Bitcoin Blasts Past $33,000 As Optimism For BTC Spot ETF Surges (decrypt.co) 79
Bitcoin has surged past $33,000 per coin on Monday, rising nearly 11% in 24 hours. According to CoinGecko, the coin is up more than 17% in the past seven days. Decrypt reports: Bulls have flooded the space as talk about a spot Bitcoin ETF has investors hopeful that the long-awaited crypto product will soon get approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Monday CoinShares report showed that institutional investors are pouring money into the space; JPMorgan analysts said last week that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved by Christmas.
High-profile investment firms that have applied to the SEC for a spot ETF are fine tuning their applications in the hope that the regulator will give them the green light. Investors have been hungry for a spot Bitcoin ETF for the best part of a decade but Wall Street's biggest regulator experts say has denied applications for such a product, mostly citing the potential for market manipulation as one of the main reasons.
But analysts are now more optimistic than ever before: BlackRock, world's biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own. Not long after, manager Grayscale scored a victory against the SEC when a federal judge sided with the firm over its application to convert its flagship Bitcoin fund into an ETF.
High-profile investment firms that have applied to the SEC for a spot ETF are fine tuning their applications in the hope that the regulator will give them the green light. Investors have been hungry for a spot Bitcoin ETF for the best part of a decade but Wall Street's biggest regulator experts say has denied applications for such a product, mostly citing the potential for market manipulation as one of the main reasons.
But analysts are now more optimistic than ever before: BlackRock, world's biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own. Not long after, manager Grayscale scored a victory against the SEC when a federal judge sided with the firm over its application to convert its flagship Bitcoin fund into an ETF.
Good news everyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
BlackRock, world's biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own.
Anybody taking bets on how long until taxpayers are bailing Blackrock out?
It'll probably take about 10 years (Score:3, Insightful)
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The frustrating thing is we know exactly how to stop this kind of thing and we have known since the 30s but we just don't do it because we get so easily distracted by moral panics.
They didn't have cryptocurrency in the previous 30s, and you're about 6 years, 2 months too early for the next one.
Cryptocurrency isn't what's going on here (Score:2)
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But these are special daffodils, so the formula that didn't work on fiat daffodils is going to work this time.
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They did already. They are why rent prices are so high everywhere, because they can sit on property and keep it off the market, driving prices up on everything else. To boot, they don't care if they have zero occupancy. The goal isn't rent, but speculation and by pulling properties off the market, it has caused rent to go up exponentially.
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:4, Insightful)
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that's not how it works. they will initially fund the etf by purchasing the underlying asset, referred to as seeding. smaller etfs might seed $2.5m, but Blackrock has seeded prior etfs anywhere from 10-100m
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Joce640k's comment should be a reply to yours. The house never loses. Blackrock isn't putting their own money into the Bitcoin ETF. They're just making it possible for you to put your own in, and they take a management fee. If it goes up they get lots of management fees. If it collapses they just stop collecting fees, they're not out anything.
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Ah, but what if the greed takes hold? That never happens to financial organizations or managers, right? They're immune to greed. The greed that makes them think that they can invest their own money in the experimental asset. Of course, they have to start believing their own lie too, but financial companies have never believed their own lies before, no one ever believes their own lies.
So that thing about sliced and diced mortgage instruments was just fake news and none of those smart financial houses wer
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they will put their money during seeding of the etf. read how etfs are launched and how the funding occurs.
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Not a household name, so not likely.
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BlackRock, world's biggest fund manager
I would imagine they're big enough to provide the required levels of campaign contributions.
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BlackRock, world's biggest fund manager, applied for a Bitcoin ETF of its own.
Anybody taking bets on how long until taxpayers are bailing Blackrock out?
FTA: Blackrock is creating an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). That means it's other peoples' money, and Blackrock will be profiting from commissions and fees. Imho, it doesn't make any financial sense to have an ETF in a volatile investment, because mathematically over time if you invest in something that swings up and down, your investment will asymptotically approach zero. The only way to make a positive return from a volatile investment is to sell at the peaks and buy at the lows. But the question becomes, h
Place your bets (Score:2)
Remember: The house never loses.
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A strange game indeed. The only winning move is not to play.
Bitcoin has surged 11% in 24 hours - Why? (Score:3)
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Re:Bitcoin has surged 11% in 24 hours - Why? (Score:4, Informative)
One war in particular for the recent shift. Bypassing of US sanctions is really the only valid use of BTC.
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Why?
Because if it keeps going up, you could make a profit by selling it to the next fool. Doesn't that make you want to go on an exchange and get some magic internet money right now?
It's worth mentioning that even such FOMO buying itself creates additional demand which drives up the price. Of course, it also might not continue going up and all these buyers could end up as bag holders. Such is the game of crypto.
Re:Bitcoin has surged 11% in 24 hours - Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah
> Probably wash trading [npr.org] still.
So
Re: Bitcoin has surged 11% in 24 hours - Why? (Score:2)
Because a Bitcoin ETF is expected very shortly based on news published today and last week, and this ETF will increase the addressable market, and generally asset values increase when their addressable markets grow.
SHORT SHORT SHORT (Score:2)
Perfect opportunity to short BitCoins while they're inflated, before the next (and hopefully successful and therefore final) round of money laundering crackdowns driven by the latest Israel-Hamas dustup hits. This conflict seems to have woken up the western world to the dangers of allowing casual end-runs around all existing money laundering controls better than the age of ransomware or today's North Korean nuclear program did.
Re:SHORT SHORT SHORT (Score:5, Interesting)
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Buy the rumour, sell the news. The news has hit.
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This. If you are buying now, you are already too late.
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The problem with shorting is that not only are you betting that whatever it is you're shorting is going to drop in value, you also have to be pretty accurate on your estimate as to the timeframe of when it will drop, as well. When the time is up, you're now on the hook to buy it at the current market price. That's how Wallstreetbets screwed over the GameStop short sellers.
Re:SHORT SHORT SHORT (Score:4, Insightful)
"Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent." - (probably) A. Gary Shilling, whose name is a great one for a Wall Street economist
Re: SHORT SHORT SHORT (Score:2)
People who thought that just lost $150M in short liquidations after the news of an ETF came in.
No one should short such a volatile asset unless they're totally cool getting wiped out by a single news story.
Stupid stupid stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
And then several big financial firms want to build ANOTHER layer of abstraction/leverage by standing up bitcoin ETFs that are gonna a) make it easier for idiots err I mean retail investors to blow their money on it and b) make it easier to leverage against an already obscenely unstable asset?
What could possibly go wrong?
That this is even being CONSIDERED for approval by our regulators is an indication that they are ENTIRELY toothless.
And the financial houses that are floating this sh&t? They should know better and leave this to the crypto bros. I understand that the individual traders can only see the $$$ and their quarterly bonus. But the execs are supposed to be slightly steadier at the wheel. Absolutely none of my investment money will be housed with any outfit that is balls-deep in a bitcoin ETF. I’m not gonna put my life savings in the hands of a company that will pull that sort of shady crap. I actually have a very high tolerance for portfolio fluctuations, but bitcoin ETFs are gonna be riskier than penny stocks multiplied by distressed third-world debt.
And don’t give me the “it’s another asset class for portfolio balancing” arguments. With the fundamental underlying problems cryptocoins face, your portfolio diversification needs would be better served by an ETF with a value defined by a random number generator.
Every single layer of this entire process should know better. Have they been asleep for the past 18 months? It’s literally raining cryptobro corpses.
Flat-out irresponsible, from end-to-end.
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All true, all shouted repeatedly... and all irrelevant.
Bitcoin, for me, is the most mystifying construct in the tech world.
Re: Stupid stupid stupid (Score:3)
FTX is dead. SBF is going to jail. Binance has issues. So of course the professional thieves are stepping in to show the amateurs how itâ(TM)s done
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Hey, now. Its only still down more than 50% from its peak less than two years ago - so a great store of value, amirite?
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You think that *countries* are using Bitcoin to avoid SWIFT? If $50 million in Bitcoin changes hands in one day it makes headlines. There are plenty of routes to move $50 million that will go unnoticed, Bitcoin is for small fry. Do you think that when $100 million in cocaine changes hands that they drive up with a semi full of $100 bills to pay for it? No, it goes through Citibank, Wall Street, the real estate market, shell companies like the 200,000 that that Monsack Fonseca created, false shipping, mo
The grand master plan of crypto (Score:1, Informative)
The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what they want to make you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and f
With apologies to Monty Python (Score:5, Funny)
When I first discovered Bitcoin, it was at an all-time high. Everyone said I was daft to invest in Bitcoin, but I invested all the same, just to show them. It went down in value. So I invested some more. That went down in value too. So invested a third time. That got stolen by hackers, my bank account was drained and the exchange went out of business. But the fourth one went up in value. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest Bitcoin in all of England.
Of course, bailouts incoming... (Score:3)
I'm reminded of 2008, where a ton of bankers got a ton of hefty bonuses, while all the toxic debt was tossed onto the backs of taxpayers. This time, instead of real estate debt, it will be cryptocurrency. Unlike real estate which has an intrinsic value, "owning" a bunch of signed numbers doesn't mean much.
Nothing like another shell game.
Optimism for BTC? (Score:2)
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I'm not worried. It likely will be at $100,000 by December. Nothing is stopping it from doing so.
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If you think a house will be worth 50% more in 10 years, why buy it at current price, why dont you just offer 50% more right now?
Re:2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been around since the days where cryptocurrency was mainly Tim C. May's "first to the locker" cryptocurrency, and Chaumian cryptocurrencies.
What soured me on Bitcoin was the fact that once it gained popularity, it went from being a cypherpunk's "oh cool" item to something that was sold like a multilevel marketing product, and hammered on the masses.
If you look at Bitcoin, there is a lot there that isn't really cypherpunk friendly. First, the immutable blockchain. The blockchain is there, so people don't get double-spent. Why should all transactions on it be recorded forever? Why should Alice's purchase of a pack of condoms be something she has to deal with the rest of her, and her descendent's life, because it is there forever? Bitcoin wallets may be private, but there is a ton of money spent on ferreting out people via transactions, and gleaning info with a bunch of pieces. Eventually, if someone did a nefarious deed with Bitcoin, some LEO will be knocking, just because that transaction will never be going away, and the hounds keep getting ever smarter.
Then came the altcoins. We saw tons and tons of ICOs, which were pre-mined to insane level. Afterwards, the rug pulls began. We saw the exchanges pop up and pride themselves as being better banks than banks... until the master key gets compromised, and all their assets drained.
After that, the scams after scams, be it NFTs, people trying to push BTC based derivatives onto banks, so the US government would have to bail the "crypto bros" out.
Yes, the tech is "cool" in some senses, but it is totally not what a cypherpunk would have wanted.
A cypherpunk would have designed a cryptocurrency to be Chaumian in nature, where mining would be getting credits for SETI At Home or protein folding... something actually useful with that energy burned. The blockchain would be designed with privacy and anonymity in mind, with blinding factors everywhere, and a way to preen the blockchain after a while so it doesn't have to keep growing. It would look completely different than what it is now. Definitely not something that Tim May or some of the other cypherpunks would have wanted.
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Someday I hope/think/believe it will be the best money. The dollar is dying as our government[...]
This answers your original concern "it's astounding to me just how anti-Bitcoin so many are". In the end it's about the agenda (your motivation for the tech, what you want to do with it). The debate quickly moves from tech (which many tech-oriented people may praise) to the project's motivations, and the ones you quote, which are probably shared among proponents of bitcoin, are prone to create strong "political" disagreements.
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One of the things that attracts me to Bitcoin is it's similarity to the Internet and the Web. It's a protocol in a stack. Doing what SSH, SFTP, HTTPS, et al have been doing for information for decades, but for money.
would moderate this funny but not gonna waste modpoints on a crypto thread ...
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Why should all transactions on it be recorded forever? Why should Alice's purchase of a pack of condoms be something she has to deal with the rest of her, and her descendent's life, because it is there forever?
What is recorded is that address A moved value to address B. There is no indication that why the transfer was made. Was it for the condoms, cigarettes, piece of soap, or something else. However, I agree that the privacy should be still improved.
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What is recorded is that address A moved value to address B. There is no indication that why the transfer was made. Was it for the condoms, cigarettes, piece of soap, or something else
You're kidding, right? By that metric, I can pay my drug dealer with Venmo, as long as I don't put "ILLEGAL DRUGS" in the comment field. The authorities will never be able to figure it out. *facepalm*
Re: 2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:2)
How do you explain the fact that people buy drugs with Bitcoin all the time and never get caught?
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The same reason I see people shoplift in broad daylight without being caught. The same reason you can speed without being caught. The authorities can't catch 100% of people who break the law.
That doesn't change the fact that BTC leaves a nice trail pointing back at you, a trail that doesn't exist with cash, the mere existence of which seems to offend the cryptobro crowd.
If you're into illegal drugs you might also consider the sheer stupidity of being them from strangers on the Internet. Call me crazy,
Re: 2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:2)
It's trivially easy to avoid having your Bitcoin transactions tracked. Don't believe the G-men trying to con people into thinking they can track everything.
Postal service is where you'll get caught buying drugs over the Internet with Bitcoin, not on the blockchain.
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The many examples of Uncle Sam tracking transactions on the blockchain would seem to prove you wrong. In any case, I never said that the "G-men" can track everything , what I did say was, "BTC leaves a nice trail pointing back at you"
Cash isn't perfect either. If you withdraw a huge sum from an ATM a block away from a fertilizer plant, the day before a massive ANFO bomb goes off, Uncle Sam is going to trace that back to you in short order. The difference with cash is it's not a PERMANENT record. More
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Why should all transactions on it be recorded forever? Why should Alice's purchase of a pack of condoms be something she has to deal with the rest of her, and her descendent's life, because it is there forever?
What is recorded is that address A moved value to address B. There is no indication that why the transfer was made. Was it for the condoms, cigarettes, piece of soap, or something else
You're kidding, right? By that metric, I can pay my drug dealer with Venmo, as long as I don't put "ILLEGAL DRUGS" in the comment field. The authorities will never be able to figure it out. *facepalm*
In this case it was a question of condoms purchase (legal stuff), not from drugs (illegal stuff). And presumable from the point of general public, not from the point of law enforcement. In the case that I answered the general public (or law enforcement) don't know what Alice purchased. In case the Alice purchase something illegal, law enforcement can track the actors down based on their other activities and then find out that what was purchased by asking it from those that were part of the transaction. Sam
You know the joke (Score:2)
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
LOL? (Score:2)
People who understand this technology don't want this technology. You have been warned.
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I think its both 1 and 2.
But also, todays Slashdot isnt the same as early Slashdot.
It flipped at some point and the interesting conversations or insight I used to see pretty much disapeared.
Might also have to do with people having a high time preference vs a low time preference and wanting immediate returns or results, without being able to evaluate on a longer time horizon.
Re:2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been on Slashdot since probably 1997 and I've always thought of many Slashdotters as among the smartest people in tech. Often ahead of the curve with regard to technology. Linux users most. Many are programmers or at least know how to code. Smart people in general. Yet, it's astounding to me just how anti-Bitcoin so many are. It's like you're anti-tech Luddites! LOL
That's a nice appeal to authority [wikipedia.org] you got there with micro-targeting (shaming) aimed at the /. audience tossed in for good measure. You're trying to manipulate people's emotions to make your point. It does not incline me -- and I dare say, any other skeptic -- to listen to what you have to say on BTC. It is literally the oldest sales trick in the book.
If you were to do a deep dive and really make an attempt to understand the technology (decentralized, portable, immutable, finite supply, true digital scarcity, fungibility, security, permissionless, censorship resistant, etc.)
Can't help but notice that you glossed right over another key attribute: Carbon footprint [nrdc.org].
I've been around here since the 1990s too. I remember things like SETI@home [berkeley.edu], distributed.net [distributed.net], and Folding@home [foldingathome.org]. I am not enough of a mathematician to understand the low level of those projects, nor do I fully understand the math of crypto, what I do understand is the electrical impact of running a C(G)PU at 100% 24/7/365. I can see it on a Watt Meter. I can calculate the impact it has on cooling, whether for my house, or, at a larger scale, a data center. I still participate in these projects, during the winter months, when the "waste" heat is of value and I'm not increasing my carbon footprint.
Those projects appeal to noble instincts and desires. There is nothing in them for you. By contrast, BTC/crypto appeals to humanity's absolute worst impulse, greed, and no amount of spin you put on it will overcome that simple truth.
Did you guys all get FOMO and buy some Bitcoin when it was at $69K and now you're just salty about it? Did you buy some of the 20K+ "Crypto" garbage coins during the last bull run, lose everything, and now you hate all "Crypto"? If you think Bitcoin and "Crypto" are the same, you might want to RTFM.
I haven't paid one penny for crypto. I looked at it, when it slithered out of the shadows, and briefly flirted with tossing together a mining rig, but decided not to because of the carbon footprint. On paper, I lost a lot, I looked at it when you could actually mine coins without a small fortune in hardware and electricity. Still, zero regrets. I have non-zero regrets over stock purchases I passed on during previous market corrections -- I could have bought Ford [google.com] at <$2/share but wasn't bold enough -- there's non-zero greed in my veins, but I believed then and still believe today that BTC is a carbon intensive ponzi scheme. I'm very happy not to have contributed to it.
Re: 2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:2)
People gloss over the carbon footprint thing because it's not really a big deal. I've never once seen a Bitcoin carbon analysis that understands how Bitcoin works. The carbon footprint of Bitcoin has been falling pretty rapidly and is expected to fall for its entire lifetime.
Not to say it's not using a lot now, but the economics of rewards vs fees guarantees that the carbon footprint falls over time at any given price point.
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Wow, rationalize much? You know what doesn't have a massive carbon footprint, today, right now? Traditional finance. Credit/debit cards, electronic transfers, and cash. You know what actually has a stable enough value to be useful for day to day commerce? Euros, US Dollars, Yen, Yuan, Pesos, Pound Sterling, and nearly all currencies not undermined by war or braindead economic policy that leads to hyperinflation.
Even if BTC wasn't a massive ponzi scheme -- and it totally is -- primarily useful for spec
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Wow, your post started out at -1 and you aren't on my foes list. I guess you burned up all your karma whoring the Ponzi scheme?
For the record, if you offered me ANY asset at 10% of its alleged value, I would immediately stop taking you seriously because there's a 99.9999999% chance you're a scammer. I trust my chances of winning the PowerBall more than I trust random messages from strangers on the Internet with offers too good to refuse.
It's dope though that you had to conjure up an obvious scam to plug
Re: 2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:2)
You think manufacturing and shipping card readers, cards, and networking equipment has no carbon footprint? Producing Visa/Mastercard/AMEX commercials? Sending credit card statements in the mail? Flying finance executives around the world on corporate jets?
You obviously don't understand the first thing about measuring carbon impact, so maybe avoid demonstrating your complete ignorance by not mentioning things you don't understand.
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Bahahahahaha, thanks for literally making me laugh out-loud. Just call me completely ignorant, that obviously proves your point. ;-)
Fun fact, bro, I didn't say traditional finance has no carbon footprint. It was a decent if lazy attempt at a straw man argument though. When you can't win on the merits just change the topic. "But traditional finance has a carbon footprint too!" Yeah, so did your inane comment, and so will my reply. Following your logic, I can easily replace my sedan with a private jet,
Re: 2 Things About Slashdotters and Bitcoin (Score:2)
It's a vicious cycle of FOMO, get rich quick losers, and confirmation bias.
1. This is silly; fake money can't be worth it
2. Wait, does everyone think this is real?
3. OMG, I could have retired if I bought some two years ago
4. All time high? I'm gonna make a bunch of quick money!
5. What did I just do? This is all scammers; no one makes money on this except the first string of early adopters
6. Oh, look, Scamcoin... I can get it on the ground floor on this one and make a bunch of quick money!
7. Jesus, this whol
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Not buying MSFT in the 80s is a "missed opportunity"
Not getting in on BTC is not, unless your definition of "opportunity" is a zero sum game of musical chairs, where you're cool getting yours and fuck the people left standing when the whole comes crashing down.
By the crypto bro definition of "missed opportunity" it would be a "missed opportunity" not to have gotten in on Bernie Madoff's funds in the 1990s. Dude is beating the market! What a great opportunity. All you suckers who didn't invest are just
Bipolar bank (Score:2)
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It's amazing that I have to ask this on Slashdot, but...
Have you ever heard of stable coins?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Mike Gaetz (Score:2)
Who is paying Mike to say this?
It's a decentralized Ponzi scheme (Score:2)
All crypto is little more than a decentralized Ponzi scheme.
Sometimes it turns out to have actual value and utility, but most of the time it's just a bullshit ride for the gullible.
But here's the thing- crypto is no good as money. It's nearly useless for actual, day-to-day transactions.
Why? Well, if you thought your ShitCoin was going to go up radically in value, why would you ever spend it? You wouldn't. People are using crypto as an investment, not as something to spend.