Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.
Why not register an account and join the discussions? When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no Google ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!
Seems there's a lot of pressure to move fast. ...
Grayscale, the manager of GBTC, is claiming bragging rights for being the first of the newly approved crop of spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to begin trading, a representative for the firm said on Thursday.
“I am happy to confirm that GBTC started pre-market trading at 4 am EST this morning,” Grayscale’s head of comms Jennifer Rosenthal said via email.
...
The laser eyes on Ben Franklin suggest quite the battle is ahead as issuers of the newly approved bitcoin ETFs try to scoop up investors' money.
Hours after U.S. regulators approved the groundbreaking products on Wednesday, Franklin Templeton, a 76-year-old asset manager with $1.5 trillion assets under management and its own bitcoin ETF to sell to customers, tweaked its X avatar. It put laser eyes on its logo that features Ben Franklin, the famous 18th century American.
That's a nod to crypto culture, where red, glowing eyes are commonly featured in bio pics.
...
Following a landmark approval by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 10, shares of several spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have started debuting on exchanges.
As of 2:45 pm UTC on Jan. 11, data from the Cboe BZX Exchange showed that shares of the Bitcoin ETF from ARK 21Shares were trading at $50.18 under the ticker ARKB, those from Invesco Galaxy at $49.59 under BTCO, WisdomTree at $52.13 under BTCW, Fidelity at $44.40 under FBTC, and Franklin Temple at $28.48 under EZBC. The spot BTC ETF offered by VanEck, under the ticker symbol HODL, did not appear to be live at the time of publication but was set for an opening price of $54.92.
On the Nasdaq Stock Market, shares of the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund under the ticker BRRR started trading in the pre-market for roughly $20 before dropping to $14.10 at the time of publication. Shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust — offered by the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock — under IBIT also surged roughly 22% in some pre-market activity, trading at $28.64 at the time of publication.
The spot Bitcoin ETF offered by Grayscale Investments — one of the offerings that likely contributed to the SEC approval of the investment vehicles — opened at $42.25 under GBTC on the New York Stock Exchange Arca, rising to $42.97 at the time of publication. Shares of the Bitwise Bitcoin Trust started trading at $26.80 under BITB, and the Hashdex Bitcoin Futures ETF, which also holds spot BTC following SEC approval, opened at $60.00 under the ticker DEFI.
...
Just watched this on bitcoin - a wealth of information
...
Seems there's a lot of pressure to move fast. ...
... This has been percolating for months (a year?) now. ...
It’s been over ten and a half years since the Winklevoss twins first filed for a bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) in July 2013.
This filing, covered by CoinDesk in its first year of operation, was ultimately unsuccessful – despite multiple re-submissions – but serves as an interesting time capsule to look at how the industry has changed and matured since then.
...
...
Blackrock (the Death Star) controls the ETF ...
I don't think anyone took either bitcoin or the move to financialize it, seriously.
well, I watched it last night.Care to give us an executive summary of any interesting points?
... I just think that both the mindset and the expectation of what might actually happen, shifted quickly in a short time.
Whaaaaat? Problems already!?
Backlash (ie. people closing/moving their accounts) against Vanguard has been brewing all morning. I guess Merrill is going to join them in cutting off their nose.
Vanguard is not managing an ETF. They are preventing their customers from buying any of the ETFs that were approved. Their customers are reportedly closing accounts and moving to Fidelity or another broker.Whaaaaat? Problems already!?
Every brokerage house has its products - it chooses what it thinks fits well for its desired customers. Either using beneficient parameters, or through untoward formulae; but they select what they will sell.Vanguard is not managing an ETF. They are preventing their customers from buying any of the ETFs that were approved. Their customers are reportedly closing accounts and moving to Fidelity or another broker.
Vanguard’s decision to not offer its users access to bitcoin ETFs has sparked a backlash among some customers, who have decided to close their brokerage accounts and move their money to other platforms.
...
Julian Fahrer, co-founder and chief executive at Apollo, a review platform for bitcoin-related products, said on X, formerly Twitter, that he requested to transfer his 401(k) account from Vanguard to Fidelity.
“It took about 15 minutes,” Fahrer tweeted.
...
Oher crypto enthusiasts expressed similar feelings on X.
...
As investor interest in bitcoin ETFs appear to be high, financial institutions that don’t offer access to the trading of such products may suffer from user outflows, said Frank Corva, senior analyst for digital assets at comparison website Finder.com.
“Financial institutions that ignore bitcoin and hinder their clients from getting access to the asset will likely be punished in the form of their clients moving their money to institutions that accommodate their desire to get exposure to bitcoin,” Corva wrote in emailed comments.
...
While several things happened in the weeks leading up to their debut, some related to implied volatility and the options market are worth noting as speculators look at ether (ETH) as the next likely candidate for a spot ETF approval.
Implied volatility represents investors' expectations of price turbulence and positively impacts the prices of call and put options. A call allows buyers to profit from or hedge against price rallies, while a put offers protection against price slides.
When facing a binary event such as the earning’s date in a stock or the SEC’s decision on spot ETF applications, traders tend to buy options to build a “long vega” position that benefits from increases in implied volatility. The strategy, however, exposes traders to a potential post-event crash in volatility and the resulting slide in options prices.
That’s precisely what happened in the bitcoin market, a lesson for ether traders that holding a long volatility exposure on the day of the ETF announcement may be risky, according to crypto quant researcher Samneet Chepal.
...
Several firms have filed applications for spot ether ETFs, including BlackRock, in November 2023. The earliest deadline for approvals is in May for VanEck’s ETF, followed by BlackRock’s in August.
Of course it will be approved. It WILL be used to manipulate and control Bitcoin... Just like all the other commodity ETF's.
So you shouldn't be a fan if you actually are bullish Bitcoin.
The two "authorized" participants... JPM and Virtu Financial The two biggest cons on the planet.
...
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is often believed to be one of the largest single holders of Bitcoin in the world. In a Sept. 6 social media post, Arkham claimed that the trust held over $16 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. Current Arkham data estimates the trust’s holdings at $27 billion, as the price of Bitcoin has risen over the past few months.
Shares of GBTC have been traded since 2013 but were not redeemable for Bitcoin until Jan. 11. Because of the irredeemability of the shares, they have often traded at a steep discount to their net asset value, or the value of the Bitcoin they represent. For example, in October, each share of the trust was worth 16% less than the amount of Bitcoin it represented.
On Jan. 12, the day after multiple Bitcoin ETFs began trading, Arkham Intelligence data showed that the trust sent 894 BTC to Coinbase in one transaction and another 2,607 BTC to other wallets in three other separate transactions. The amount sent to Coinbase represents $41 million in outflows, or approximately 0.15% of the Grayscale trust’s total holdings, while the remaining outflows to other wallets represent an additional $119 million, or 0.44%.
On the same day that these outflows occurred, Bitcoin’s price went into a sudden downturn, falling from approximately $46,000 to slightly above $43,000 by 6:47 pm UTC. The fall resulted in the break of a strong line of support at $44,740.
Despite the small amount of outflows shown by Arkham, some X users theorized that the downturn may have been caused by redemptions of GBTC shares, as holders of these shares finally got the chance to cash out. ...
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?