You could instead look at downside deviation instead of volatility, but in my experience standard volatility and upside/downside deviation look very similar for most securities. This is somewhat paradoxical for me personally, but it is what it is.
It's not even that unusual, or newsworthy. It's pretty common for banks, basically the rule for European banks. I'm still not convinced the numbers are "real" though. As I understand it, there are a few main arguments as to why "buy and strip" price arbitrage doesnt happen, and I'm not sure which is/are true:
- Regulatory barriers. JPM or Apple can't just buy Deutsche Bank because lawmakers won't allow it.
- They're too big to be bought out out by (European?) private equity, or controlling stakes aren't available.
- That's not real book value. Try to wind it down and it'll evaporate.
Maybe there are more. I understand that dividends and buybacks are currently limited by regulators in Europe, and that closes one valve for the price arbitrage, but still...
I will concede though that there is a huge market of derivatives which often seem pretty unusual and risky to an amateur investor such as myself, so maybe Bitcoin isn’t that different from some of those investments. I don’t know a lot about that market, other than that it played a large role in the Great Recession, which is a dubious distinction.
Most people are unaware, the the derivative volume of btc is yuuuge compared to the spot volume.
In short, from a quantitative perspective, it never makes sense to look at a security or asset in isolation. Instead one must consider the total portfolio as a whole.
Source: work as a quant trader
tldr: If the question is "does crypto have a place in everyone's portfolio?" The answer is emphatic an "yes". And indeed, we are quickly moving towards a world in which crypto is held by most institutional investors. Even at this early stage, the institutional flows into btc is staggering. And it will only increase with time. From my vantage point as an insider, btc is here to stay. full stop