******* What is Monetary Premium ? *********
This is the difference between the utility cost of a monetary token and its value when used as money. Take, for example, a kids funpark. You usually don't pay the guy at the ride - rather you go to a kiosk and buy a "chip" that gets you on the rides. That centralises the funpark monetary function so the guys working at the rides don't have to deal with change and the likes.
Lets consider for a moment, the cost of one of those plastic tokens in the hardware shop - maybe about 5 cents ? Then consider the cost at the funpark - about 2 dollars ? That's some difference. We pay 5 cents in one shop and 2 dollars in the other for the same worthless plastic token with no intrinsic value. What's the difference ? The difference is that in one case, the cost carries a "monetary premium" because you are paying for monetary adoption of the token by the funpark economy. (b.t.w. this is also the answer to the question of bitcoin having no "intrinsic value" - a meaningless subjective term at the best of times).
There are only 2 types of value: utility value and monetary value. The monetary premium could be considered to be the premium paid for the monetary value over the utility value (no small premium !!!!).
Now we've got some basic ingredients to start to work out a notional "bottom" for bitcoin. We can consider 3 elements:
[1] - The VC valuation to date
[2] - the monetary premium
[3] - a speculative premium
The speculative premium is simply the expected return on investment over a given time period. To calculate the speculative premium, we first pick a time period and then estimate the VC valuation and monetary premium (based on adoption curve) over that period.
Here's a rough estimate of mine - feel free to plug in your own figures and decide for yourself whether you think the market is oversold or not !!!
(Source for VC capitalisation:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-venture-capital/ )
So, based on all that, I see 3 possible scenarios (moving from pessimistic to optimistic):
[1] - bitcoin goes to the lowest conceivable value; the VC valuation to date = $35
I see about a 5% chance of this happening given the 3rd graphic I posted at the start of this thread. There's just been too much consolidation and advancement of fundamentals. For this to happen, 2 elements of the price would have to disappear: the monetary premuim (bitcoin retail adoption drops to zero) and the speculative premium would have to disappear (no ROI expected for the next 2 years). Bitcoin would basically amount to the scrap value of the network. Unlikely but we need to include it as a theoretical possibility, so lets give this one a 5% chance.
[2] - bitcoin looses all its speculative value and is left with a low monetary premium - $175
I see about a 35% chance of this happening. Not because I don't think there's a future but because the speculative premium can potentially be cancelled out temporarily by bearish trading.
[3] - bitcoin chunders along horizontally for the next year - $220
Given the market history, we cannot exclude this possibility, so lets give it a 50% chance of happening for 12 months and a 25% chance of happening for the next 24 months (I think that's pessimistic but lets be pessimistic)
[4] - bitcoin gets a factor of 10 increase in VC capitalisation and a factor of 10 increase in monetary premium (driven by retail adoption) over the next 14 months = $5250
This looks like an exciting prospect so alarm bells must go off in our heads ("something must be wrong" !!). All the same, if we are to accept pessimistic numbers we must also accept optimistic ones if thats what the calculator says.
I'm not going to quantify the chance of this happening because it's the optimistic option and could be clouded by wishful thinking. What I suggest people do is look at the VC capitalisation profile for the world wide web for the years 1994 to 2000 and see what's realistic and what isn't, then give yourselves a % chance of your "preferred" ROI !
