The Future of Money is Here: Zero Trust Digital Currency Contracts

BoomBustBTC contract

Note: New subscriber content available below.

I have created derivatives for Bitcoin that work exclusively on the Bitcoin network. They are capable of literally replacing the role of the large money center and investment banks. YES! This is a big thing. I will hopefully have a limited use beta example of the first product for the viewers of the show to experiment with. These products have been designed as zero trust contracts (meaning it was designed to eliminate the human judgment factor, thereby nearly completely automating the entire transaction). Currently, trust issues that the conventional OTC banking system products incur severely hamper free flowing capital markets. Greed begets inefficiencies. Digital zero trust contracts (as opposed to physical legal contracts) “theoretically” eliminate litigation and court involvement and expensive dispute resolution through means of the legal system. My BoomBust contracts allows anonymous parties to swap exposure in and out of Bitcoin from many widely traded currencies. (USD, EUR, YEN, CNY, etc.).

The state of the capitalist union today is ripe for Bitcoin activity to explode if knowledge of the platform spreads. Just to list of few catalysts:

The lack of trust in the world’s reserve currency, the USD.
The financial controls in the world’s most populous nations, India and China.
The Pan-European sovereign debt crisis
The confiscation of bank deposits in Cyprus (EU Bank Depositors: Your Mattress Is Starting To Look Awfully Attractive – Bank Risk, Reward & Compensation) and Ireland (As Forewarned, Irish Savers Have Just Been “Cyprus’d”, And There’s MUCH MORE “Cyprusing” To Come) and eventually anywhere banks are overleveraged and/or undercapitalized.
The billions of the great “unbanked” of the world, in both 3^rd world nations and even in the most developed nations on earth, ex. right here in the US.
The paltry returns on loans and bank deposits as well as the unsubstantiated bubble returns on risk assets – all stemming from the Fed’s unprecedented 6 year global ZIRP real time experiment. I commented on this back in 2008 (A real life, real time example of the Great Global Macro Experiment)and it’s still running strong.

Possible uses for the BoomBust contracts:

Simple investment/speculation

Those who want to gain exposure to a foreign or digital currency can easily enter into a swap to gain said exposure without actually having to purchase said currency (other than BTC, of course).

Hedging

The swap can be used as a simple hedge for any party that has large exposure to BTC, USD, EUR, etc., such as a retailer with low margins and high volume, ex. Chinese widget manufacturer or smartphone OEM, that accepts bitcoin but wants to hedge out the volatility and market risk. The BoomBust contracts can be layered, levered and/or compounded to make more complex hedges as well.

Capital flight/mobility & Banking System Bail-in protection

Parties who are domiciled in free flowing capital hostile states that have tight capital controls, ex. China, India, and now France with its 75% effective wealth confiscation scheme, etc. that have banned or limited BTC trading by banks and/or individuals can take advantage of the BoomBust contracts to gain multi-currency exposure without explicitly violating the law. Take note that the systems with the tightest capital controls have been the one’s exhibiting the most aggressive stance to bitcoin. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand what Bitcoin is and what it can do. I stand to educate the masses. See below…

Cyprus banks closed on a Friday and announced confiscation of assets over the weekend. These BoomBust contracts could have been used to move monetary value outside of the Cyprus banking system assuming the participants had a store of Bitcoin (it is rumored that this is how some of the Russian money was removed over the weekend). Let’s assume a small businessman would like to purchase $1M euro worth of bitcoin, yet is concerned that the BTC volatility may cause more of a loss than the Cypriot capital controls. He buys the BTC then hedges his large BTC position into EUR. He proceeds to do that with a quarter of his monthly cashflows, building up a sizeable, fully hedged position in cyberspace (thus, effectively offshore) and outside of the fragile Cyprus banking system. The Cyprus banks pull the trigger to confiscate funds and the Russian bank depositor has significant funds mobile and ready to deliver anywhere in the internet connected world within minutes, even on a Sunday afternoon.

Another example of dealing with a company with tight capital controls would be India. India has extremely tight capital controls that have (IMHO) hampered its economic progress relative to China, despite having similar populations and the advantage of a large indigenous English speaking population stemming from British occupation (easier to do business with the larger capitalist nations when more of your constituents speaks the native tongue).

India has effectively outlawed trading in bitcoin, but Indians can still participate in the evolution of money by taking advantage of the liberalised remittances scheme of the Central Bank of India, a person can remit up to 75,000 USD offshore annually. These monies can end up in a Bitcoin friendly jurisdiction (amazingly enough, like the US), and be used to purchase BTC hedged, via BoomBust contracts, back into rupees or the currency of choice.

indian BTC program

This can also work the other way around, which would actually be quite advantageous to the Indian government and potentially make them rethink the real world practicality of capital controls. Even in a country that has capital controls and fears Bitcoin may threaten its banks, a decentralized near friction free currency exchange would be beneficial solely do to international remittances from expats in foreign workers. A real world example are Indians that I know who lose significant money because of PayPal and Western Union fees (not to mention bank wire fees). Indians can send BoomBust digital contract rupee locked BTC home on a deferred basis. The registered exchange or ATM in India however could only be one-way so that it only accepts BTC from the Indian general public in exchange for rupees and not the other way around.

Spread Arbitrage

On Dec 13^th, the EUR/USD exchange rate was roughly .78x, thus if one were to have sold 1 BTC into EUR than purchased USD, a $10.66 spread could have been realized over buying the USD with EUR directly.

arbitrage opp

Notice the differences in prices throughout the SAME MARKETS, contingent upon exchange.

BTC markets

I am happy to discuss this with institutional and professional subscribers whenever possible.

All paying subscribers (click here to subscribe) can download this introduction to our institutional level report on investing in cryptocurrencies: File Icon Digital Currencies’ Risks, Rewards & Returns – An Into Into Bitcoin Investing For Longer Term Horizon. There will be much more to follow in the upcoming days. Below is the brief summary as how we have computed the following ratios:

Excess Risk Adjusted Return

Excess Risk Adjusted Return is defined as returns over and above the required return on asset based on its risk characteristics. BITCOIN being a very volatile asset, the required return of the currency has been computed using the CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) approach. CAPM equation requires a variable known as Return on Market Portfolio (a portfolio comprising of all risky assets, conventional as well as alternative assets like antiques, currencies, private equity investments, etc.). For equity investments, general Market Index shall suffice but in our case the investment is altogether different (Digital Currency) and the conventional market index will be a bad proxy. Best Proxy in our case shall be a diversified Currency Portfolio – comprising all global as well as digital currencies. As such there exists no known proxy/Index consisting all Currencies, We have approximated it by using MSCI – EM Currency Index. The Index comprises a basket of 25 emerging market currencies.

Excess Risk Adjusted Return = (Return on Asset) – (Required Return on asset based on its risk characteristics)

Return on Asset (Ra) = Return on B ITCOIN for different periods like 3M, 6M 12M, etc.

Required Return on Asset = RFR + ? * (Rm – Ra)

RFR = Current US I year Treasury Yield

Beta = Covariance of (Returns on Asset & Returns on comparable Index) divided by Variance of (Index Returns)

Rm = Long term return on comparable Index, (in our case which is the Currency Index return comprising 25 Emerging Market currencies)

What’s so eery is that now even Ben Bernanke and I actually agree upon something…

“Digital currencies may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system._”

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke