Live data from Hacker News

Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

cointelegraph.com

731–740 of 1001 posts

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#731

Looks like these are the 11 tickers? Bitwise (BITB) ARK Invest/21Shares (ARKB) Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) VanEck Bitcoin Trust (HODL) Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust (FBTC) WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust (BTCW) Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund (BRRR) Hashdex Bitcoin Futures ETF (DEFI) Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)

What's the difference between those 11 tickers? Shouldn't all of them go up or down the price of bitcoin plus/minus a very small error rate?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#732
post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to look at it from a fundamental perspective - what drives people to purchase BTC? I don't know about you, but close to 100% of everyone I know that have bought BTC (and other coins, for that matter) the past 5-10 years have done it in hopes of it going to the moon. The bitcoin maxis are at this point a fringe movement, a distant past, really. If you put all your savings on index funds, there is some p…

I have all my savings stored in bitcoin. I do it because I've spent 100s of hours learning what money really is and can see that bitcoin is the best form of it, certainly the best long term store of value. I also know that the best long term store of value will ultimately be where the world's stored value is moved to.

I like your courage, but you really should diversify. Life is long and none of us have a crystal ball. If you don't trust USD, get some other currencies, including crypto. Get some property. Gold. Bonds. Stocks. Savings. Shit happens and you need to defend your portfolio as well as maximise profits.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#733
post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several days that could be candidates for the day Rome fell. There are several reasons we could argue that the Roman Catholic Church is the continuation of Rome and so Rome never truly fell. That is what I was trying to say in the previous comment.

it probably makes more sense to argue that the byzantine empire is the continuation of rome, but in a broader sense, all of human civilization is the continuation of the indus valley civilization

The point being there isn’t a single cause to the fall of Rome and there are even a few arguments that Rome continued in various forms, some of which still exist today.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#734
post #558
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 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…

Doesn't the ETF completely bypass such rules? Now you aren't trading actual Bitcoin -- you're trading entitlements at the DTC, managed on their own settlement system and centralized databases. All you need to do is look into RegSHO to see all the ways that system can be gamed.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#735
post #665
post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US really dropped the hammer on Russia last year and yet Russian troops kept advancing. There isn't much proof-in-the-pudding right now that they can stop a top-10 global economy. This isn't the 90s and it isn't clear how much the US can throw their weight around.

> Russian troops kept advancing Did they? The war is in a stalemate. Militarily this isn't that different than the proxy wars of the Cold War EXCEPT Russia has suffered more casualties by a magnitude or two than the USSR did in Afghanistan or the US in Vietnam. For the Russian regime this war is now 100% an existential threat. For the US from an entirely a real-politik point of view, if the end goal is to defeat Russ…

> For the Russian regime this war is now 100% an existential threat.

For everyone this war is an existential threat. It is unusual for governments that come in after a revolution to be more stable than their predecessors and any successor to Putin will still have the worlds largest nuclear weapons stockpile. There is an outside chance of a literal replay of Germany WWI -> WWII if the Russians collapse. Not to mention the risk of armageddon from the current war; I'd still expect to get another Able Archer style story to add to the near misses out of this conflict.

And from a realpolitik perspective, sure the US is coming off better than Russia here. But the US isn't coming off well; it's military looks a bit wheezy through all this. If they can't deter the world's 11th largest economy from going to war in NATO's sphere of influence; what can they deter? If they can't muster the resources to turn back the Russians in 2023, what are they going to be able to pull in Africa, the middle east and APAC region?

EDIT Bearing in mind we're talking about someone trading Bitcoin in a way they don't like. "this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity?" is just bunk. They don't have that sort of power these days.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#736
post #65

What other products that are as known-to-be-risky-and-associated-with-fraud are backed by an ETF? Genuinely curious what else is out there...

THCX the cannabis ETF went from $230 to $16. Maybe it was not known to be risky, but it was a massive rug pull. Does that qualify?

I should've added this comment from the SEC, the entity that just authorized this ETF:

"""

Though we’re merit neutral, I’d note that the underlying assets in the metals ETPs have consumer and industrial uses, while in contrast bitcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware,[4] money laundering,[5] sanction evasion,[6] and terrorist financing.[7]

"""

- https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/gensler-statement-spot-bi...

What other ETF exists for an asset that the SEC closes its statements about like this?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#737
Is there any guarantee that if this goes wrong (let's say ETF's are hacked and lose their BTC) then assets in other ETF's are safe? Let's say BlackRock ends up on the hook for billions after their BTC ETF goes wrong. Are my shares in iShares NASDAQ 100 ETF safe?

I want to make sure I don't have any exposure to crypto world by owning stock ETFs. If there is any scenario that I am on the hook for crypto nonsense going south I am going to sell and just own selected stocks instead. I would greatly appreciate someone providing clarity on this issue.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#738
post #65

What other products that are as known-to-be-risky-and-associated-with-fraud are backed by an ETF? Genuinely curious what else is out there...

> What other products that are as known-to-be-risky-and-associated-with-fraud are backed by an ETF? Government bonds. There were ETFs holding Greek gov bonds for example. Greek cheated to enter the EU (by fudging its numbers, with the help of big accounting firms and banks). And government bonds are known to be risky, seen that throughout times many government have simply grown their public debt and then defaulted. F…

Your post-script is something to consider.

I should've added this comment from the SEC, the entity that just authorized this ETF:

"""

Though we’re merit neutral, I’d note that the underlying assets in the metals ETPs have consumer and industrial uses, while in contrast bitcoin is primarily a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware,[4] money laundering,[5] sanction evasion,[6] and terrorist financing.[7]

"""

- https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/gensler-statement-spot-bi...

What other ETF exists for an asset that the SEC closes its statements about like this?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating the consequences of modern and ancient inflation, which were extremely different. In modern times when we want to print money, it just involves a mixture of worthless sheets of paper or even more worthless entries in a database. So we have the luxury of being able to just pull trillions of dollars out of thin air, devaluing all of the other preexisting dollars in the process. But in the past, money…

I don’t think you understood my comment, at all. Debasement in the late Roman Empire was triggered by deflationary conditions. They needed to inject more money and couldn’t (because there literally wasn’t more silver), so they debased it. But why did they need to inject more money? The deflationary spiral I mentioned.

The reason they ran out of money is because they were spending more than they had - and then spending even more, exactly the same as today. That has nothing to do with deflation. For instance one obvious cause is that the Roman Empire kept increasing the size of its military. By the time it collapsed, it had its largest military ever, by a wide margin. Again, table [1] here. Note also that is just nominal forces, it doesn't include the e.g. Barbian forces Rome also began integrating into its military machine to try to keep everything going just a bit longer.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size_of_the_Roman_army

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#740
post #686
post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US really dropped the hammer on Russia last year and yet Russian troops kept advancing. There isn't much proof-in-the-pudding right now that they can stop a top-10 global economy. This isn't the 90s and it isn't clear how much the US can throw their weight around.

The US is not at war with Russia and no US forces are engaging Russian forces. This is actually an important distinction. It's much less of a conflict than the Iraq war. It does show two things: US hegemony over certain European countries that might want to take Russian money and gas is weak, and the US foreign policy coherence is weak as Ukraine policy is at risk from cranks.

If they can't win the not-war they're fighting against Russia, what is their huge military stockpile supposed to do? If it isn't useful here, they can't use it.
Post reply on HN