Why is Bitcoin Valuable?

I’m writing this today with Bitcoin having once more passed the $10,000 mark. It’s quite remarkable to think that a digital asset that didn’t even exist until 2009 can be valued at such a level. Is it pure speculation? Or is there something particular about BTC that makes it valuable?

One person who has an answer for that question is known as PlanB, an anonymous Dutch institutional investor who created the Bitcoin Stock to Flow (S2F) model. According to his website, the name PlanB refers to “an alternative plan to quantitative easing (printing money by central banks), negative interest rates, and currency debasement in general.” His online handle, @100trillionusd, “is a reference to the Zimbabwe 100 trillion dollar note during the 2008 hyperinflation.”

If you really want to understand what the S2F model is, you should go straight to the following two articles from March 2019 and April 2020 respectively:

Modeling Bitcoin Value with Scarcity

Bitcoin Stock-to-flow Cross Asset Model

If this is a bit too much heavy reading I will attempt to summarise briefly:

The bottom line here is scarcity, Bitcoin is scarce in the same way that silver and gold are scarce, but it can be transmitted over the internet. The S2F model aims to put a value on this scarcity.

Stock refers to the existing stockpile or reserves of something. Flow is the annual production. Gold has a high Stock to Flow ratio – it would take 62 years of gold production to get the current gold stock. Around the year 2022 Bitcoin’s stock to flow ratio will overtake that of gold.

It is high stock to flow that makes something monetary goods. Low stock to flow goods can easily be over-produced, thereby crashing the price.

Supply of Bitcoin is fixed. As new Bitcoins are mined, the miner that found the block is rewarded. Over time those rewards are cut in half at regular intervals, know as halvings. The halvings and the fixed supply are the reason that Bitcoin’s stock to flow increases over time.

Working on the hypothesis that scarcity (SF) drives value, PlanB created a statistical model. What he found is that there is a statistically significant relationship between stock-to-flow and value. (the price of Bitcoin) Interestingly he also found that gold and silver are in line with the Bitcoin model values for SF. Of course other factors also affect price, but he found scarcity to be the dominant driving factor.

So what could it mean for the future price of Bitcoin? The initial modeling predicted a $1trillion valuation sometime after the May 2020 halving. This would mean a price of $55,000 per Bitcoin in the next year or two.

“People ask me where all the money needed for $1trn bitcoin market value would come from? My answer: silver, gold, countries with negative interest rate (Europe, Japan, US soon), countries with predatory governments (Venezuela, China, Iran, Turkey etc), billionaires and millionaires hedging against quantitative easing (QE), and institutional investors discovering the best performing asset of last 10 yrs.” (Modeling Bitcoin Value With Scarcity)

The Bitcoin stock-to-flow cross asset model in the second article then revised this to a market value of $5.5trillion in 2020 – 2024. Which translates as $288,000 per Bitcoin. Yes, that’s the kind of number that can get your attention! Whether it turns out to be accurate or not will be something that’s very interesting to watch over the next few years. (particularly if you have some skin in the game)

Clearly my explanation above has been highly simplified. If you find this interesting and / or need a lot more persuading, please do read the two articles posted above and follow PlanB for more: @100trillionUSD

Disclaimer: This should go without saying, but the information contained in this blog is not investment advice, or an incentive to invest, and should not be considered as such. This is for information only.