A major development for Bitcoin occurred a few days ago, but it did not receive the proper coverage in the mainstream media.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is one of the 12 independent banks that make up the US Federal Reserve System (Fed), recently released a scientific study on the nature of Bitcoin and the conclusion it came to is surprising: it identifies Bitcoin as a kind of savings instrument, similar to gold.

“Monetary surprises”

This new report, number 1052, from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled “The Bitcoin-Macro Disconnect” was released a few days ago and in which the federal agency tries to understand the nature of Bitcoin.

It is a serious academic paper that uses statistical analysis. In fact, because the report led to unexpected conclusions, it is published under the title “monetary surprises”.

“The key result is that, unlike other U.S. asset classes, Bitcoin is orthogonal to monetary and macroeconomic news. This decoupling is puzzling, as unexpected changes in discount rates should, in principle, affect the price of Bitcoin even when interpreting Bitcoin as a purely speculative asset.”

Simply put, the report states that based on rigorous statistical analysis, it has been found that — contrary to popular opinion — the Bitcoin price is mostly independent of both monetary and macroeconomic news. And even though Bitcoin reacts to news, it reacts significantly weaker than other assets.

Contrary to the populist view

This conclusion contradicts the populist view that Bitcoin is only a speculative asset. This unusual feature makes Bitcoin a defensive asset. Financiers typically classify assets as defensive if they behave contrary to some factor.

For example, Bitcoin’s price usually rises when dollar inflation increases, which makes BTC a defensive asset against the dollar.

Like Gold

Large players often hedge their reserve portfolios against devaluation. This means they use defensive assets to balance the value of the portfolio.

For example, if one part of the portfolio loses value, the other part becomes more expensive as a defensive asset for the first part and overall maintains the original value of the portfolio. Such a balanced portfolio composition is called “hedging”.

The “orthogonal properties” of Bitcoin, which the Fed writes about in its academic study, are ideal for hedging traditional financial assets. The Fed also recognizes Bitcoin as a savings vehicle (just like gold) for a variety of reasons.

Bitcoin as a hedge

This conclusion is fully supported by data from the US bank, BNY Mellon. Bank clients are already aware that Bitcoin can be used to hedge risks.

According to Reuters, Michael Demissie, head of advanced solutions at BNY Mellon Bank, said during the fintech and regulatory services conference, ‘Afore Consulting’, that cryptocurrencies are firmly entrenched in the financial sector, with clients eagerly using them in their portfolios.

“We see that clients are absolutely interested in digital assets,” he said.

Demissie added that more than 90 percent of this bank’s clients plan to invest in cryptocurrency assets in the near future.

Get the latest news here: Cointime channel — https://t.me/cointime_en