Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9f2xs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-06T12:32:07.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - DeFi versus TradFi Valuation Using Multiples and Discounted Cash Flows

from Part I - Institutionalisation of Digital Assets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2025

Reena Aggarwal
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Paolo Tasca
Affiliation:
University College London
Get access

Summary

As of August 2022, blockchain-based assets boast a combined market capitalisation exceeding one trillion USD, among which the most prominent are the decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) tokens associated with decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols. In this work, we seek to value DeFi tokens using the canonical multiples and discount cash flow (DCF) approaches. We examine a subset of DeFi services including decentralised exchanges (DEXs), protocol for loanable funds (PLFs), and yield aggregators. We apply the same analysis to some publicly traded firms and compare them with DeFi tokens of the analogous category. Interestingly, despite the crypto bear market lasting for more than one year as of August 2022, both approaches evidence overvaluation in DeFi.

Type
Chapter
Information
Digital Assets
Pricing, Allocation and Regulation
, pp. 44 - 68
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloomberg (2022). Your evening briefing: How BlackRock lost $1.7 trillion in six months. www.bloomberg.com.Google Scholar
Cousaert, S., Xu, J., and Matsui, T. (2022). Sok: Yield aggregators in defi. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), 114. IEEE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damodaran, A. (2007). Valuation approaches and metrics: A survey of the theory and evidence. Now Publishers Inc.Google Scholar
Damodaran, A. (2012). Investment valuation: Tools and techniques for determining the value of any asset, volume 666. John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Damodaran, A. (2022a). Historical returns on stocks, bonds and bills: 19282021. pages.stern.nyu.edu.Google Scholar
Damodaran, A. (2022b). Tax rate by sector. pages.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar.Google Scholar
Damodaran, A. (2022c). Total betas by sector. pages.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar.Google Scholar
Financial Times (2022). Nasdaq closes down 5% in sharpest fall since 2020. www.ft.com.Google Scholar
Gordon, M. J. (1959). Dividends, earnings, and stock prices. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 41(2): 99105.Google Scholar
Gudgeon, L., Werner, S., Perez, D., and Knottenbelt, W. J. (2020). Defi protocols for loanable funds: Interest rates, liquidity and market efficiency. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies, 92112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hu, J., Luo, Q., and Zhang, J. (2020). The fluctuations of Bitcoin price during the hacks. International Journal of Applied Research in Management and Economics, 3(1):1020.Google Scholar
Kelly, B. and Pruitt, S. (2013). Market expectations in the cross-section of present values. The Journal of Finance, 68(5):17211756.Google Scholar
Liu, J., Nissim, D., and Thomas, J. (2002). Equity valuation using multiples. Journal of Accounting Research, 40(1):135172.Google Scholar
Lord, F. (2022). MakerDAO Valuation. messari.io.Google Scholar
Mihal, D. (2022). DAO are the new companies. What’s on their balance sheets? openorgs.info.Google Scholar
Modigliani, F. and Miller, M. H. (1958). The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment. The American Economic Review, 48(3):261297.Google Scholar
Qin, K., Zhou, L., Afonin, Y., Lazzaretti, L., and Gervais, A. (2021). Cefi vs. DeFi – comparing centralized to decentralized finance. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.08157.Google Scholar
Schreiner, A. (2009). Equity valuation using multiples: An empirical investigation. Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Shanaev, S., Sharma, S., Ghimire, B., and Shuraeva, A. (2020). Taming the blockchain beast? Regulatory implications for the cryptocurrency market. Research in International Business and Finance, 51:101080.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statista (2022). Annual growth of the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States from 1990 to 2021. www.statista.com.Google Scholar
Steiger, F. (2010). The validity of company valuation using discounted cash flow methods. arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4881.Google Scholar
Token Terminal (2022). Our metrics. tokenterminal.com. Uniswap (2022). Introducing UNI. uniswap.org.Google Scholar
Welch, I. and Goyal, A. (2008). A comprehensive look at the empirical performance of equity premium prediction. The Review of Financial Studies, 21(4):14551508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werner, S. M., Perez, D., Gudgeon, L., Klages-Mundt, A., Harz, D., and Knottenbelt, W. J. (2022). SoK: Decentralized Finance (DeFi). The 4th ACM Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies, 3046. https://doi.org/10.1145/3558535.3559780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WRDS (2022a). Assets – Total. wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu.Google Scholar
WRDS (2022b). Debt in current liabilities – total. wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu.Google Scholar
WRDS (2022c). Pretax – Income. wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu. WRDS (2022d). Revenue – Total. wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu.Google Scholar
WRDS (2022e). Total current operating revenue. wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu.Google Scholar
Xu, J., Paruch, K., Cousaert, S., and Feng, Y. (2023). SoK: Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) with Automated Market Maker (AMM) Protocols. ACM Computing Surveys, 55(11), 150. https://doi.org/10.1145/3570639.Google Scholar
Xu, T. A. and Xu, J. (2023). A Short Survey on Business Models of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Protocols. International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC), 197206. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32415-4_13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×