This week’s piece presents insights into NYDIG’s weekly research notes and reports, a feature we started over 4 years ago to help educate and inform bitcoin investors. While the research targets the professional investor audience (institutions, corporates, family offices, endowments, high net worth individuals, etc.), we have made it open for all to read. Our hope is that the broader Bitcoin community benefits from the thoughts, observations, and opinions NYDIG brings to the market. While the writing, analysis, and data presentation is largely a singular effort (I do my own stunts), I am fortunate to be surrounded by world-class lawyers, technologists, traders, and regulatory experts here at NYDIG.
The style of the newsletter is very much reflective of how I like to consume information, especially content I consider to be a tool used to make investment decisions – conclusion-led, fact-supported, data-driven, and graphically infused. Where applicable, I find that tables and charts do a better job of driving home points than words. I tend to let the data do the talking.
I’ve thought a lot about the nature of investment research. This will be my 25th year of professionally producing and consuming it (both on the sell and buy side for both equities and crypto). I find that investment research serves one of three purposes: education, actionable information, or entertainment. Hopefully, we do a little of all three here at NYDIG.
High-Level Statistics
- 47 weekly research notes and reports (this is 48)
- +1.4M emails sent
Most Engaged Research Notes
- Predicting Bitcoin ETF Fund Flows
- The Implications of Bitcoin’s Fourth Halving
- Quantum Leap
- BlackRock’s Consistent Premiums
- Bitcoin Ownership Propels MicroStrategy Stock Performance
Topics Covered
The bitcoin ETFs were the story of 2024, until the election. With $37.1B of net inflows in less than a year, the ETFs have proven to be way more popular than we had estimated. Here’s the strange thing though, and reason to be hopeful for more – it’s still mostly retail investors (80% of total AUM). Hedge funds are engaged in basis trading and independent advisors own some, but ownership through the wealth management arms of banks and the wirehouses is largely absent.
I’ve been writing about bitcoin’s price cycles for 7 years now. They keep happening. Their existence is simultaneously one of the most interesting economic conundrums created by the asset as well as a source of intermediate-term alpha if one were to embark on market timing in the name of active management. Certainly, we have argued for a long-term allocation for bitcoin rather than short-term trading, as investment horizon longevity is one of the durable sources of return for any asset.
Finally, I spent the better part of this past summer dispelling seller overhangs that resulted in choppy markets. We’ve known for a long time that Mt Gox coins would transition to creditors' hands, but there seemed to be no facts to support the idea that actual selling materially affected price, rather it seemed to be fear of potential selling that weighed on price.
Here are the topics covered in 2024 by count. Sometimes I devote a week to 3 topics, sometimes 1. It just depends on the subject and the amount of space required.
- ETFs - 24
- Price and Cycles - 11
- Mt Gox & Large Seller Overhang - 7
- Economics - 6
- Mining - 5
- Blockchain Data and Technology - 4
- Derivatives - 4
- Quarterly Wraps - 4
- Halvings - 3
- Regulation and Politics - 3
- Gold - 2
- Equities & Corporates - 2
- Other Assets - 2
- Banking - 1
- Industry Events - 1
- Risk and Return - 1
Looking to 2025 and Beyond
The weekly research notes and occasional long-form reports are just a portion of the “research” function at NYDIG. Most of the research goes directly into the work we do with our clients and partners as well as functions internally within NYDIG. But what I write or analyze publicly is informed by questions we receive from clients, market events, or important news. Bitcoin is a vast arena, one that encompasses market, legal, regulatory, political, and technical matters, just to name a few. While the industry seems to continue to be an endless source of new items to analyze, it is hard to cover all the industry events. To the extent there are important or interesting topics that should be tackled, we’d love for you to let us know what you’d like to read about.
Greg Cipolaro
December, 2024