Cryptoassets and the crypto ecosystem as a whole has to face many of the same challenges as conventional assets and the regular financial system do. The same classic problems which are staple of economics textbooks (and history books), such as maturity mismatch, liquidity shortages, credibility, and collateral feedback loops. But whereas the conventional system has learned from the past and evolved to deal with them, much of the crypto ecosystem seems to have overlooked them. In this post I draw out the parallels between previous issues in the traditional financial system and recent crypto turbulence. I argue that when crypto goes wrong, it often goes wrong in strikingly conventional, even old-fashioned ways.
Cryptoassets could have important roles within the metaverse – a decentralised, immersive next generation of the internet. Cryptoassets enable verifiable ownership of digital items, and when built to common standards, can move interoperably between web applications – increasing the asset’s value proposition. They can also align the incentives of developers, content creators, users and investors on metaverse platforms, and are required to incentivise miners and validators to add metaverse-based transactions to the underlying blockchain. We argue that if an open and decentralised metaverse grows, existing risks from cryptoassets may scale to have systemic financial stability consequences. Widespread adoption of crypto in the metaverse, or any other setting would require compliance with robust consumer protection and financial stability regulatory frameworks.
To consider Bitcoin volatility, we
look at 10-day returns (capital standards typically estimate market risk over a
10-day period) since 19 July 2010, when Bloomberg’s Bitcoin data start. We
compare Bitcoin with assets in three categories – currency pairs, commodities
and equities – and for each we have picked one low-volatility asset and one
more volatile asset. For currency pairs and commodities, we chose the most and
least volatile ones (in terms of standard deviation of 10-day returns) out of
the most liquid in each category. And we chose the most and least volatile FTSE
100 equities (again, in terms of standard deviation of 10-day returns).
For stable assets we expect a peaked distribution with short tails, as returns cluster near 0%. Figure 1 shows that Bitcoin has been more volatile than any other asset in our sample.
Figure 1
But people are often interested in the downside risk of assets. We therefore consider how Bitcoin’s Value at Risk (VaR) compares to other assets. VaR is the maximum loss over a given time interval under normal market conditions at a given confidence interval (eg 99%). A 10-day 99% VaR of -10% tells you that 99% of the time your 10-day return on the asset would be no worse than a 10% loss.
Figure 2 shows Bitcoin’s VaR is high, but the VaR of the other most liquid crypto-assets is higher. TRON’s VaR to date (-84%) is almost twice Bitcoin’s (-44%).
Figure 2
Giulio Malberti and Thom Adcock work in the Bank’s Banking Policy Division.
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Cryptoassets (or ‘cryptocurrencies’) are notoriously volatile. For example, in November 2018, Bitcoin – one of the more stable cryptoassets – lost 43% of its value in just 11 days. This kind of volatility makes it difficult for cryptoassets to function as money: they’re too unstable to be a good store of value, means of exchange or unit of account. But could so-called ‘stablecoins’ solve this problem and finally provide a price-stable cryptoasset?
