Bitcoin fund prices driven by hype, hope
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are on their way to being the next big thing or yesterday’s news. Their novelty makes it hard to tell which.
For better or worse, funds are being introduced that let investors capture the rewards and risks available in cryptocurrencies. Most are listed on foreign markets or aimed at accredited investors, those with high incomes or substantial wealth, although the funds often have minimum investments of as little as $10,000 to $25,000.
Several firms have filed to sell specialty exchange-traded funds in the United States, but none have been approved yet. The Securities and Exchange Commission has cited “significant investor protection issues that need to be examined before sponsors begin offering these funds to retail investors.”
Fund manager Van Eck and software developer SolidX asked the SEC in early June for permission to offer an ETF that addresses the agency’s concerns, partly by setting the share price so high, nearly $200,000, that small investors could not afford it. That request is still pending.
If and when funds are listed, prospective shareholders should treat them with caution and skepticism, investment advisers and authorities on cryptocurrencies warn. Since its invention in 2009, bitcoin has risen from pennies to about $6,400, and other cryptocurrencies have experienced astounding runs of their own.
There are fascinating aspects to bitcoin and its peers, especially the underlying blockchain technology, but prices have been driven to a large extent by hype and hope, and the gains could be reversed.
“There is no intrinsic value to a bitcoin,” said Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. “The market is caught up in a frenzy for new technology.”
One sign of the frenzy is in the trading price of Bitcoin Investment Trust, one of the funds for welloff investors. It has been 56 percent above the value of the portfolio’s assets this year on average, according to Morningstar, bid up by shareholders eager for access to the market when few other avenues exist. The premium, which was 45 percent on June 30, could fall sharply if other investment vehicles come along.
“The challenge with cryptocurrency-oriented investing is it’s hard to gain exposure, as there are no U.S.-listed ETFs,” said Todd Rosenbluth, director of ETF and mutual fund research at CFRA.
“When the supply to gain exposure to bitcoin grows via ETF choices and better meets demand, the premium will narrow.”
Just what the right prices are for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, fund premiums aside, is hard to judge, Matthew Hougan, global head of research at Bitwise Asset Management, acknowledged.
“The crypto ecosystem hasn’t evolved an agreed-upon framework to value crypto,” he said.
Hougan said he thinks there’s a chance that cryptocurrencies will become widespread alternative forms of money, much as gold may be considered today, putting a floor under prices. He cited the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies — the blockchain ledgers recording transactions exist in no one spot and under no one’s control — and their built-in digital scarcity. “It’s entirely feasible that a new store of value could emerge in the world,” he said. “I don’t think that concept began and ended with gold.”
Bitcoin is the best-known cryptocurrency but not the only one. There are roughly 1,600 of them, McKnight said, and, “80 percent are scams, or assets with no value in the long run.”
The technologies embodied in these ventures will undoubtedly serve other purposes, he said. Blockchains — secure, time-stamped sets of digital records — are expected to be valuable tools in areas like supply chain management and banking that feature large amounts of information shared among multiple parties using varied data management systems.
“There’s a mass of confusion between blockchain technology, which will have a big impact, and cryptocurrencies,” McKnight said. The blockchain technology “is what investors should be looking at.”