{"id":391074,"date":"2019-07-25T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/?p=391074"},"modified":"2024-06-11T13:45:54","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T13:45:54","slug":"why-bitcoin-matters-negative-yielding-debt-balloons-to-13-5-trillion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wncen.com\/news\/why-bitcoin-matters-negative-yielding-debt-balloons-to-13-5-trillion\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bitcoin Matters: Negative Yielding Debt Balloons to $13.5 Trillion"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you told economists twenty years ago about Bitcoin<\/a> (BTC) and negative-yielding debt, they would be shocked. In the 1990s or even the 2000s, decentralized digital money and a bond that made your money disappear with time would have seemed abstract \u2014 quite abstract.\u00a0 Now, however, these two financial trends, which came to fruition mostly over the last decade, have become widely recognized.<\/p>\n

Related Reading: Bitcoin (BTC) Loses Multiple Parabolic Trend Lines as Bears Roar<\/a><\/h6>\n

Odd Macroeconomic Trends<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What’s weird, Bitcoin and negative-yielding bonds, which are assets that inherently are vastly different, seemingly have the same origins: the 2008 Great Recession. After this horrible financial dilemma, which cost mom & pop investors billions upon billions, the world’s central banks and governments were forced to take drastic action.<\/p>\n

The United States’ Federal Reserve started injecting money into the economy through a monetary strategy called “quantitative easing”, better known as QE or open market operations (OMOs).<\/p>\n

The European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) followed suit, also embarking on QE operations to bolster their balance sheet, resulting in a monumental surge in the stock market, and risk-on assets like Bitcoin too.<\/p>\n

Related Reading: Cryptocurrency is Part of the Global Currency War, Says Federal Reserve Branch Head<\/a><\/h6>\n

As a result of this and other political and economic factors, there began the era of negative-yielding debt. Now, according to Bloomberg, there exists over $13.4 trillion worth of debt that is negative-yielding \u2014 an all-time high for a type of asset that, per normal economic theories, makes no damn sense. What’s weird is that much of this debt is issued by governments or top-graded firms.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/epomboy\/status\/48452352<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

That’s not the only odd trend in global finance. As Ikigai’s Travis Kling notes, a Federal Funds rate that is above the IOER \u2014 the rate which consumer banks holding money with the Fed get paid; and the expectations of more QE are signs that we live in “weird times” from a global macro standpoint.<\/p>\n

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We talked about it on our quarterly call, but these are weird times we live in for global macro, and the stage is set for them to get meaningfully weirder.<\/p>\n

$13tn negative yielding debt. A Fed Funds consistently above the IOER. And the whole world is about to juice more QE. pic.twitter.com\/L2MDFuuSPo<\/a><\/p>\n

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) July 24, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n