Abstract

This report is the third in a three part piece on Bitcoin economics. In the first piece, we looked at common misconceptions with respect to how banks make loans and the implications this has on the ability of banks to expand the level of credit in the economy. We analysed the inherent properties of money which ensure that this is the case and evaluate the impact this could have on the business cycle. In part two, we considered why Bitcoin might have some unique combinations of characteristics, compared to traditional forms of money.  We explained the implications this could have on the ability of banks to engage in credit expansion. In this piece (part three), we examine the deflationary nature of Bitcoin and consider why this deflation may be necessary due to some of Bitcoin’s weaknesses. We also look at how Bitcoin could be more resilient to some of the traditional economic disadvantages of deflation than some of Bitcoin’s critics may think.

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Bitcoin’s Deflation Problem

One of the most common critiques of Bitcoin and related crypto-coin systems, is the supply cap (in the case of Bitcoin 21 million) and the associated deflationary nature of the system, which could be damaging to the economy. Critics have argued that history has taught us that a finite monetary supply can be a poor economic policy, resulting in or exacerbating, economic crashes. Either because people are unwilling to spend appreciating money or because the real value of debt increases, resulting in a highly indebted economy. Bitcoin proponents are often called “economically naive”, for failing to have learnt these economic lessons of the past.

In this third piece on Bitcoin economics, we explain that the situation may be more complex than these critics think, as Bitcoin is fundamentally different to the types of money that came before it. There may be unique characteristics about Bitcoin, which make it more suited to a deflationary policy. Alternatively, limitations or weaknesses in Bitcoin could exist, which mean that too much inflation could have negative consequences not applicable to traditional forms of money. In our view, these issues are often overlooked by some of Bitcoin’s economic critics.

A selection of quotes about Bitcoin’s inflation problem

The supply of central bank notes can easily expand and contract. For  a  positive  demand  shock  to  bank  notes  (shifting  from  consumption/investment  to money: i.e. it is a  deflationary  shock),  the  central  bank increases money  supply  by  buying  securities and  foreign  currencies.    For  a  negative  demand  shock  to  bank  notes,  the  central  bank absorbs money in circulation by selling securities and other assets.  In case of [Bitcoin], the latter operation is not included in its protocol. That is  to  say,  the  cryptocurrency  protocol  usually  includes  the  currency  supply  rule,  but  does  not  have  a  currency  absorption  or  write-off  protocol. Can we reduce this irreversibility?

– Mitsuru Iwamura (“Can We Stabilize the Price of a Cryptocurrency?: Understanding the Design of Bitcoin and Its Potential to Compete with Central Bank Money”) – 2014

The point is that by not building in an inflation, of say 2% per annum in the global supply of Bitcoins, you almost doom it as a currency, because people will start hoarding it, knowing that it’s going to be worth more next year than it is this year

 –  David Webb (51 minutes into the video) – 2014

More broadly, a hard supply cap or built-in deflation is not an inherent strength for a would-be money. A money’s strength is in its ability to meet society’s needs. From my perspective, Bitcoin’s built-in deflation means that it does a poorer job than it might at meeting society’s needs. Maybe I will be proven wrong. We shall see.

 –  The Economist (“Bitcoin’s Deflation Problem”) – 2014

The currency’s “money supply” will eventually be capped at 21m units. To Bitcoin’s libertarian disciples, that is a neat way to preclude the inflationary central-bank meddling to which most currencies are prone. Yet modern central banks favour low but positive inflation for good reason. In the real world wages are “sticky”: firms find it difficult to cut their employees’ pay. A modicum of inflation greases the system by, in effect, cutting the wages of workers whose pay cheques fail to keep pace with inflation. If the money supply grows too slowly, then prices fall and workers with sticky wages become more costly. Unemployment tends to rise as a result. If employed workers hoard cash in expectation of further price reductions, the downturn gathers momentum.

 – The Economist (“Money from Nothing”) – 2014

Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.  For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary. There is an upper limit on the number of bitcoins that can ever be created (‘mined’, in the jargon: new bitcoins are created by carrying out mathematical operations which become progressively harder as the bitcoin space is explored—like calculating ever-larger prime numbers, they get further apart). This means the cost of generating new Bitcoins rises over time, so that the value of Bitcoins rise relative to the available goods and services in the market. Less money chasing stuff; less cash for everybody to spend (as the supply of stuff out-grows the supply of money).

 –  Charlie Stross (“Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire”) – 2013

Nevertheless, there is still the 21m limit issue. If the limit is reached, the future of Bitcoin supply has to go down the path of fractional reserve banking, since only re-lending existing coin, or lending on the basis that settlement can one day be made in Bitcoin — a la conventional banking practice — can overcome the lack of supply

 – Izabella Kaminska – Financial Times (“The problem with Bitcoin”) – 2013

 

So to the extent that the experiment [Bitcoin] tells us anything about monetary regimes, it reinforces the case against anything like a new gold standard – because it shows just how vulnerable such a standard would be to money-hoarding, deflation, and depression.

–  Paul Krugman (“Golden Cyberfetters”) – 2011

While Bitcoin has managed to bootstrap itself on a limited scale, it lacks any mechanism for dealing with fluctuations in demand. Increasing demand for Bitcoin will cause prices in terms of Bitcoin to drop (deflation), while decreasing demand will cause them to rise (inflation). What happens in each of these cases? Let’s start with deflation, because right now demand for Bitcoin is on the rise. What do people do when they think something’s value will be higher tomorrow than it is today? Well, they acquire and hold on to it! Who wants to give up money that’s constantly rising in value? In other words, rising demand causes demand to rise further. Irrational exuberance at its finest. Deflation begets deflation, ad infinitum, or at least until something breaks.

– The Underground Economist (“Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency”) – 2010

Deflation and the deflationary debt spiral

Many economists have been debating the advantages and disadvantages of inflation for decades. Nevertheless, this primary point of contention is one of theory; economists, from differing schools of thought have a variety of views on the topic.  It is fair to say that the current economic consensus is that deflation is an undesirable economic phenomenon, while moderate inflation of around 2% per annum is desired. Those with Austrian school leanings, who oppose centrally managing inflation towards a certain positive target, tend disproportionality to support Bitcoin and gold’s somewhat deflationary nature.

One of the primary drivers for the negative view on deflation appears to be the 1929 great depression and the idea of a deflationary debt spiral. The theory is that during a period of economic recession and deflation, the real value of debt increases. Such an increase compounds the misfortunes of an already weak economy. Economist Irving Fisher is often credited with formulating this theory, as a response the financial crises of 1837, 1873 and the 1929 great depression.

Then we may deduce the following chain of consequences in nine links:

1. Debt liquidation leads to distress setting and to
2. Contraction of deposit currency, as bank loans are paid off, and to a slowing down of velocity of circulation. This contraction of deposits and of their velocity, precipitated by distress selling, causes
3. A fall in the level of prices, in other words, a swelling of the dollar. Assuming, as above stated, that this fall of prices is not interfered with by reflation or otherwise, there must be
4. A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies and
5. A like fall in profits, which in a “capitalistic,” that is, a private-profit society, leads the concerns which are running at a loss to make
6. A reduction in output, in trade and in employment of labor. These losses, bankruptcies, and unemployment, lead to
7. Pessimism and loss of confidence, which in turn lead to
8. Hoarding and slowing down still more the velocity of circulation. The above eight changes cause
9. Complicated disturbances in the rates of interest, in particular, a fall in the nominal, or money, rates and a rise in the real, or commodity, rates of interest.

Evidently debt and deflation go far toward explaining a great mass of phenomena in a very simple logical way

 – Irving Fisher (1933)

Is deflation as bad as these critics claim?

To the extent that critics accuse Bitcoin supporters of being economically naive, they may not always be entirely correct or they could be missing some nuances. Firstly, one does not need to be an Austrian economist to question whether deflation (supply cap) is always undesirable. Deflation could be bad in some circumstances, but it may depend on the characteristics of the economy and the type of money used in society. The social sciences are not like maths of computer science, nobody really knows the right answer to a high degree of certainty and opinions in the academic community change over time. Furthermore, economic circumstances can change over time, which can result in a different set of dynamics, where different inflation policies are optimal. Therefore a hard rule, fixed for all time, such as “deflation is always bad”, may not be the correct philosophy. For example, maybe Fisher’s view on inflation was correct for the economy in the 20^th century, however by 2150 technology may have fundamentally changed to such an extent, such that another inflation policy may be more appropriate for society.

Bitcoin has different characteristics and the deflationary debt spiral argument may be less relevant

As we explained in part 1 and part 2 of this piece, Bitcoin possesses properties which are fundamentally different to the traditional money used in the economy such as the US Dollar or gold backed systems. Traditional money, such as the US Dollar are based on debt, which is an inherent property of fiat money. Alternatively Bitcoin may have properties which make it resilient to credit expansionary forces, such that the money is not inherently linked to debt. Therefore in the event of an economic crash and deflation, in a Bitcoin based economy, the impact of increases in the real value of debt could be less significant than one may think. This could make the deflationary debt spiral argument less relevant in a Bitcoin based economy.  In our view, it is likely that many of the Bitcoin critics may have overlooked this point when evaluating the disadvantages of Bitcoin’s deflationary monetary policy.

Disadvantages of inflation unique to Bitcoin

In addition to Bitcoin having some potential advantages, which could make it more resilient to the disadvantages of deflation, Bitcoin’s critics may also have overlooked some of Bitcoin’s weaknesses, which may make it more vulnerable to inflation:

• Arbitrary Environmental Damage – Another common criticism of Bitcoin is the environmental damage caused by the energy intensive mining process. Although as we explained in the second part in our series on mining incentives, this issue could be overestimated since miners have a uniquely high level of choice with respect to the geographic location of their mining operations. This flexibility could reduce environmental damage as miners may use failed energy projects rather than investing in new ones.  However, it is still important to note that, the negative environmental damage caused by Bitcoin does seem to be a significant negative externality.  Mining incentives are made up of transaction fees and the block reward (inflation). Therefore increasing inflation increases the level of environmental damage and increases the negative externality. If a 2% inflation policy is decided upon, this could mean at least 2% of the value of the system is spent “damaging” the environment per annum. The inflation policy decision is somewhat arbitrary and the more inflation is selected the greater the extent of environmental damage. There may even be parallels here with the existing financial system. The policy of central banks to stimulate the economy, to achieve their inflation targets, could also be said to cause an arbitrarily high level of environmental damage, at least in the eyes of some critics. Although the link between inflation and environmental damage in a Bitcoin based system is more direct and measurable.  Instead of continued inflation, in Bitcoin the block reward halves every four years until mining incentives are driven entirely by transaction fees. This means that the level of environmental damage will be driven by the market, in that it could represent the amount that users are willing to pay for security, rather than an arbitrarily high level of environmental damage which would be the result of an inflationary monetary policy.
• Aligning the interests of miners and users – Miners are currently primarily incentivised by the block reward rather than transaction fees. This results in a number of potential problems in the ecosystem, for example perhaps the interests of miners and users are not well aligned. Miners could, for example, exclude transactions from blocks, against the interests of users. Miners may be less likely to take this kind of action if they are primarily incentivised by transaction fees, something Bitcoin’s deflationary policy ensures will eventually become reality.
• Inability to generate coin value – The supply cap can be considered as a key selling point of Bitcoin for investors and is likely to have helped generate investor interest which may have been necessary to bootstrap the system. If a perpetual inflationary policy was chosen, Bitcoin may not have been able to succeed to the extent it has, even if the deflationary policy is inferior from an economic perspective.

The irony of this debate – economic criticisms are only relevant if Bitcoin is a tremendous success

Much of this discussion focuses on the economics of Bitcoin, assuming Bitcoin is widely adopted, such that the inflationary dynamics have an impact on society. In our view this is an unlikely outcome and perhaps should be considered even more unlikely by Bitcoin’s critics. In our view, Bitcoin may satisfy a useful niche, that of making both censorship resistant and digital payments, but it’s unlikely to become the main currency in the economy. Therefore the debate about Bitcoin’s deflationary nature should be considered as largely irrelevant anyway. Hence it is therefore somewhat odd that some critics use this as an argument against Bitcoin.

This point is similar to one Paul Krugman made in his 2013 “Bitcoin is Evil” piece. Although Mr Krugman is widely derided in the Bitcoin community, most notably for his 1998 comment that “by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”, we consider the distinction he draws in the quote below as both accurate and sensible:

So let’s talk both about whether BitCoin is a bubble and whether it’s a good thing — in part to make sure that we don’t confuse these questions with each other.

– Paul Krugman – “Bitcoin is Evil” – 2013

Perhaps Satoshi thought that having a finite supply cap and a deflationary bias, may help the system succeed, even if from society’s point of view, moderate inflation would be more utilitarian. From a system design perspective, producing a working payment system should be the priority, since a system which does not succeed, even if it’s hypothetically beneficial to society, is ultimately useless.

Conclusion

We conclude that rather than being driven by economic naivety, some Bitcoin supporters may have had a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between debt, deflation, the properties of money and credit expansion than the critics think. In contrast one could argue it’s the economic mainstream’s lack of understanding of the relationship between money and debt, and the potential ability of Bitcoin to somewhat decouple the two, which is the most prevalent misunderstanding. Indeed to many, Bitcoin’s ability to decouple debt from money and thereby result in a deflationary climate without the deflationary debt spiral problem is the point, rather than a bug.

However, even if Bitcoin has solved this economic problem, perhaps it’s naive to think Bitcoin would result in a more prosperous economic system. Bitcoin is a new and unique system, which is likely to cause more economic problems, perhaps unexpected or new ones. After all there is no perfect money. It just may not be correct to apply the traditional economic problems of the past, to this new type of money. Although it may be more difficult, identifying Bitcoin’s potential economic problems may require more analysis and a stronger understanding of the underlying technology.

Ironically, if one thinks these economic problems associated with deflation have a remote chance of being relevant, like the critics indirectly imply, that would mean Bitcoin has a significant chance of becoming widely adopted and hugely successful. In that case, perhaps the sensible thing to do is buy and “HODL”.

Abstract: Although in 2018 Bitcoin may have somewhat moved on beyond this issue, in this sixth piece on consensus forks and chainsplits, we provide a list of 44 tokens which seem to have forked away from Bitcoin since the Bitcoin Cash split.

(Source: gryb25)

From late 2015 to the end of 2017, there was significant focus and analysis in the Bitcoin community about a chainsplits, finally resulting in the launch of Bitcoin Cash and then a plethora of other tokens. We have already covered some of topics related to these splits, in the five articles below:

• Bitcoin Cash: Potential Price Implications of Investment Flow Data
• The SegWit2x (B2X) Hardfork – Protecting Yourself and Your Coins, Part 1: Coin Splitting
• The SegWit2x (B2X) Hardfork – Protecting Yourself and Your Coins, Part 2: Investment Strategies
• The Bitfinex chain split tokens
• A complete history of Bitcoin’s consensus forks

In this sixth piece we list 44 Bitcoin forked tokens.

List of Bitcoin forked coins since Bitcoin Cash

(Source: BitMEX Research, Forked coin websites, findmycoins.ninja)

Please note it is very important to handle these new fork tokens with caution. In particular, we would strongly advise you not to import your Bitcoin private key into any new fork token wallets without first spending the Bitcoin to a new output associated with a different private key after the token snapshot point, so that your Bitcoin is not at risk.

Abstract

We look at Bitmain’s new Ethereum miner and notice that it may be less energy efficient than one might expect for an ASIC. We explore the possibility that this miner contains a new more advanced form of technology, which is less efficient than ASICs, but potentially partially immune to PoW algorithm changes. We then conclude that whether this particular Ethereum chip is capable of this or not, this type of technology may eventually end the era of anti-ASIC PoW changes designed to improve decentralisation, such that crypto-coin communities may have to accept the inevitability of ASICs.

Overview

Bitmain have recently launched a new Ethereum miner, widely believed to be an ASIC, and it is expected to ship in late July 2018. However, many in the Ethereum community oppose ASICs and prefer GPU mining, since GPU companies are primarily concerned with gaming rather than crypto-coins, which should mean that the hardware is distributed more widely and fairly, improving decentralisation. Therefore a risk to Bitmain could be that the Ethereum community decide to hardfork to change the PoW algorithm, which could devalue the Bitmain machines and result in a large wasted investment.

In this report, we speculate that Bitmain may already be one step ahead of the Ethereum community. Bitmain may have already learnt a lesson with Monero, two coins which recently conducted PoW changes, potentially resulting in large devaluations of Bitmain’s ASIC chips. Developing a custom chip requires a considerable financial investment and therefore we think Bitmain may have taken some countermeasures to avoid another loss. Bitmain could have designed a new type of mining chip, less efficient that ASICs, but immune to PoW changes. This could make an Ethereum hardfork PoW change mostly pointless.

The recent Monero anti-ASIC PoW change

At the start of April 2018 the Monero community decided to hardfork and change the PoW algorithm, in an attempt to “brick” ASICs and make Monero more GPU-friendly. Due to sharp increases in hashrate, illustrated by Figure 1 and 2 below, the Monero community believed that ASIC manufacturers had developed Monero ASICs, in secret, and were mining the coin.

As Figure 2 shows below, the rolling 90-day hashrate growth rate reached c. 300% in the early part of 2018 (based on 7-day rolling averages). Even after factoring in the sharp increase in value of the Monero coin, this is an extraordinary growth rate. After Monero developers announced plans for a hardfork, Bitmain began to sell Monero ASICs on their website, indicating that they could indeed have been mining in secret. After the PoW change, as Figure 1 shows, the Monero hashrate dropped off significantly.

After the hardfork, the Monero chain split into two, with the original rules coin being called Monero Original (XMO). Although this coin had a lower value than Monero, it had a higher hashrate, since there was little else for the Monero ASICs to mine. There was no replay protection implemented for the split, however Monero increased the ring signature limit, therefore one can split Monero and Monero Original by first initiating a transaction on the Monero Original chain with fewer ring signatures than are allowed on Monero (less than 7).

Figure 1 – Monero hashrate compared to Monero price

Source: Coinmarketcap, BitMEX Research

Figure 2 – Monero hashrate compared to Monero price – Rolling 90-day percentage growth of 7-day moving average

Source: Coinmarketcap, BitMEX Research

Note: In the 7 days following the PoW hardfork, the hashrate rolling average excludes the period prior to the hardfork

Bitmain’s new Ethash miner

As we mentioned above, Bitmain has recently launched a new Ethereum miner, which is expected to ship around late July 2018. Given the history with Monero and the fact that many in the Ethereum community, including those mining Ethereum at home on GPUs, are likely to be unhappy at a new Bitmain product, Bitmain may be concerned. One downside to the new miner could be increased miner centralization, but in addition to this, the product may also receive hostility from some in the Ethereum community due to their financial interests in the existing Ethereum miners, GPUs. Bitmain’s management is not stupid, and therefore in our view the company is likely to act with caution and may have taken measures to mitigate against some of these risks.

Figure 3 – Bitmain’s new Ethereum miner: the Antminer E3

Specifications:

• Power consumption: 800W
• Hashrate: 180MH/s

Source: Bitmain

The advertised specification of the product is disclosed above. As the table below illustrates, a back -of-the-envelope calculation could imply this new Ethereum miner is less efficient than one would expect if it was an ASIC, based on comparisons with the efficiency gain measured on some of the other ASICs related to other coins. For instance a Bitcoin ASIC is c. 521x more efficient than an FPGA, while the Monero ASIC is c. 88x more efficient than a GPU. In contrast the new Ethereum miner is only c. 1.4x more efficient than a GPU. This could indicate that the new Ethereum miner is not an ASIC at all, but merely a new device more efficient than the existing GPU miners. However, we appreciate that the below table is a crude approximation which ignores many crucial variables and factors, such as the memory-intensive nature of the Ethereum mining algorithm. But although the calculation is inaccurate, the figures can still potentially illustrate a point:

Figure 4 – Approximate miner efficiency calculations

Source: BitMEX Research, Bitmain
Note: Figures are approximations

Mining chip types & Vector processors (VPs)

As Figure 5 below illustrates, when Bitcoin launched in 2009, mining was conducted using CPUs. However, the architectures of GPUs and FPGAs are more efficient at processing repetitive hash operations. Therefore the network shifted, first to GPUs and then to FGPAs. In 2013, ASICs designed for specific hash functions emerged. Compared to CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs, ASICs are far more efficient at running a particular algorithm, however excluding this, ASICs are far less efficient or actually totally useless.

Figure 5 – Crypto-coin chip type timeline

Source: BitMEX Research
Note: The inclusion of Vector Processors (VPs) towards the end of 2018 is speculative

It might be possible that Bitmain has developed a new type of chip, a Vector Processor. The architecture of this chip could be designed for PoW hash functions in general, but not for a specific hash function. These chips could then be more efficient than GPUs and FPGAs, but less efficient than ASICs. The advantage over ASICs is that they could be, in some respects, immune to PoW changes. It is possible that the new Ethereum miner falls into this category of chip, although this is mostly speculation on our part.

Figure 6 – The evolution of crypto-coin chip types

Higher efficiency

It is possible that Bitmain’s new Ethereum miner is tailored for Ethash, in that the components inside the miner such as the electric circuits, power control devices, memory and control modules could all be specifically calibrated for mining Ethereum. However the chip itself, which is the area that requires by far the most financial investment, could be more general and not specifically designed for Ethereum. Therefore if Ethereum conducts a PoW change, it could be possible to direct the chips into a new device as they leave the foundry or perhaps even recover the chips from the old device put them into a new Ethereum miner. Although again, at this point we are speculating.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology

At TSMC’s latest set of quarterly results on 19th April 2018, Co-CEO Mark Lie said the following:

[Bitmain] is doing a lot of things on blockchain technology, like AI. They are doing very well. We expect them to slowly move to the AI area.

Source: Q1 2018 earnings call

“AI” is a term with many meanings. Although at this point the situation is unclear, it is possible that any new Vector Processor chips could be what TSMC mean by AI technology. Since any such chip may be able to switch between hashing algorithms, at a stretch, one could argue this falls within the scope of AI. It remains to be seen if the chip is merely programmable, like modern GPUs, or if there is a trick up its sleeve that could give it an efficiency gain vs. GPUs in most cases. If present, this advanced technological capability is likely to be seen as a major achievement for Bitmain. Such technology may also be even more expensive to develop and more specialised than the technology in ASICs, which could make the decentralisation problem even worse.

Ethereum hashrate growth – No evidence of deployment of the new chips

Despite the above, we have not yet seen any strong indications of the deployment of the new chips on the Ethereum network. As Figures 7 and 8 below indicate, Ethereum’s hashrate appears, broadly speaking, to be following a normal trend given the price volatility.

Figure 7 – Ethereum hashrate compared to Ethereum price and NVidia GPU sales

Source: Bloomberg, Etherscan.io, Coinmarketcap, Nvidia, BitMEX Research

Figure 8 – Ethereum hashrate compared to Ethereum price – Rolling 90-day percentage growth of 7-day moving average

Source: Bloomberg, Etherscan.io, Coinmarketcap, BitMEX Research

Conclusion

When discussing the possibility that Bitmain’s new Ethereum miner isn’t an ASIC and that the new chip may be somewhat immune to PoW changes, Vitalik Buterin told us:

I have a very similar impression myself

Despite what we have said above, most of the content in this article should be considered guesswork. However, even if we are wrong about this particular chip, we still think it is reasonably likely that at some point in the future, Bitmain or another company, will develop a general-purpose hashing chip, which is more efficient than GPUs for almost all hashing algorithms. At this point the era of anti-ASIC PoW changes could be over, with crypto-coin communities having to make a choice between two potentially unfavourable outcomes:

1. Allowing ASICs, or,
2. Allowing general purpose hashing chips, where technologies and production capabilities could be even more concentrated.

Unless of course proof-of-stake systems prove robust enough.

Disclaimer

Whilst many claims made in this note are cited, we do not guarantee accuracy. We welcome corrections.