Tulane University's Freeman School of Business Wins Top Prize of $10,000 with 67:33 Investment Ratio of Bitcoin Versus Ethereum in Kraken Investment Case-study Competition Hosted by The Economist's Which MBA? Site

NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- If you had $1m to invest across two blockchain technologies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, by buying bitcoins and ethers – the digital assets or "cryptocurrencies" that power these decentralised computer networks – and you could not touch your investment for the next 5 years, how much of that $1m do you invest in each? This was the challenge posed to 13 teams at business schools around the world in the Kraken Investment Case Study Competition, hosted by The Economist's Which MBA? site.

Kraken's experts selected the top three proposals, and visitors to the case study competition website voted for the People's Choice winner:

• First place was awarded to the team from Tulane University's Freeman School of Business who created a minimum-variance portfolio of 67% Bitcoin and 33% Ether based on historical-return data of the two cryptocurrencies. They validated their strategy using a multiple regression model, back-testing and a Monte Carlo simulation.
• Second place went to the team from Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Business who proposed a 69:31 investment ratio for Bitcoin and Ethereum respectively. According to the team, Bitcoin offered a higher expected value, but the volatility and speculative nature of cryptocurrencies indicated a need for diversification across platforms.
• Third place was awarded to Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business who based their Bitcoin-heavy portfolio on the cryptocurrency's established presence in the market, stable functionality and finite supply.
• The People's Choice Award went to the team from Ryerson University's Ted Rogers School of Business after they received the most votes from the general public

"We at Kraken would like to thank all 13 teams that participated in the challenge to optimise a $1 million, five-year Bitcoin-Ether portfolio," said Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, a global digital-asset exchange. "We enjoyed reviewing the variety of approaches taken across proposals. We'd like to stress that we did not assess proposals based on whether they represented Bitcoin-dominant or Ether-dominant portfolios. We are an agnostic exchange, which means that we do not prefer a certain digital asset over another. We evaluated proposals, including both the paper and the video from each team, based on other key qualities (e.g., apparent depth of understanding of the subject matter, accuracy in their representations, ability to clearly convey their findings and conclusions in an engaging way)."

Powell continued, "The videos and papers have already generated organic conversation among viewers that will help encourage beginners to learn more about the value of digital assets. We're very happy to have had the opportunity to witness some of the great brainpower that's out there coming through these MBA programs. We hope that the participants enjoyed evaluating two new assets that will undoubtedly be part of a very large class of digital assets in the future."

The teams' videos can be viewed along with their written analyses onThe Economist's Which MBA? site.

The teams who competed hailed from:

• FIA Business School
• Tulane University
• Ryerson University, Ted Rogers School of Management
• Porto Business School
• Ivey Business School at Western University
• Rutgers Business School
• Middlebury Institute of International Studies
• BYU Marriott School of Management
• Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
• Creighton University, Heider College of Business
• University of North Texas

To enquire about opportunities to sponsor or participate in an upcoming case-study competition hosted by The Economist's Which MBA division, visit: success.economist.com.

The case-study competition challenge and resulting selection of winners are based solely on the opinion of the challenge sponsor. The Economist does not endorse the opinions contained in the content of the challenge or the participants' written and video submissions.

About Which MBA? (economist.com/whichmba)

Which MBA? is a division of The Economist Newspaper Group which offers a suite of online products serving both prospective MBA students and business schools. Our consumer products for prospective students include a GMAT preparation course, annual MBA rankings, and content on Economist.com. Which MBA? offers multi-media advertising solutions for business schools ranging from online MBA fairs, to traditional online and print mediums, to custom white-label lead generation tools.

About The Economist (economist.com)

With a growing global circulation (more than 1.5 million including both print and digital) and a reputation for insightful analysis and perspective on every aspect of world events, The Economist is one of the most widely recognized and well-read current affairs publications.

About Kraken (kraken.com)

Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, Kraken is the world's largest global Bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity. Along with bitcoin and euros, hundreds of thousands of traders, institutions and authorities trust Kraken to facilitate trading in US and Canadian dollars, British pounds, Japanese yen, and a variety of digital assets like ether. Kraken was the first digital asset exchange to have trading price and volume displayed on the Bloomberg Terminal, one of the first exchanges to offer leveraged bitcoin margin trading, the first to pass a cryptographically verifiable proof-of-reserves audit, is a partner in the world's first cryptocurrency bank, and is consistently rated the best and most secure digital asset exchange by independent news media. Follow them @krakenfx.

SOURCE The Economist's Which MBA? division