Building off yesterday’s post today I will unveil a Bitcoin valuation.
Before we go any further I must emphasize that I am sharing this information as an intellectual exercise and for entertainment purposes only. This is not an investment recommendation and the output of this model should not be used to make investment decisions. You should consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decision. In the interest of full disclosure you should also know that I currently own neither cryptoassets nor exchange traded cryptoasset products (ETPs and ETNs).
The theoretical underpinning from this model is taken from Burniske and Tatar’s book, Cryptoassets. The authors propose adapting the Equation of Exchange (MV = PY) for valuing cryptocurrencies.
What the equation of exchange tells us is that the money supply times the velocity with which money circulates (left side) must equal the price level times real output (right side, a.k.a nominal output). So:
M = Money Supply
V = Velocity of Money
P = Price Level
Y = Real Output
I will apply the model to Bitcoin using data from blockchain.info. Many of my inputs will be rounded but I have always believed that perfect is the enemy of good when it comes to investing and valuation in particular. I am not sweating the small stuff. You are welcome to redo the work to two decimal points if spurious precision is your thing.
Anyway, we start with the supply of Bitcoin. This is easy. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins (unless of course the code is changed and that is a governance issue for the time being not a valuation issue). To be conservative I will assume all 21 million Bitcoin are in circulation for the valuation calculation.
The velocity of Bitcoin is a bit fuzzier but I can try to approximate the number using Bitcoin transaction data. According to the data Bitcoin transaction volumes are fairly stable oscillating around 200,000. We can annualize this by multiplying by 365 which equals about 73,000,000. We divide 73,000,000,000 by the current Bitcoin supply of about 16 million to get a velocity of about 4.56.
Price in USD is the variable we solve for. So we will pass over it for now.
With output we make a small adjustment and use output in USD terms as it will be easier to place our assumptions in context that way. This is about $1bn per day currently which we can annualize to about $365bn. That is estimated output today. What we need for our model is to also estimate the output at some point in the future. For the sake of this exercise let’s say in five years we think the USD equivalent transaction output for the Bitcoin network will be $1tn. This is a critical variable and some readers may think I am being overly conservative. Maybe so but do consider that this represents a compound annual growth rate of 112% a year.
We set up the model as follows:
21,000,000 x 4.56 = P ($1,000,000,000,000)
Solve for P using basic algebra and you get about .000096 BTC/USD. To make this number intelligible we take the reciprocal 1/.000096 to get USD/BTC which (using a spreadsheet for spurious precision) is about $10,443. That is a the estimated value of one Bitcoin five years from now.
For the final step we simply discount this price 5 years at our required rate of return. Since discount rate estimation is a pain and something of a guessing game in the best of times I like to simply choose a desired hurdle rate. For an asset like BTC I think 30% is reasonable given the risks and the immaturity of the asset class.
So discounting $10,443 for 5 years at 30% I estimate the value of one BTC today at $2,813. A summary of these calculations is included below.
Contrary to what some may think modeling is not about predicting the future. Rather it is about being explicit with your assumptions. This helps you test your assumptions for reasonableness. It also helps you identify the key variables you need to get right. Finally, it helps you build and maintain conviction in the face of market price volatility.
With Bitcoin here are the key variables:
- How big can it get? -> How much “share” of global transaction volume will it take?
- How long will it take to get there?
- To what extent will it be used to transact versus as a store of value? The lower the velocity the more it is being used as a store of value and vice versa.
- How much reward do you require given the risks?
You might disagree with my results and that is fine. However, I would ask you to consider where our views differ in the context of this model. Is it because you believe Bitcoin will get “bigger” and/or that it will get there “faster”? Is it because you think Bitcoin is less risky than I do?
I hope to update this valuation from time to time as Bitcoin evolves as an asset.
In closing, I would like to once again emphasize:
I am sharing this information as an intellectual exercise and for entertainment purposes only. This is not an investment recommendation and the output of this model should not be used to make investment decisions. You should consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decision. In the interest of full disclosure you should also know that I currently own neither cryptoassets nor exchange traded cryptoasset products (ETPs and ETNs).