Federal Reserve Economic Data

The FRED® Blog

Buying eggs with bitcoins

A look at currency-related price volatility

The FRED graph above tracks the price of eggs. Specifically, a dozen large grade A chicken eggs, in U.S. dollars, for each month since January 2021.

This graph is a histogram, otherwise known as a bar graph, so the length of each bar represents the full price. Merely glancing at the heights of the bars shows us that the price fluctuates over time, with a low of $1.47 and a high of $2.52 as of April. This runny volatility is why food prices, along with energy prices, are often excluded from monetary policy analysis.

Cracking open this first concept is fairly simple, but the FRED Blog team hatched the idea of asking another question: What would the graph look like if we purchased that same carton of eggs with bitcoins instead of U.S. dollars? The graph below shows this. Because a bitcoin is worth so much more than a carton of eggs, we multiplied the price by 100 million to express it in so-called satoshis, which is the smallest subunit of bitcoin.

The price fluctuates quite a bit, between 2829 and 6086, which is much more than it did for the U.S. dollar price. Plus, you’d need to add a bitcoin transaction fee, which has been about $2 lately, but which can spike above $50 on occasion. Hopefully, if you were making this purchase with bitcoin, you’d put many many more eggs in your basket.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “price of eggs”; the series we use should appear at the top of the results. Restrict the sample period to start in January 2021. From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Format” tab to choose “Bar” as the graph type. Second graph: Take the first and add a series to the first line by searching for and selecting “bitcoin price” and applying formula a/b*100000000.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The far-reaching effects of your Valentine’s Day chocolate

This post falls on February 14, Valentine’s Day, and our thoughts turn sweet. Specifically, to chocolate.

Chocolate is ubiquitous and delicious and sometimes frivolous, especially while strolling through the “impulse purchase” lanes of the supermarket. But chocolate can be of major importance to those who produce it, in particular to those who produce its raw material, cocoa.

The largest exporter of cocoa is Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa. Cocoa beans and cocoa derivatives represent close to 40% of the exports for this country of 26 million residents. Cocoa matters a lot to Côte d’Ivoire.

The FRED graph above shows a couple of things:

  1. The price of cocoa is quite volatile, which happens with primary commodities. But price volatility can have big effects on economies that depend on that production.
  2. For cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, we see that higher prices help reduce the country’s public debt. Of course, many other factors affect the public debt, such as other economic activity, debt conditions, and financial markets.

As you enjoy your chocolate, take a moment to consider its economic impact. And the sweetness of FRED data.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “cocoa price.” From the graph, click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Line” tab, and search for and select “Cote d’Ivoire debt.” Use the “Format” tab to move the y-axis for the second line to the right side. Restrict the sample period to when data are available for both lines.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

In mid-2020, the least wealthy gained the most net worth

The FRED Blog has discussed how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the net worth of households. To recap: Your net worth is the difference between the value of your assets and the value of your liabilities. When the value of your assets decreases while the value of your liabilities stays constant, your net worth becomes smaller.

The ALFRED graph above shows that the largest reduction in household net worth during the first quarter of 2020 occurred for the wealthiest 1% of households. The high volatility of financial markets during that period and the differences in the distribution of total assets across different classes of households can help explain that.*

The same ALFRED graph also shows that, during the second quarter of 2020, household net worth increased all around, this time with the largest gains among the bottom 50% of households.

Given the large reduction in economic activity recorded during that time, this rebound is remarkable. Faster growth in home prices and the large accumulation of real estate assets among the least wealthy can help explain this gain in net worth. Also, much of the gains in asset values comes from expectations of higher future incomes, which may not correlate with current income nowadays.

*This post shows an ALFRED graph to display the data available at the time of writing. For the latest data, see this graph.

How this graph was created: From FRED’s main page, browse data by “Release.” Search for “Distributional Financial Accounts” and click on “Levels of Wealth by Wealth Percentile Groups.” From the table, select the “Total Net Worth” series held by each of the four wealth quantiles and click “Add to Graph.” Use “Edit Line 1” to change the graph units by selecting “Units: Percent change” and clicking “Copy to All.” Last, edit the graph “Format” by selecting “Graph type: Bars” and choosing colors to taste.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

View on FRED, series used in this post: WFRBLB50107, WFRBLN09053, WFRBLN40080, WFRBLT01026


Subscribe to the FRED newsletter


Follow us

Back to Top