Appréciation du marché de la crypto-monnaie comme opportunité d'investissement pour la diversification d'un portefeuille

Abstract

Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto has launched the Bitcoin in 2008. Thereafter, it is nearly 2200 other cryptocurrencies that have been created. Furthermore, over the last few years, financial markets are experiencing bad performances and correlation coefficients between traditional assets are constantly increasing. This thesis examines, considering those changes, the cryptocurrency market in terms of investment opportunity and portfolio diversification. Moreover, this report will answer to two main questions Does the cryptocurrency market represent a new investment opportunity? and If so, what is its potential in terms of portfolio diversification ? To be able to answer the above questions, an empirical study has been conducted based on two proposals: first, portfolio allocation and second, portfolio optimization. The Modern Portfolio Theory developed by H. Markowitz (1952) and performance indicators such as the Sharpe and Sortino ratios have been used to carry out this research. Primarily, three cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, ether and ripple) were added one by one to portfolios whose asset mix had been previously defined according to three types of investment strategies: defensive, moderate and aggressive. It emerged that the best possible choice to maximize the Sharpe ratio and to minimize the standard deviation is by adding a 10% proportion of bitcoin in a defensive strategy portfolio mainly due to the weak correlation the cryptocurrency shares with bonds. Anyone who wants to maximize the Sortino ratio would rather choose the ripple due to its low downside deviation. Secondly, the impact of adding cryptocurrencies to portfolios previously diversified with other traditional assets such as stocks and bonds has been evaluated. According to the results, the inclusion of bitcoin (1.75%), ether (0.45%) and ripple (0,02%) increases the Sharpe ratio. Indeed, the efficient frontier moves upward when the investment in the cryptocurrency market is not constrained, which allows the investor to achieve a higher return for the same level of risk. Moreover, the three cryptocurrencies seem to be a very good option when it comes to the Sortino ratio improvement. Indeed, the results show that a proportion of 10% in cryptocurrencies maximizes the ratio. One can conclude that the cryptocurrency market represents an investment opportunity for portfolio diversification and deserves to be taken seriously into account by investors.