Bitcoin: Blockchain, Mining, Energy

It’s no secret that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, in general, have gained significant popularity and notoriety over the last 12 months. Most notably because the return has been an astronomical 430% over the time period, but also due to companies such as Tesla, MicroStrategy, and Square investing a collective $3.9 billion earlier this year. For anyone invested in Bitcoin or following the asset, this last year has not been without its ups and downs.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. All transactions made with bitcoin are noted on a public ledger and verified by a network of computers. Many people and companies are working to verify transactions instead of just one entity, making it decentralized. The public ledger of bitcoin transactions is stored in the blockchain.

 

Irrational Exuberance

There’s no question markets have been volatile this year. If we peel back the top layer, there are many different events we can blame it on: inflation, treasury yields, the Fed and interest rates, Covid vaccines, unemployment, even the colder than normal February. But, what if we didn’t peel back the top layer? Instead, we focus on a potential over-arching theme as a way to over-simplify what’s been happening in the stock market.

In a December 1996 nationally televised speech, then Chair of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan referred to the behavior of stock market investors as “irrational exuberance”. Since then, this term – irrational exuberance – has been used to in conjunction with speculative and instable markets.

In his bestselling book aptly titled Irrational Exuberance, author/economist/Nobel prize winner Robert Shiller defined it as,

“the psychological basis of a speculative bubble. I define a speculative bubble as a situation in which news of price increase spurs investor enthusiasm, which spreads by psychological contagion from person to person, and, in the process, amplifies stories that might justify the price increase and brings in a larger and larger class of investors, who, despite doubts about the real value of the investments, are drawn to it partly through envy of others’ successes and partly through a gambler’s excitement.”

One of the longer sentences you’ll see, but by breaking it down and providing some examples we can better understand what it means. And, how it might explain markets today.

 

Power of the Retail Investor

In recent weeks, and more notably recent days, shares of GameStop [GME] and AMC Entertainment Holdings [AMC] have been gobbled up hordes of retail investors. So much so that prices have gone up 320%, and 161% just since Monday, respectively. In “GameStop Mania Reveals Power Shift on Wall Street—and the Pros Are Reeling”, a recent article published in the Wall Street Journal, journalists Gunjan Banerji, Juliet Chung, and Caitlin McCabe explain how this has been happening and the culprit behind these mammoth price movements.

What started as a general conversation about the potential value of GameStop on popular platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and Discord has turned into an all-out war “between professionals losing billions and the individual investors jeering at them on social media.” So much so that regulators within the SEC are beginning to look into the potential of market manipulation.

 

Market Predictions

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”  – John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

 

THE 2021 MARKET PREDICTIONS ARE IN, AND THEY’RE PROBABLY WRONG.

 

Every year, the top investment banks, research institutions, and market analysts make their predictions on where the S&P 500 (stock market) will close the year. They have mountains of research at their disposal, a slew of economic indicators, and they still get it wrong most of the time.

Take 2008 when the markets fell 38% as an example:

• “Stocks will reach new record highs at some point during the upcoming year.” – Robert C. Doll, Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Global Equities at BlackRock (January 2009)
• “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of these [credit default swap] transactions.” – Joseph Cassano, AIG financial products head (August 2007)
• “The Federal Reserve and Congress have delivered a ton of economic stimulus, and that stimulus is set to juice up an economy that has been weak, but not terrible. If everything goes according to plan, the economy will grow faster in the second half of the year, and a recession will have been avoided.” – Kevin Hassett, American Enterprise Institute (June 2008)