Bitcoin Difficulty

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Bitcoin Strengthening Market Share and Security

Since my 2017 analysis when I was somewhat concerned with market share dilution, Bitcoin has stabilized and strengthened its market share.

The semi-popular forks did not harm it, and thousands of other coins did not continue to dilute it. It has by far the best security and leading adoption of all cryptocurrencies, cementing its role as the digital gold of the cryptocurrency market.

Compared to its 2017 low point of under 40% cryptocurrency market share, Bitcoin is back to over 60% market share.

There is a whole ecosystem built around Bitcoin, including specialist banks that borrow and lend it with interest. Many platforms allow users to trade or speculate in multiple cryptocurrencies, like Coinbase and Kraken, but there is an increasing number of platforms like Cash App and Swan Bitcoin that enable users to buy Bitcoin, but not other cryptocurrencies.

The ongoing stability of Bitcoin’s network effect is one of the reasons I became more optimistic about Bitcoin’s prospects going forward. Rather than quickly fall to upstart competitors like Myspace did to Facebook, Bitcoin has retained substantial market share, and especially hash rate, against thousands of cryptocurrency competitors for a decade now.

Currencies tends to have winner-take-most phenomena. They live or die by their demand and network effects, especially in terms of international recognition. Cryptocurrencies so far appear to be the same, where a few big winners take most of the market share and have most of the security, especially Bitcoin, and most of the other 5,000+ don’t matter. Some of them, of course, may have useful applications outside of primarily being a store of value, but as a store of value in the cryptocurrency space, it’s hard to beat Bitcoin.

During strong Bitcoin bull markets, these other cryptocurrencies may enjoy a speculative bid, briefly pushing Bitcoin back down in market share, but Bitcoin has shown considerable resilience through multiple cycles now.

Through a combination of first-mover advantage and smart design, Bitcoin’s network effect of security and user adoption is very, very hard for other cryptocurrencies to catch up with at this point. Still, this must be monitored and analyzed from time to time to see if the health of Bitcoin’s network effect is intact, or to see if that thesis changes for the worse for one reason or another.

Reason 2) The Halving Cycle
Starting from inception in January 2009, about 50 new bitcoins were produced every 10 minutes from “miners” verifying a new block of transactions on the network. However, the protocol is programmed so that this amount of new coins per block decreases over time, once a certain number of blocks are added to the blockchain.

These events are called “halvings”. The launch period (first cycle) had 50 new bitcoins every 10 minutes. The first halving occurred in November 2012, and from that point on (second cycle), miners only received 25 coins for solving a block. The second halving occurred in July 2016, and from there (third cycle) the reward fell to 12.5 new coins per block. The third halving just occurred in May 2020 (fourth cycle), and so the reward is now just 6.25 coins per new block.

The number of new coins will asymptotically approach 21 million. Every four years or so, the rate of new coin creation gets cut in half, and in the early 2030’s, over 99% of total coins will have been created. The current number that has been mined is already over 18.4 million out of the 21 million that will eventually exist.

Bitcoin has historically performed extremely well during the 12-18 months after launch and after the first two halvings. The reduction in new supply or flow of coins, in the face of constant or growing demand for coins, unsurprisingly tends to push the price up.

Here we see a pretty strong pattern. During the 12-24 months after launch and the subsequent halvings, money flows into the reduced flow of coins, and the price goes up due to this restricted supply. Then after a substantial price increase, momentum speculators get on board, and then other people chase it and cause a mania, which eventually pops and crashes. Bitcoin enters a bear market for a while and then eventually stabilizes around an equilibrium trading range, until the next halving cycle cuts new supply in half again. At that point, if reasonable demand still exists from current and new users, another bull run in price is likely, as incoming money from new buyers flows into a smaller flow of new coins.

Based on recent hash rate data, it appears the mining market may have gotten past the post-halving capitulation period (from May into July), and now is looking pretty healthy. Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment reached a new high point this week, for the first time since its March sell-off.

Stock-to-Flow Model

Monetary commodities have high stock-to-flow ratios, which refers to the ratio between the amount of that commodity that is stored (aka “the stock”) and the amount of that commodity that is newly-produced each year (aka “the flow”).

Base commodities like oil and copper have very low stock-to-flow ratios. Since they have a large volume relative to price, they are costly to store and transport, so only a handful of months of supply are stored at any one time.

Monetary commodities like silver and gold have high stock-to-flow ratios. Silver’s ratio is over 20 or 30, and gold’s ratio is over 50 or 60. Specifically, the World Gold Council estimates that 200,000 tons of gold exists above ground, and annual new supply is roughly 3,000 tons, which puts the stock-to-flow ratio somewhere in the mid-60’s as a back-of-the-envelope calculation. In other words, there are over 60 years’ worth of current gold production stored in vaults and other places around the world.

As Bitcoin’s existing stock has increased over time, and as its rate of new coin production decreases after each halving period, its stock-to-flow ratio keeps increasing. In the current halving cycle, about 330,000 new coins are created per year, with 18.4 million coins in existence, meaning it currently has a stock-to-flow ratio in the upper 50’s, which puts it near gold’s stock-to-flow ratio. In 2024, after the fourth halving, Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio will be over 100.

The model backtests Bitcoin and compares its price history to its changing stock-to-flow ratio over time, and in turn develops a price model which it can then (potentially) be extrapolated into the future. He also has created other versions that look at the stock-to-flow ratios of gold and silver, and apply that math to Bitcoin to build a cross-asset model.

The white line in the chart above represents the price model over time, with the notable vertical moves being the three halvings that occurred. The colored dots are the actual price of Bitcoin during that timeframe, with colors changing compared to their number of months until the next halving. The actual price of Bitcoin was both above and below the white price model line in every single year since inception.

As you can see, the previously-described pattern appears. In the year or two after a halving, the price tends to enjoy a bull run, sharply overshoots the model, and then falls below the model, and then rebounds and finds equilibrium closer to the model until the next halving.

Each halving cycle is less explosive than the previous one, as the size of the protocol grows in market capitalization and asset class maturity, but each cycle still goes up dramatically.

PlanB’s model extrapolation is very bullish, suggesting a six figure price level within the next 18 months in this fourth cycle, and potentially far higher in the fifth cycle. A six figure price compared to the current $9,000+ price range, is well over a tenfold increase. Will that happen? I have no idea. That’s more bullish than my base case but it’s nonetheless a useful model to see what happened in the past.

If Bitcoin reaches a six figure price level with 19 million coins in total, that would put its market cap at just under $2 trillion or more, above the largest mega-cap companies in the world today. It would, however, still be a small fraction of 1% of global net worth, and about a fifth of gold’s estimated market capitalization (roughly $10 trillion, back-of-the-envelope), so it’s not unfathomable for Bitcoin to eventually reach that height if there is enough sustained demand for it. During the late-2017 cryptocurrency mania, the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency space reached over $800 billion, although as previously mentioned, Bitcoin’s share of that briefly fell to under 40% of the asset class, so it peaked at just over $300 billion.

While the PlanB model is accurate regarding what the price of Bitcoin did relative to its historical stock-to-flow ratio, the extent to which it will continue to follow that model is an open question. During the first decade of Bitcoin’s existence, it went from a micro-cap asset with virtually no demand, to a relatively large asset with significant niche demand, including from some institutional investors. On a percent-growth basis, the demand increase has been unbelievably fast, but is slowing.

When something becomes successful, the law of large numbers starts to kick in. It takes a small amount of money to move the needle on a small investment, but a lot of money to move the needle on a big investment. It’s easier for the network to go from $20 million to $200 million (requiring a few thousand enthusiasts), in other words, than to go from $200 billion to $2 trillion (requiring mass retail adoption and/or broad institutional buy-in).

The unknown variable for how well Bitcoin will follow such a model over this halving cycle, is the demand side. The supply of Bitcoin, including the future supply at a given date, is known due to how the protocol operates. This model’s historical period involves a very fast-growing demand for Bitcoin on a percent gain basis, going from nearly no demand to international niche demand with some initial institutional interest as well.

The launch cycle had a massive gain in percent terms from virtually zero to over $20 per Bitcoin at its peak. The second cycle, from peak-to-peak, had an increase of over 50x, where Bitcoin first reached over $1,000. The third cycle had an increase of about 20x, where Bitcoin briefly touched about $20,000. I think looking at the 2-5x range for the next peak relative to the previous cycle high makes sense here for the fourth cycle.

If demand grows more slowly in percent terms than it has in the past, the price is likely to undershoot PlanB’s historical model’s projections in the years ahead, even if it follows the same general shape. That would be my base case: bullish with an increase to new all-time highs from current levels within two years, but not necessarily a 10x increase within two years. On the other hand, we can’t rule out the bullish moonshot case if demand grows sharply and/or if some global macro currency event adds another catalyst.

All of this is just a model. I have a moderately high conviction that the general shape of the price action will play out again in this fourth cycle in line with the historical pattern, but the magnitude of that cycle is an open guess.

Game Theory

Let’s put away real numbers for a second, and assume a simple thought experiment, with made-up numbers for clarity of example.

Suppose Bitcoin has been around for a while after a period of explosive demand. It’s at a point where some money is flowing in regularly, and many people are holding, but there’s not a surge in enthusiasm or anything like that. Just a constant low-key influx of new capital. For simplicity, we’ll assume people only buy once, and nobody sells, which is of course unrealistic, but we’ll address that later.

In this example, the starting state is 100 holders of Bitcoin, with 1000 coins in existence between them (an average of 10 coins each), at a current price point of $100 per coin, resulting in a total market capitalization of $100,000.

Each year for the next five years, ten new people each want to put $1,000 into Bitcoin, totaling $10,000 in annual incoming capital, for one reason or another.

However, there is a shrinking number of new coin supply per year (and nobody is selling existing coins other than the miners that produce them). In the first year, 100 new coins are available for resale. In the second year, only 90 new coins are available. In the third year, only 80 new coins are available, and so forth. That’s our hypothetical new supply reduction for this thought experiment.

During the first year, the price doesn’t change; the ten new buyers with $10,000 in total new capital can easily buy the 100 new coins (10 coins each), and the price per coin remains $100.

During the second year, with only 90 new coins and still $10,000 in new capital that wants to come in, each buyer can only get 9 coins, at an effective price point of $111.11 per coin.

During the third year, with only 80 new coins and still $10,000 in new capital, each buyer can only get 8 coins, at an effective price point of $125 per coin.

By the fourth year with 70 new coins, that’s $142.86 per coin. By the fifth year with 60 new coins, that’s $166.67 per coin. The number of coins has increased by 40% during this five-year period, so the market capitalization also grew pretty substantially (over 130%), because both the number of coins and the per-coin price increased.

Some of those premises are of course unrealistic, and are simply used to show what happens when there is a growing user-base and constant low-key source of new buyers against a shrinking flow of new coins available.

In reality, a growing price tend to cause more demand, and vice versa. When investors see a bull market in Bitcoin, the demand increases dramatically, and when investors see a bear market in Bitcoin, the demand decreases. In addition, not all of the existing Bitcoin stock is permanently held; plenty of it is traded and sold.

However, Glassnode has plenty of research and data regarding how long people hold their Bitcoin.

Well-known gold bull and Bitcoin bear Peter Schiff recently performed a poll among his followers with a large 28,000+ sample, and found that about 85% of people who buy-and-hold Bitcoin and that answered his poll (which we must grant is a biased sample, although I’m not sure to which bias) are willing to hold for 3 years or more even if the price remains below $10,000 that whole time.

I’m not trying to criticize or praise Peter Schiff here; just highlighting a recent sentiment sampling.

The simple thought experiment above merely captures the mathematical premise behind a stock-to-flow argument. As long as there is a mildly growing user-base of holders, and some consistent level of new demand in the face of less new supply, a reduction in new supply flow naturally leads to bullish outcomes on the price. It would take a drop-off in new or existing demand for it to be otherwise.

The additional fact that the new supply of Bitcoin gets cut in half roughly every four years rather than reduced by a smaller fixed amount each year like in the simplistic model, represents pretty smart game theory inherent in Bitcoin’s design. This approach, in my view, gave the protocol the best possible chance for successfully growing market capitalization and user adoption, for which it has thus far been wildly successful.

Basically, Bitcoin has a built-in 4-year bull/bear market cycle, not too much different than the stock market cycle.

Bitcoin tends to have these occasional multi-year bear markets during the second half of each cycle, and that cuts away the speculative froth and lets Bitcoin bears pile on, pointing out that the asset hasn’t made a new high for years, and then the reduction in new supply sets the stage for the next bull-run. It then brings in new users with each cycle.

Here we see a consistent trend. During the Bitcoin price spikes associated with each cycle, people trade frequently and therefore the percentage of long-term holders diminishes. During Bitcoin consolidation periods that lead into the halvings, the percent of Bitcoin supply that is inactive, starts to grow. If new demand comes into the space, it has to compete for a smaller set of available coins, which in the face of new supply cuts, tends to be bullish on a supply/demand basis for the next cycle.

And although these halving-cycle relationships are more well known among Bitcoin investors over the past year, partly thanks to PlanB’s published research, Bitcoin remains a very inefficient market. There’s lots of retail activity, institutions aren’t leading the way, and relatively few people with big money ever sit down and try to really understand the nuances of the protocol or what makes one cryptocurrency different than another cryptocurrency. Each time Bitcoin reaches a new order of magnitude for market capitalization, though, it captures another set of eyes due to increased liquidity and price history.