Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: BitCoin vs Visa as an investment
by
exoton
on 20/12/2014, 11:06:56 UTC
You also get the benefit of receiving dividend income from owning visa stock, while you would likely need to spend some amount of money to keep your bitcoin investment secure

From a pure finance point of view, you will have to look at both dividend receipt and capital appreciation to get the total return.
Return on capital is how you should judge which investment has fared better.

Usually, if 2 companies have the same RoE, the Company with lower dividend payouts would be more tax efficient. In most jurisdictions, long term capital gains attracts lower tax than dividends.
That is true. However dividends are money now while capital appreciation is potential money in the future. There are risks that both investments could eventually go to zero, but with dividends you would not lose everything

You can mimic dividend payments even when an asset has only capital appreciation. Regularly sell small amounts of your assets (percentage equal to dividend yield that you want). The rest of the asset appreciates. So that way, you have 'money now' as well as potential gain (albeit lower than what you would get if you held the entire asset) in the future.

The downside is people lack the discipline to systematically sell. It is easier for them when the company gives regular dividends.
This would only work when the price increase is steady and constant. There is no investment that has a stable enough of a capital return investment for this to work. With a dividend payment you will receive funds regardless of where the price of the investment has gone recently, however with your strategy, you can only sell a small portion of your holdings when the price has appreciated recently.