Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and the Psychology Driving Global Currency Values

                        March 31, 2013, v3, n5

Really good investment opportunities contain what Nassim Taleb calls "Optionality" - enormous upside multiples and limited downside.  Given a few bubble-ready characteristics of cryptocurrencies (limited issuance, steadily increasing publicity, declining trust in the banking system), I knew the conditions were right for a massive Bitcoin bubble, and since early 2011 I wanted in.

Terrific investing insights cross my mind occasionally, and in my opinion I've honed a keen intuition for identifying the really good ones.  The problem is, I often don't act on these golden insights.  But maybe once every two years an insight is so monumental that I tell my wife to hound me until I make a specific investment.  Bitcoin in 2011?  Yup, I knew it was set up to be a classic bubble.  In fact, I even bought a Bitcoin-derived domain name.  

Now to be clear, when I see the above price charts I feel the pain disappointment.  You see, I didn't buy any Bitcoin.  I've watched Bitcoin bounce through $2 twice.  When it last was under $3 I asked my wife to PLEASE NAG ME to buy some. 

I realize that most men don't ask their wives to nag them.  But I'm a lucky man - my wife doesn't nag - so if she were to nag, the logic went, I would be sure to pay attention.  But this wasn't a foolproof strategy. 

As I had requested, my wife did nag me systematically at the appointed times, "Rich, buy Bitcoin.  Rich, did you buy Bitcoin yet?"  But somehow I stored her reminders in that empty space in my brain where most men seem to file non- emergent, quickly forgotten, and later regretted wifely reminders like: "Rich, please take out the garbage, the kitchen is getting stinky," "Rich, please buy gas for the generator, another big snowstorm is coming," and "Rich, don't forget to brush your wild-man-just-rolled-out-of-bed hair before that important meeting."

But getting into cryptocurrencies isn't so easy.  Back then it required wiring money to Japan, and trading on an exchange (MtGox) that was a frequent target of hacking attacks.  True story:  after one such attack the login and password of my first Bitcoin trading account at MtGox were - and still are - displayed on the internet for the world to see.   Ultimately, due to inertia, lack of urgency, and general busy distraction, I didn't get around to buying any Bitcoin itself.   (But a disclaimer, I do own other cryptocurrency).

Given that Bitcoin has appreciated 40x over the past 12 months, I'm keen to know how much longer this rally might continue.  Now the first warning sign that a short-term bubble top is near is the excited tone of this newsletter itself.  Also, bank research reports will no doubt be issued on cryptocurrencies in the next month or so.  That doesn't mean the top is here today, but it does mean that the recent surge of attention, largely based on the amazing price appreciation, is probably overdone and a retreat will happen at some point... (don't ask me when).

In our investigations of the psychological forces that drive currency valuations, we performed yearly and weekly studies on our Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices (TRMI).  As you may know, the TRMI contain 15 currency and 35 country-specific sentiments derived from social media and news from 1998 to the present.  The list of currency TRMI is below.  Each of these is extracted in references to the currency through a process of text analytics.  You'll see how this is relevant to cryptocurrencies below.

Of the 15 TRMI, using the past 12-months TRMI average and the next 12-months currency return, 5 are correlated with future currency price direction with high confidence (p-value < 0.01).  Significantly for our newsletter today, Trust in a currency expressed in news is inversely correlated with future currency price direction.  When the news media expresses high trust in a given currency, you'd be better served moving to a currency with less expressed confidence.  Keep in mind we're looking at the top ten global currencies based on past year's Buzz in the News, so known unstable currencies such as the Zimbabwe Dollar are not included.

After the simple regression, we decided to look at the results of a long-short arbitrage.  The below is an equity curve of extremity arbitrage, 12-month holding period, in which we selected the 10 currencies over the past 12-months with the most Buzz, then bought the 4 with the lowest Trust and shorted the 4 with the highest Trust expressed.  As you can see, trading against what everyone else trusts is generally profitable.

Similarly, PriceMomentum (direction of price trend) reported in news is inversely correlated with future return direction. So when you read that a currency is trending strongly in one direction, it is likely to be nearing a reversal.

What does this mean for cryptocurrencies?  Given that Trust in cryptocurrencies is low and Uncertainty is high while fundamentals are strong, we have a positive set up.  But there are some short-term headwinds coming from the recent strong uptrend.

Using our currency research, we pulled the best TRMI into a final model.  We see a fairly good distribution of currencies selected by the strategy.  The annual currency forecast of this model as of March 1, 2013 is below.  Long Australian, Singaporean, and Canadian dollars and the Japanese Yen.  Short South Korean, Israeli, Egyptian, and South African currencies.

We also developed a weekly currency trading model with more than double the returns of the annual model (assuming no transaction costs).  I'll write more about our weekly currency trading model in a subsequent newsletter.  We have a new website hosting our annual and weekly currency forecasts with strategy construction explanations.  Please email me for more information or access. 

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency." 

~ John Maynard Keynes, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" (1919).

Cryptocurrencies based on digital bits are emerging as a real phenomenon, used for actual transactions, beyond the pale of government regulations.  Cryptocurrencies have the potential to upend banking systems and central banks.  If you think banks are OK as is, then consider that most wouldn't have survived 2008 without TARP.  And take a look at the 720,000 Euros in "Blocked Funds" in this guy's bank account in Cyprus.

Cryptocurrencies have their problems of course.  The transaction history of each unit of currency is becoming quite long, leading to delayed transaction times as each unit of coin is reconciled.  Additionally, there may be disputes along the "Blockchain," leading to forked transaction histories and multiple species of the same currency (although this has not happened yet).  And of course, some day, with enough computing power and ingenuity, additional vulnerabilities may be discovered and exploited.  With Bitcoin's market cap now $1 billion, the incentive to find and exploit vulnerabilities is present.  Yet one could say something similar about physical currencies - they are inconvenient for large purchases, can be counterfeited, and are subject to devaluation.  Of course, with physical currencies there is physical punishment (prison) for those who counterfeit or sabotage.  Not so with cryptocurrencies.

The takeaway from this newsletter is to make a psychological shift to treating the ongoing cryptocurrency revolution as real and not something that can be ignored indefinitely.

If you want to buy cryptocurrencies, it's important to get cash in place to buy even if you don't plan to so do for months.  The cash placement problem is one of the deterrents that kept me out of Bitcoin early on.  If you're a busy person, find someone you trust who is technically sophisticated and understands cryptocurrencies.  Keep in mind that most people feel inertia around this, and even with nagging, we often wait to make the obvious investment after it has been proven valuable (and we are too late in entering).  

We love to chat with our readers about their experience with psychology in the markets and with alternative economics - we look forward to hearing from you!  We especially love interesting stories or your or others experiences.

We will be in London at TradeTech Europe and in Dallas in April.  We have additional 2013 speaking engagements in New York, Orlando, and San Francisco - we look forward to seeing our friends in those cities!  Please contact Derek Sweeney at the Sweeney Agency to book us: [email protected], +1-866-727-7555.

In 2012 we launched the Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices for monitoring market psychology for 30 currencies, 50 commodities, 120 countries, and 40 equity sectors and industries in social and news media.  This data is used by top global hedge funds to improve their investment returns.  Please let us know if you'd like to learn more.

Happy Investing!