# Cam Harvey: Why Bitcoin Is Not the New Gold ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u66gG-ok2QU ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u66gG-ok2QU) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) - Welcome once again to another episode of "Through the Noise" with Cam Harvey. I don't know where this asset's going to be by the time this episode shows. This is what's most difficult about recording this, 'cause tomorrow it might be different. But today, while we're recording this, Bitcoin is down like 50% year over year. It's very confusing and very volatile, especially given the episodes we've done on gold and other assets, which people tend to connect with Bitcoin. - Yeah, it's so interesting you asked us. So I got a question for you. So over the last 15 years, how many times has the price of Bitcoin fallen 60%, not 50, 60%? - I mean, I've been following it for a long time and so it's hard to really measure, but, you know, two or three. - Yeah, no, six. So we've had six different drawdowns of 60% or more, and we're not even, at least today, at 60%. So this is not unusual. This is a volatile asset. So Bitcoin is at least four times as volatile as the stock market. And we know we can have very large swings in the stock market. So this is exactly what happens with a highly volatile asset, it will go down very hard, and then historically at least, it's come back. So again, I want to qualify that, historically, because you never know what will happen going forward. But this is just a characteristic of this asset. - But it doesn't make sense to me because it's pitched as kind of a hedge against inflation. It's pitched as this thing where you're supposed to be able to preserve your purchasing power like you would in some other hard asset. - Yeah, so certainly, it is pitched in many different ways by people that want to sell the asset. So let's think about the hedging ability. The history is so short, so we really only have 15 years of data that's high quality for this asset. So you need to be very careful in terms of touting its ability to hedge inflation where we don't have a track record. It is true that the supply is not controlled by a central government. That's true. But it is a highly volatile asset, which means, that when you need that hedging ability, it might not be there for you. And it's volatile for actually many different reasons. So one reason is that it's really hard to think about what the value is. So if we're thinking about like the price of Apple stock, well, you've got many analysts that've got models, that are forecasting the earnings, we can do some analysis and figure out what the value today should be. And there's disagreement, but it's not a huge amount of disagreement. For Bitcoin, many people believe it's worth zero. Other people believe it would go to a million dollars. So the degree of disagreement is really large. It's also a relatively illiquid asset. So what that means, if there's a large order, that can move the price very dramatically compared to other kind of large capitalization assets like Apple stock. It's got a short history, so it's not a lot of time for people to kind of learn about it. The regulatory situation is uncertain still for many of the cryptocurrencies. Progress is being made, but it's still uncertain. And then (sighs) there are unique risks with investing in cryptocurrency. So all of that, I think, contributes to this very heightened degree of volatility. - We talked a little bit about the supply, the liquidity of the market, but I would think that the demand for Bitcoin should be correlated with the demand for something like gold, but we're seeing that actually, they're moving the opposite direction right now. So I can't put those two stories together. - Yes. So I've got a recent paper on this called, "Gold and Bitcoin," and I encourage you to take a look at it. So I explain this in a couple of different ways. So number one, given that Bitcoin is at least four times more volatile than the stock market or gold, it is hardly a safe haven asset. ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u66gG-ok2QU&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 09:00) So people saying, "Oh, well, this is the new gold, Bitcoin. " Well, anything with volatility at that scale, just doesn't fit as a safe haven asset. And then number two, I mentioned these unique risks that Bitcoin's got, that gold does not have. And let me give you an example. And that is that Bitcoin exists on a digital network, a blockchain network, and it is possible that network could be attacked. And if the attacker gains 51% control of the network, they effectively take over the coins. So if that happens, it's reasonable to assume that the price of Bitcoin would collapse to something close to zero. So there's a credible scenario that I detailed in my paper where the price of Bitcoin could go to zero. So gold doesn't have a scenario like that. So in contrast to Bitcoin, gold actually has tangible uses. So 5% of gold that's produced is used in technology. Over 50% is used for artistic purposes like jewelry, 2% is used for dentistry. So there's like tangible uses for gold, and gold has got this multi millennia track record of being a safe haven type of asset. So I do think that people are realizing that fundamentally, gold and crypto are different. - What is the future of crypto? What does this look like for us? - So this is important that crypto is not just one thing. So when we say crypto, we're usually referring to, let's say, Bitcoin, which is the largest crypto. But what I'm particularly interested in is something called the tokenization of real world assets. So to use the technology of blockchain to solve problems. The most successful tokenization of a real world asset is something called a stable coin. So this is a token that is backed with US dollars where you can transfer anywhere in the world in one to 12 seconds, compared to a usual transfer with a wire that would take three to five days. The cost of doing this is trivial, the security is high, it's transparent. This is just solving very important problems, and I'm very enthusiastic about the possibilities. The original Satoshi Nakamoto paper published in 2008, the vision was a payments mechanism, a peer-to-peer payments mechanism, not a gambling arena. And these stable coins hold the promise of greatly increasing the efficiency of our financial system, reducing transactions costs, making it faster, more transparent, more secure. And that's all good for economic growth. And what we should be focusing on is anything to augment economic growth. And this tokenization of real world assets, I think is very important ingredient for the path going forward. - Well, Cam, I hope that we can discuss this in detail at a later date. Thank you so much for your time on, I think this is our first episode on crypto, I hope it's not our last. And we should put the link to your "Gold and Bitcoin" paper into the links below this podcast, (indistinct) for. - Will do. Thank you. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/32710*