Going Bankrupt

The positive thing about bankruptcy is that it usually translates into a discharge. This will prevent your creditors from collecting on debts. Nonetheless, note that there are still some exceptions to the rule and some of these are alimony and child support obligations, recent tax liabilities, and so on and so forth.

Another potentially positive aspect associated with bankruptcy is, of course, the automatic stay. This represents a preliminary court decree that prevents creditors from actively trying to collect debts from you during the actual bankruptcy timeframe. This means you will not be contacted via mail or phone in this respect. Essentially, the automatic stay applies until the bankruptcy court decides to issue a discharge.

The Bottom Line

Bankruptcy is usually the last resort of a person in financial difficulties. There are many nuances when it comes to filing for bankruptcy and options to choose from. Therefore, getting legal and accounting counsel is paramount for anybody considering his or her options.

Should I Invest in Gold?

All investments have to be made by taking into account the objectives of the portfolio, the allocation of assets, and the need for the new investment into the overall investment strategy. Hence, before investing in gold it is best to carry out a basic review of the portfolio goals and then make a choice.

The start of 2016 featured dull economic growth and feeble energy prices which caused the share market to open at its worst. This resulted in an increased demand for gold and its price soared. However, as the year progressed, the share market outperformed gold and by the year ending it was 3 percentage points above the yellow metal.

You may go through the below-listed pros and cons of gold before investing in it.

Advantages of investing in Gold

  • It is a great hedge against inflation and currency: Gold and other precious metals are a good source of hedging any risks such as a possible decline in the US Dollar or other major currencies. Price of gold tends to rise with the weakening of a currency. It is argued that high inflation is marked by increased prices of gold, which safeguard purchasing power. However, there are many who debate this argument. Additional information about the relationship between inflation and gold prices is provided below in the article.
  • Portfolio diversification: One of the major aspects of a good portfolio is diversification wherein there is no correlation between different classes of assets in the investments. This means that the different asset classes fluctuate in their own unique way thereby offering some protection during times of volatility. Over the past 5 years, the price of gold has differed from the different share indices and the movement of each is independent of one another. Thus, gold and other precious metals are a great way to diversify the portfolio.
  • Hedge against economic collapse: Gold and other precious metals can be a great source of barter when the world economy is in turmoil. Over the course of history, it has been observed that people purchase gold as a hedge against uncertain times. When the world appears to be in a state of disarray, investors like to buy and own gold. For example, in 2008, during one of the worst global financial crises in recent times, there was an appreciation of gold by 5 per cent while stocks tanked by nearly 40 per cent. Gold gained over 7 points against stocks in 2011 when it seemed that the United States may default and the credit rating of the country dropped.

Disadvantages of investing in Gold

  • The returns in the long-term are low: As compared to shares, the returns offered by gold have historically been low. It thus makes a bad investment selection for the long term.
  • No revenue in form of dividends: Investment in gold does not offer interest, dividends, or any other type of income. Hence, one of the most renowned investors in the world, Warren Buffet, is against investment in gold or other precious metals. Currently, the interest rate is low, and hence in such a scenario lack of income will play a smaller role as the opportunity cost with regards to investment in gold will be lower.
  • The worth of gold is determined by what a buyer is willing to pay for it: Gold does not have an intrinsic value. Thus, it’s worth can drop if people decrease their investments in gold. Also, it would not be of great value in a barter market as people may consider something like toilet paper or other true consumables to be worth more than gold which does not really take care of any human needs on its own.

The relationship between gold and inflation

It is said that gold does not offer any yield. The definition, however, states that increased interest rates will offer some yield to gold investors. On the other hand, if the FED detects inflation and increases the interest rates, then people will sell gold and purchase Treasury notes for better returns. This will cause the price of gold to drop.

President Trump has stated that he will begin a public works program amount to $1 trillion. Such fiscal stimulus may cause the inflation to rise sharply and making the FED increase the interest rates. This may eventually result in a drop in gold prices.

The above example has to be read in context with what happens in reality and not in theory. It is important to note that the FED does not increase interest rates haphazardly. It wants the inflation to be under control, but its main aim is to keep negative real rates wherein inflation is higher as compared to nominal rates. Raising the interest rate will not offer any positive effect unless there is a faster rise in inflation. This is the scenario where its job of wealth preservation is done by gold.

In the late 1970s, the United States was on the brink of hyperinflation, the gold price was about $130, and Treasury notes dived under 7 per cent. By 1980, gold reached its peak price of over $800, while the ten-year Treasury returns were over 10 per cent. To avoid a worldwide run on the dollar, the FED chief took anti-inflation steps in October 1979. The price of gold kept rising till it reached its peak, but the stranglehold kept on by the FED eventually yielded results and gold prices started to dive.

The current Fed chief, Janet Yellen, may not strangle inflation as in the above example. In the late 70s, the FED had hiked up the interest rates above the inflation rate. However, in 2018, the FED is most likely to increase interest rates but keep it under the rate of inflation.

Different financial issues across the world like persistent unemployment, the European debt crisis, and a hangover of the housing crisis, etc., have created an environment that is fraught with a probable collapse of the global economy. Hence, hedging in gold will offer stability and protect your ability to continue trading for varied goods and services.

 

Is Netflix Worth its Valuation?

Netflix has grown to become a $180 billion dollar Market Cap company. If you add their net debt, that adds up to a total capitalization – aka Enterprise Value – of $192 Billion.  Not bad for a company founded in 1997. Not bad at all.

Price Per Potential Subscriber

If you divide the $192 billion Enterprise Value by the 236 million people that populate the United States of America, you arrive at a value of about $815 per each compatriot of Wilmont Reed Hastings Jr. This is where you might point out that Netflix is a global brand with a global audience. Well, that computation, my friend, would allocate $25 worth of Netflix per human inhabitant of the earth.

NFLX EV/EBITDA Multiple

In the last twelve months, Netflix’s Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization was $2 billion. That means that Netflix is trading at a multiple of 96 times its trailing EBITDA. Disney, by comparison, is trading at a multiple of 11.

So, imagine this scenario: For the next 10 years, Netflix grows its EBITDA by an annual rate of 24.19%. At the end of the tenth year, Netflix’s EBITDA will have reached $17.5 billion. That’s a very healthy growth. But for this to happen, paid subscriptions would have to be close to 1 billion.

Needless to say, a Netflix with 1 billion subscribers does not have the same growth potential as a Netflix with 130 million paid subscribers. What if Netflix was now trading at the same multiple as Disney is trading at today? That would mean that after ten years the enterprise value of Netflix would be $192 billion.

Price is what you pay for. Value is what you get.

 

 

Should I Invest in Bitcoin?

The cryptocurrency market has experienced tremendous growth over the last decade; especially in the case of Bitcoin as opposed to other altcoins; Bitcoin is a digital currency that came into the market early in the year 2009.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin’s operations are purely decentralized with no entity given the responsibility of controlling it. Apart from Bitcoin, there are several other cryptocurrencies available in the market today; the most common ones include Ethereum, Litecoin, Tether, Stellar or BitcoinCash.

Since December 2017, Bitcoin’s value has escalated up to about $1900. However, its value has experienced volatility since then, despite the prediction of digital analysts of financial showing the value will increase to $50000 by 2025. This looks quite confusing whether to or not to invest in Bitcoin? Before making a judgment let’s check over some fundamental aspects of in relation Bitcoin investment;

Is Bitcoin Safe?

There has been a hot debate over the years whether Bitcoin is a safe investment. Regardless of the negative stories on bitcoins that people hear, Bitcoin has proven to be more secure compared to other financial systems.

Firstly, the Bitcoin’s operations are decentralized such that over ten thousand nodes are responsible for keeping track of Bitcoin ledger and validate all the transactions in the network to ensure the security of investor’s money. On the other hand, the centralized system can be easily compromised by hackers or third party. Also, Bitcoin uses proof of work to enhance security and prevent any possible failures in the system.

Moreover, the transparent transaction done using bitcoin is also an indication of its safety. Additionally, a customer does not need to provide confidential information when using the Bitcoin Wallet and thus are not a risk of revealing their identity to possible malicious people.

Is Bitcoin Legal?

The question of the legality of any currency is understandable. Unlike the traditional currencies controlled by a single entity, in most cases the central bank, Bitcoin is unique. The Bitcoin is decentralized and primarily under nobody’s control. Generally, the legality of the Bitcoin currency entirely depends on what are you doing with it, where are you in the world. Nevertheless, is essential to be always updated on the recent regulations that may arise with regards to digital currency.

An Investment or a Currency?

Currency can be defined as a unit of account and store of value or a medium of exchange. On the other hand, Bitcoin as per definition can be termed as an asset. In this case, an asset can be used to serve various purposes. A currency should be trustworthy, convenient and stable. Bitcoin has experienced volatility and fluctuation in value over a long period. Its instability, therefore, cannot qualify it as a currency but rather an asset or a commodity. The value of commodity usually surges. It creates an exchange value that is affected and modified by underlying marketing expectations.

How do I value Bitcoin?

There are several ways of valuing cryptocurrencies. One of the best methods of determining the value is by evaluating the market that the cryptocurrency trades in. In this case, the value of Bitcoin can be determined by assessing the supply and demand in the market. In other words, the price of Bitcoin depends on the interaction between the sellers and buyers. A Bitcoin trader who believes that its rate will increase in future will be willing to purchase it at a more expensive than the existing one.

Wrapping Up

The rising demand for digital currency has got the attention of many people in the financial industry. Some of the advantages of investing in bitcoins include protection fraud, minimized risk of identity theft, direct transfer lower fees of transactions as well as the access to difficult-to-access markets. However, some of the limitations are the uncertainty of its legality, high volatility and high risks of loses. Conclusively, based on the above discussion, investing in Bitcoins might be a risk worth taking, having in mind the demand is growing tremendously, and the number of users is doubling yearly.

Should I Invest in ETFs?

Investing in today’s economy has evolved tremendously over the last decade. With advancements in financial technology and the growth of the Internet in general, the financial markets have become more accessible today than ever before.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Growing financial markets entice new product creation and one of the more recent products is an ETF or an Exchange-Traded Fund. Having many of the same characteristics of a mutual fund, this is traded on the exchanges and behaves similarly to a stock with minute by minute price movements.

Difference Between an ETF and a Mutual Fund

As stated, an ETF has similar characteristics to that of a mutual fund in that it mimics an index or underlying asset. However, some of the differences include how it works. With a mutual fund, some funds require a minimum investment amount and only let you enter and exit as described in the prospectus. With an ETF, there are no minimum requirements and you can enter and exit how you see fit.

Secondly, when trading an ETF you are actually trading shares, whereas with a mutual fund you are contributing to the pool of assets and your money is being used to rebalance the portfolio. Some mutual funds will limit when you can enter due to frictional costs.

Lastly, mutual funds are typically priced at the end of the day whereas, with an ETF, the price is changing constantly like a stock.

Are ETFs a Better Investment Than Stocks?

Many individuals ask if an ETF is better then a stock, while it varies on an individual level, here are a few benefits that an ETF will have that equities do not. The first one is that company-specific risk is limited. When you invest in an individual equity, you add company specific risk to your portfolio, but when you add an ETF that tracks a sector or index, you have a limited company-specific risk.

Another benefit to an ETF is it is managed with a fund manager. This ensures that your ETF products are reacting and performing as it should. With a stock, you have to watch the company’s performance yourself and be willing to study and understand what you are investing in at the company level.

It’s difficult to have a flat statement saying one is better than the other because everyone has different investment objectives. Each has their own benefits and it is up to you to understand what your portfolio requires.

Are ETFs Safe?

As a general rule, yes, ETFs are a proven product that appears to be safe and sturdy. However, you cannot take for granted that an ETF is safe, even the popular ones such as the SPY. It is prudent that you as an investor to complete your own research and understand if the ETF is aligned with your financial objectives.

Overall, ETFs are a wonderful way to access certain areas of the market without taking on risks such as company-specific risk. You can find ETFs that track an index or market sector, allowing you to diversify portions of your holdings. ETFs should still be researched and reviewed like any investment and should you still have questions, contact your financial advisor.