Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC • Hacker News Board

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#671

Post by fidelramos » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:07 AM UTC

petesergeant wrote: post #594

pavlov wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popularity of these scammy exchanges despite the massive red flags shows that this is actually what customers want. They don't want the theoretical advantages of permissionless blockchains and private keys, they just want penny stocks that trade 24/7 and are called "crypto" because it sounds cool. So institutions will take advantage of that desire for convenience and work with regulators to turn "crypto" into jus…

> They don't want the theoretical advantages Surely only a fool would want advantages that were theoretical only?

But they are not theoretical, users who have their own crypto wallets have been unaffected by all the failed exchanges (MtGox, FTX, etc.)

There are other actual advantages that some people today benefit from, like avoiding confiscation and uncensorable transactions ( which would have been appreciated by the Canadian truckers when they were debanked), or protection against high inflation (like many Venezuelans and Argentinians do).

This is not to say that the UX of cryptocurrencies is not good enough for the majority of people, but that is a separate criticism.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#672

Post by miohtama » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:08 AM UTC

johnyzee wrote: post #586

miohtama wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is described in the every prospectus that was approved today. Prospectuses are public.

Can you quote the relevant parts then, since you have apparently read all the prospectuses? I am wondering the same thing. Will they publish the custody addresses?

Sorry, I am not your secretary. You can perfectly fine to go to read those yourself, please do not be lazy.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#673

Post by cturner » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:09 AM UTC

rmbyrro wrote: post #664

cturner wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an important difference between shares and crypto: US shares exist as a result of US legislation. Hence, it is straightforward to make regulatory or legislative changes for the operation of a share market. This is not true of crypto. Crypto is more like a currency than a share. It is transnational - if one jurisdiction applies regulatory burden, activity will flow somewhere else without that changing the ope…

Nothing prohibit the US from legislating bitcoin.

This is true. But it would be a mistake to see the legislative options for the US towards crypto to be as straightforward as its options for its own share market. With crypto, there is far more potential for unintended consequences that would push activity off-shore. That would result in reduced control.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

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Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:10 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #603

roenxi wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The possibility of change exists, but one of the hardest promises Bitcoin makes is that you can't change the rules mid-game like what happened with stocks. That is one of the most attractive things about this asset class - if the US regulators want to change how a crypto is traded ... tough biscuits. They have to convince the market participants, globally, to trade the new way. The bar might be orders of magnitude hi…

> if the US regulators want to change how a crypto is traded ... tough biscuits They can happily regulate on and off ramps, and enforce traceability etc for anything that touches the 'real' economy though, should they wish.

> They can happily regulate on and off ramps, and enforce traceability etc for anything that touches the 'real' economy though, should they wish.

But what good is that? All you get is traceability for people with nothing to hide. You can't actually prevent on and off ramps because anybody could go to the black market digital currency dealer (whose operations are conveniently situated near the local drug dealer) and exchange digital currency for anything that can be easily pawned, or cash, and the people you'd actually be interested in tracing just do that.

Which makes the KYC/AML rules de facto optional for anyone already breaking the law, but you're still inconveniencing anyone abiding the law because you e.g. can't have an anonymous vending machine because the machine would be required by law to verify your identity before accepting your money. Which is ridiculous when the vending machine sells candy bars and perverse when it sells contraceptives.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#675

Post by Wytwwww » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:10 AM UTC

npoc wrote: post #630

pavlov wrote: post #531

My prediction is that Bitcoin will become fully institutionalized within twenty years, to the point that the “Bitcoin” held by investors are entirely disconnected from the theoretical blockchain. A similar thing happened with stocks. Not so long ago they used to be physical pieces of paper. You could trade shares peer-to-peer and even anonymously by handing over the share certificate to someone in person. For dividen…

The difference is that they can never stop you custodying the bitcoin yourself. Bitcoin won't become "quaint" - it will always sit there as the hardest money mankind has ever seen (and likely ever will). If they try and create tokens that don't represent bitcoin i.e. creating them out of thin air, then they will go down in value relative to bitcoin, just as we are seeing with fiat currencies and people will move thei…

> hardest money mankind has ever seen

Except it's not really money is it? It's a speculative asset.

> The difference is that they can never stop you custodying the bitcoin yourself.

Except if you can no longer convert it to real money ($/€/etc.) it becomes effectively worthless or at least start trading at massive discount.

Also the delusional/quasi-religious rhetoric is getting old. Can't you actually try to think of any rational and/or substantiative arguments?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#676

Post by RandomLensman » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:12 AM UTC

npoc wrote: post #666

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History shows that societies with the hardest money win. I think I’d like that to be true, but I don’t see much evidence of it. Do you have some examples?

The simple fact that there's no societies left using shells, beads, Rai stones, etc. Only the hardest money survived - gold. However although gold is hard, it fair to say that it was beaten somewhat by soft fiat money, simply due to the overwhelmingly better other monetary qualities of fiat (e.g. portability and divisibility) especially in the digital age. Bitcoin is a hard money that takes the best monetary qualitie…

What does it means that a society "wins"?

Gold isn't money - it's a commodity. It isn't even a great store of value over that last thousand years or so.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#677

Post by rahmansahinler1 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:15 AM UTC

benlivengood wrote: post #287

Finally a workaround for high transaction fees! This should also solve the scalability issues quite a bit by reducing the need to record as many transactions in the first place once the exchanges hold most of the coins. Finally this should reduce the long-term potential in mining as the block reward keeps reducing exponentially with lower expectations of transaction fees. Sometimes regulatory solutions do fix hard te…

Does this sound you like a solution? There is no another tech invented for reducing gas fees and increase the speed. They just now have acceess to create new fake bitcoins like 'money' and have authorize over it. What is the difference betweeen this new printed bitcoin and the money?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#678

Post by npoc » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:15 AM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #658

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #526

I can't help thinking that Bitcoin ETFs could mark "Peak Bitcoin". When lots of people are trading it at their high street broker in their regular account, Bitcoin becomes just a number in a box - a crypto currency without crypto - with nothing underlying it.

There is no underlying value. No intrinsic value. The value is purely a function of speculative demand. And while previously people anticipated the demand would go up "organically" because of actual real-world usage, you know to pay for stuff and such, that hasn't really materialized in the way we hoped. How many actually use BTC for things like that? At its BEST it has usage to purchase other coins - but that's abou…

The IRL usage is as a savings account.

As more people understand its fundamental qualities (or even just see number go up) and save their wealth in it, it's value will become less volatile and it will become more useful as a unit of account and day-to-day medium of exchange. It will be >$10M/BTC before that'll start to happen though.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#679

Post by Kathula » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:16 AM UTC

tromp wrote: post #596

Kathula wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how Bitcoin, which for the next 100 years will continue to print new coins, is attempting to replicate deflation. Maybe inadvertently, by people losing access to their Bitcoins for various reasons, but the design itself certainly isn't deflationary. Not even in its final form, the supply will merely be constant. Also I find it humorus when people complain about deflation, which pretty much is the natural cond…

> for the next 100 years will continue to print new coins The new coin supply (block subsidy) is reducing at an exponential rate and will soon not be able to even compensate for the rate of lost coins.

The question was not if Bitcoin overall is deflationary. The comment said it was by design, which it arguably isn't because by design it's actually inflationary.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#680

Post by npoc » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 10:16 AM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #547

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #526

I can't help thinking that Bitcoin ETFs could mark "Peak Bitcoin". When lots of people are trading it at their high street broker in their regular account, Bitcoin becomes just a number in a box - a crypto currency without crypto - with nothing underlying it.

Here’s hoping bitcoin goes to zero

The lower it goes, the more of the hardest money mankind had ever seen I can buy.