In the last quarter of 2017, many miners’ margins expanded due to the 226% rise in Bitcoin prices, making further investment into mining infrastructure more profitable. Consequently, there was a 111% increase in mining hash power. Bitcoinmining infrastructure doubled in Q4 2017.
Miners managed to double their mining infrastructure power in one quarter, which was well above the average hash power increase of 40% per quarter over the last 3 years. Although it is worth noting during the previous bubble in Bitcoin in 2013 similar rises in hash power occurred.
The increase in mining power has important ramifications for the marginal cost of mining bitcoin, because all it requires significant expenditure to purchase new mining rigs, arrange more warehouse space and negotiate electricity contracts.
In previous publications, we spent considerable time in understanding the marginal cost of Bitcoin. There are varied ways to value Bitcoin, but given it has some similarities to commoditieswe felt it would be worthwhile calculating the marginal cost of production.
While marginal cost varies for commodities as supply and demand changes, it is an effective way in understanding the long-term equilibrium price. Bitcoin is exceptional in that the supply is predictable, being determined by the structure of its underlying algorithm. The hash rategrowth of the Bitcoin network, a measure of the speed at which Bitcoin blocks are mined, coupled with the known power consumption can be used to estimate the electricity consumption costs, the equivalent of the marginal cost of production that is often used to value commodities.
Using global power costs
Using global power costs we estimate the electricity consumption has risen from 1.3GW/hr at the end of Q3 2017 to 2.3GW/hr, which equates to US$3,000 spent in electricity for every coin. Due to the rise in mining infrastructure, including rig costs and assuming a 1 year lifespan of the rigs pushes the marginal cost up to US$9,380. We have included a matrix which assumes a 50% per quarter rise in hash power and the phased introduction of the new, more efficient Dragonmint mining rigs. The lifetime of a rig is debatable so we have included varied rig lifetimes.
Our analysis highlights that Bitcoin continues to trade above the marginal cost of production, although as the hash power of the network rises, the marginal cost rises sharply too.
Although Bitcoin is not a commodity, it is trading well above its marginal cost as it remains a very young digital asset, heavily influenced by regulatory risk, investor hype and the prospect that conceptually it is a compelling idea.
James Butterfill, Head of Research & Investment Strategy at ETF Securities
James Butterfill joined ETF Securities as Head of Research & Investment Strategy in 2015. James is responsible for leading the strategic direction of the global research team, ensuring that clients receive up-to-date, expert insight into global macroeconomic and asset class specific developments.
James has a wealth of experience in strategy, economics and asset allocation gained at HSBC and most recently in his role as Multi- Asset Fund Manager and Global Equity Strategist at Coutts. James holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Exeter and an MSc in Geophysics from Keele University.
Valour Render (RENDER) SEK (VALOUR RNDR SEK) with ISIN CH1108679288, är en börshandlad produkt (ETP) som spårar RENDER, den ursprungliga kryptovalutan i Render Network. Render utnyttjar blockchain-teknik för att decentralisera GPU-baserad rendering, vilket ger skapare kostnadseffektiv och skalbar tillgång till beräkningskraft för visuella effekter, spel och design.
Render-nätverket är designat för att stärka digital kreativitet och kopplar samman användare som söker renderingstjänster med GPU-ägare, vilket optimerar resurser och minskar kostnaderna. RENDER-tokens används för betalning och incitament för deltagare i nätverket, vilket möjliggör sömlöst samarbete över det kreativa ekosystemet. RENDER-innehavare stödjer en vision om decentraliserad datoranvändning, som främjar innovation och tillgänglighet inom den digitala konst- och underhållningsindustrin.
Beskrivning
Valour’s Certificate-produktlinje erbjuder börshandlade produkter som uppfyller kraven, var och en helt säkrad av sina respektive digitala tillgångar. För att säkerställa säker kylförvaring samarbetar Valour med nivå 1-licensierade förvaringsinstitut som Copper. Handlade på reglerade börser och MTFer ger dessa certifikat transparent prissättning och likviditet, vilket stärker investerarnas förtroende för säkra digitala tillgångsinvesteringar. Valours grundprospekt är godkända av Finansinspektionen och uppfyller EUs krav på fullständighet, tydlighet och konsekvens.
Det betyder att det går att handla andelar i denna ETP genom de flesta svenska banker och Internetmäklare, till exempel DEGIRO, Nordnet, Aktieinvest, Levler och Avanza.
The outcome of the US election last month continues to reverberate through the crypto markets. The Nasdaq Crypto IndexTM (NCITM) has risen over 57% since November 5, fueled by widespread optimism over the direction of digital asset policy in the US.
As I wrote in a previous note, crypto assets tend to follow a four-year cycle that includes a bull phase of roughly 12 months, followed by a year-long bear market, and then a two-year recovery period. In the previous two bull markets, altcoins (i.e., everything outside of BTC) have significantly outperformed the largest crypto asset.
I believe we’ve entered a bull market, reinforced by the macro environment and US election outcomes. But there’s another data point signaling a bull market—the outperformance of the NCITM relative to BTC.¹ In the last three months, the NCITM has had a higher return than BTC (78.0% vs. 76.5%) and since the election, the NCITM has outperformed BTC by 6.8%.
Crypto Asset Performance
So, which specific aspects of crypto are poised for outperformance this time around?
One key area to watch is smart contract projects, platforms that will allow users to transact not only information but value and property as well. We believe these platforms and applications will outperform BTC in the next 12-18 months as they compete for users and lay the groundwork for decentralized applications. On the back of the infrastructure developments we have seen in this area in the last few years, new applications are emerging across AI, gaming, and many other areas as tokenization continues to expand.
We also believe that new regulatory progress in 2025 will be more beneficial to these applications than to Bitcoin specifically, because Bitcoin already has regulatory clarity and a well-developed capital markets structure, with the growth of ETFs, options, and futures. In the US and Europe, this legislative and regulatory clarity that will benefit altcoins may include:
• Market structure legislation: Proposals like FIT21 will remove ambiguities regarding the commodity vs. security status of crypto assets, as well as create paths to registration that could boost adoption in the US.
• Stablecoin legislation / MiCA implementation: Both will drive the adoption of stablecoins in the US and Europe, expanding the stablecoin phenomenon beyond just emerging markets.
• Repeal of SAB121: When this obstacle is removed and US banks can hold crypto for their clients, banks and brokerages will increase their crypto trading and custody offerings, which will benefit altcoins the most.
• New ETF launches: With the new SEC chair, there are renewed hopes for additional ETF approvals, including indices and single assets like Solana and XRP. There’s still much uncertainty here, but new assets having ETFs as on-ramps is highly positive.
In addition to Bitcoin developing as an emerging digital store of wealth and smart contract platforms becoming a new way to exchange information, value, and property, there are three other altcoin use cases we believe will benefit in the coming year:
DeFi: Projects aimed at creating an internet-based financial system, running on smart contract platforms, will create a new global capital markets infrastructure for payments, with stablecoins and tokenized money market funds being the first important use cases.
Web3: A new iteration of the internet that will let us own our data and make the internet decentralized and more usable for things like AI agents and other innovations.
Digital Culture: An emerging digital-native generation will have more demand to own digital assets and collectibles, with gaming being a natural first application.
If we compare crypto to the internet, this industry is like the internet in the 1990s and Bitcoin could be compared to email—the only application most people hear about. But fast forward 20 years and while email is still very useful, it has not been the internet’s application that created the most societal value. We believe this could be true for how Bitcoin is currently viewed relative to crypto.
Benefits of diversification
Our team at Hashdex are firm believers that getting broad exposure to this market is necessary to capture the growth we believe we will experience in these other areas. Indices like the Nasdaq Crypto IndexTM (NCITM) can provide broader market exposure and, as crypto matures as an asset class, better risk-adjusted returns. Additionally, indices provide more significant optionality as investors don’t need to rely on an active manager to do this for them. The complexity and fast-evolving nature of crypto make it hard to pick individual winners and an index simplifies investing by offering a balanced, data-driven selection of assets that can align with modern portfolio theory principles.
This is why index ETFs have been at the core of our mission. Accessing crypto through these familiar structures allows investors to benefit from the growth of this asset class with minimal friction. For most investors, we most often recommend a very small allocation to crypto, from 1% to 5%. We strongly believe that a benchmark like the NCITM is an excellent way to “buy the market” and benefit from a strategic allocation into this promising asset class.
[1] The Nasdaq Crypto Index includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Ripple, Cardano, Chainlink, Avalanche, Litecoin, Polygon, and Uniswap as of 9/30/24
Sedan i måndags har två ETFer från Xtrackers kunnat handlas på Xetra. Xtrackers MSCI Taiwan UCITS ETF (XTMT) följer utvecklingen av MSCI Taiwan 20/35 Custom Index. Investerare får därmed direkt tillgång till den taiwanesiska aktiemarknaden. Vikten för det största företaget är begränsad till 35 procent och de övriga företagens till 20 procent vardera. Det största företaget är för närvarande Taiwan Semiconductor. Totalt omfattar referensindexet 88 företag, som täcker cirka 85 procent av Taiwans börsvärde.
Xtrackers MSCI World ESG UCITS ETF (XZWD) följer utvecklingen av MSCI World Low Carbon SRI Selection Index. Indexet inkluderar stora och medelstora företag från utvecklade länder över hela världen. De måste ha bättre ESG-egenskaper och lägre koldioxidutsläpp jämfört med sina kamrater.
Båda fonderna är tillgängliga för investerare i den utdelande andelsklassen.
Produktutbudet i Deutsche Börses XTF-segment omfattar för närvarande totalt 2 318 ETFer. Med detta urval och en genomsnittlig månatlig handelsvolym på cirka 16 miljarder euro är Xetra den ledande handelsplatsen för ETFer i Europa.