1.
외국 기사를 읽어보면 보통 비트코인투자자를 비트코인매니아라고 합니다만 A Stunning Look Inside The World Of South Korea’s “Bitcoin Zombies”처럼 한국암호통화투자자들을 비트코인좀비라고 부르기도 합니다. 비정상적으로 과열인 상태를 빗댄 표현입니다. 왜 과열일까요? 표본으로써의 가치는 없지만 참고할 수 있는 조사를 읽어보면 짐작할 수 있습니다. 아파트청약처럼 몫돈이 필요하지 않고 주식투자처럼 귀찮은 일도 없는, 쉽지만 큰 이익을 낼 수 있기때문입니다.
투자 액수는 1인 평균 566만원으로 집계됐다. 100만원 미만이 44.1%로 가장 많았고, 100만~200만원(18.3%), 1000만원 이상(12.9%), 200만~400만원(9.8%), 400만~600만원(7.8%) 순이었다.가상화폐에 투자를 한다는 사람 중 이익을 봤다고 답한 사람은 80.3%를 차지했다. 원금유지가 13.2%, 손실을 봤다고 답한 사람은 6.4%였다.가상화폐에 투자하는 이유로는 ‘고수익을 얻을 수 있는 가장 빠른 방법이어서’라는 답이 54.2%(복수응답 가능)를 차지했다. 그 뒤로 ‘적은 자본으로 투자가 가능해서’(47.8%), ‘장기적으로 가치가 상승 할 것 같아서’(30.8%), ‘투자 방법이 쉬워서’(25.4%), ‘현실 탈출의 유일한 수단이라고 생각해서’(14.6%) 등이 꼽혔다.
직장인 10명 중 3명 “가상화폐 투자”…”이익봤다” 80.3%중에서
한국만 그럴까요? 아닙니다. 일본도 비슷합니다. 시작은 암호통화매매업의 제도화이지만 중국의 암호통화시장 폐쇄가 직접적인 계기였습니다. 이후 일본의 암호통화시장은 크게 성장을 합니다. 그러면 이런 성장을 이끈 집단은 누구일까요? 도이치뱅크가 펴낸 보고서 The identity of who is propping up the Bitcoin market가 자세히 다루고 있습니다.
2. The true face of investors engaged in leveraged FX trading
“Mrs. Watanabe” is a buzzword often used by US/European media and market participants to symbolize the typical Japanese retail investor who trades in FX. Following Abe and Kuroda, Watanabe may be the most famous Japanese name among market participants (although the purported creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is also famous). Japan accounts for a high 54% of global foreign exchange margin trading (leveraged FX trading) (source: Forex Magnate, 1Q2017), so Japanese retail investors are major players in FX markets. Data from GMO Click Securities which is the top company in its industry indicates that men hold 79% of FX trading accounts, and 63% of these men are aged 30-49 (as of end-September 2017; Figures 3-4). The typical Japanese leveraged FX trader is thus a man in his 30s or 40s and really ought to be called “Mr. Watanabe”.
정확한 통계는 없지만 한국이 20대를 중심으로 투자집단을 형성하고 있다면 일본은 3~40대 남성이 주류입니다. 그리고 FX에 대한 투자경험을 가지고 있다는 점이 차이입니다. 한국은 금융시장밖에서 거래가 이루어지고 일본은 금융시장에서 이루어지기때문에 나타난 차이가 아닐까 합니다.
2.
그러면 왜 주식이 아니고 비트코인일까요? 도이치뱅크의 보고서는 기계나 인공지능에 의한 트레이딩으로 주식이 매력적인 투자자산이 아닌 현상을 지적합니다.
These observations prompt Deutsche to ask “a basic question”, namely “whether the power of price decisions for Japanese stocks (particularly financial stocks) have shifted from people to algorithms or AI.” Some additional thoughts:
Shift to passive fund management has accelerated, partially due to the impact of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rules, and the trading share of active funds, which follow decisions led by human, is declining. With reduced influence, active funds appear to be focusing on sectors with drastic fundamentals changes (such as technology sector). In fact, more than 70% of inquiries from overseas equity investors to our insurance, securities, and other financial sectors team in December were about SBI, which indirectly owns cryptcurrencies. Reduction of active management costs due to MiFID2 might accelerate this activity.
And since Deutsche is clearly correct that increasingly more, if not the vast majority, of trading decisions and execution has shifted from humans to machines, the outcome is concerning, because as the German bank notes, “if the price formation based on model is prolonged, the gap between price and fundamentals will be wider. Thus, stock price correction may occur periodically.”Yet while Japanese equities may no longer be interesting to local humans, the same can not be said for bitcoin, where as the same DB strategist “discovered” two weeks ago, it was mostly “Mr. Watanabe” trading the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
One Bank Is Unsure If Any Humans Still Trade Stocks In Japan, Or Have All Moved To Bitcoin중에서
Deutsche Bank poses a similar question when it asks “Will Bitcoin ignite the “speculative spirit” of Japanese people?”
We will be closely monitoring the risk-taking stance of Japanese retail investors in 2018 in light of the management of ¥900trn of the ¥1,800trn as deposits in overall personal financial assets. Japanese retail investors eagerly purchased certain assets at prices with little support from fundamentals during the bubble period in the 1980s and the IT bubble period around 2000. Symbolic choices were NTT shares that listed in February 1987 for the former and Hikari Tsushin shares that listed in 1999 for the latter (Figure 1).
이상의 비트코인투기는 비트코인대박(Bitcoin Wealth(富))로 이어지고 내수부분의 GDP성장을 견인하는 효과(Bitcoin Effect)를 만들어냈다고 합니다. Bitcoin Effect On Japanese Economy “Cannot Be Ignored”, Says Nomura가 소개한 내용입니다. Paper Wealth에 의한 Wealth Effect를 설명합니다.
Nomura estimates that Japanese citizens currently hold ¥5.1 trillion in bitcoin. Nomura explains the math
Bitcoin circulating supply was around 16.22mn coins in Apr-Jun 2017, and multiplying that by the 22.8% share of yen trading at the time gives roughly 3.7mn Bitcoin held on a yen basis. Although the share of yen trades rose after that, we estimate that this was due in part to overseas investors moving in as a result of the cryptocurrency clampdown by the Chinese government, and in our estimates below we assume 3.7mn Bitcoin held by Japanese people. According to a 27 December 2017 Nikkei article, the number of Japanese people holding Bitcoin has reached 1mn, and assuming average holdings of 3-4 Bitcoin per person, this is broadly consistent with our estimate.
Bitcoin “Wealth Effect” To Boost Japan’s GDP Up To 0.3%은 좀더 자세히 보고서를 소개합니다.
We consider the effect unrealized gains from this large-scale Bitcoin trading might have on the Japanese economy. Although Japanese investors’ unrealized gains are unlikely to feed straight through to their patterns of consumption, it is common knowledge that personal consumption is bolstered as a result of increases in the value of asset holdings (ie, the wealth effect). According to earlier studies on the wealth effect in the context of the Japanese economy, an increase of ¥10bn in the value of assets bolsters personal consumption to the tune of around ¥0.2-0.4bn (a range that excludes the lower and upper limits obtained in the earlier studies shown in Figure 6).
Although it is difficult to generalize about the patterns of spending of a person whose assets have soared in value as a result of the sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin, if we calculate the wealth effect assuming that an increase of ¥10bn in the value of assets bolsters personal consumption by ¥0.3bn, as in the earlier studies, then the aforementioned rise of around ¥3.2trn in the value of assets is likely to generate an increase of around ¥96.0bn in personal consumption by our estimate.
Given that Japan’s real GDP is around ¥522trn (2016 calendar year-basis), the y-y boost to GDP from this spending per se works out at just 0.07ppt. That said, given that the sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin occurred mainly in 2017 Q4, if that same wealth effect is replicated in 2018 Q1, we estimate it would boost annualized q-q real GDP growth by around 0.3ppt (= ¥96.0bn / quarterly GDP of ¥130trn x 4), which on a quarterly basis
represents an impact on a scale that cannot be ignored (Figure 5).
3.
만약 암호통화매매업이 금융산업화하였다면 국내 금융회사와 경제연구소들이 어떤 보고서를 내놓았을까요? 단순히 소개하는 보고서가 아닐 듯 합니다. 그런데 금융위원회가 암호통화를 규제하겠다고 한 이후 증권회사들의 애널리스트중 ‘암호통화’를 주제로 쓰시는 분들이 없네요. 오랜만에 보고서를 검색해보니 관련한 주제의 보고서가 없네요.
