Liron comments on A proposed inefficiency in the Bitcoin markets - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Liron 27 December 2013 03:48AM

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Comment author: Liron 02 January 2014 11:02:07PM 0 points [-]

Is this what you mean by "random walks on log scales are the 'natural' state of any investment": Most assets have fundamental reasons why they grow exponentially, and the assets which don't must therefore fall exponentially. Anything else going on?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 03 January 2014 12:39:11PM 0 points [-]

Ok, we're at the very limits of my understanding, so don't assume that this is exactly correct, but...

Take the risk-free rate, either how it's standardly defined, or by just the size of the whole economy. The risk free rate is exponential, but that's an artefact of it being a "rate". You can have sub-exponential or super-exponential rates of growth of the whole economy, by varying the risk-free rate from year to year (or from moment to moment).

Then, in a well traded market, for reasons akin to what I mentioned above, every asset will be a random walk on the log scale, with the risk-free rate as the origin (ie if we continually adjust the values by the risk-free rate, we will get such a random walk).

Comment author: Liron 07 January 2014 11:36:01PM 0 points [-]

Ok, that seems consistent with what I said.