Lately, I’ve been going to a few investment conferences, and I’ve been surprised to see the resurgence of the Bitcoin presentation. For a while, they were a dime a dozen – everywhere you turned – then they went quiet for a bit, and now they’re back, baby!

I have to give credit where it’s due, though – the presentations have evolved over the years. These days they’re pulling out more charts, more terms, and more jargon… from currency debasement to digital gold, to the ever-present argument that Bitcoin is a ‘store of value’. You have to give it to them for trying to bring rigour and credibility to what is, in my view, a fantasy asset. And I use the term ‘asset’ loosely.

At the last presentation I went to, the presenter said about halfway through a rather confusing chart pack that he often gets asked how to value Bitcoin. His response was that it was easy, but not the focus of this presentation, and he would save that question for question time. Surprisingly, the answer never came. I was going to ask the question, but I decided to play nicely with the other children in the sandpit. Clearly, if he had a plausible explanation of how to value it, it would have been front and centre in his presentation.

At the end of the session, a few of the investment professionals at my table turned to each other and said, “Did you get that?” We all shrugged and said, “Not really.” So, I’m confident it wasn’t just me.

Now, maybe I am being just an old fuddy duddy, maybe I don’t get it. I think crypto is the Wild West of finance: fast-moving, unregulated and wide open for exploitation. My best guess is that it won’t prove to be a ‘store of value’ but will be just as correlated as every speculative asset in a deleveraging event. Time will tell.

I can already feel the Bitcoin/Crypto faithful sharpening their keyboards. Nowadays, people get worked up about the strangest of things……

Kind regards,

Shelley Marsh
Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) & Founder
Wealth Differently

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