Topic: Everything you wanted to know about Grayscale BTC Trust but were afraid to ask! - page 7. (Read 16372 times)

i just looked into some other reasons why the SEC does not want shares to be easily swapped direct for btc..
much like wheat, gold, (commodity) which at the end of contract the receiver has to claim the actual underlying asset (gold/wheat)
but by being just share-fiat, the SEC treats share provisions of spot ETF as a security.

if when someone sells a share they are just given btc, not fiat.. it would be a commodity regulator involved in the share regulation(CFTC not SEC)

Not sure exactly if that is what I had been saying, but it is in the ballpark of what I was kind of saying.   

I just heard an interview with Ric Edelman (founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals) with Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast.  The interview just published today, and he seems to be closer to what I have been trying to say in terms of both his seemingly optimism of some Bitcoin spot ETFs having good chances of getting approved this year, but maybe more importantly his thoughts that several of the Bitcoin Spot ETFs (if not all 12 of them) will get approved at around the same time, which was part of the dynamic that I was trying to suggest too.

At the same time, there was not too much discussion of any kind of worry that I seem to have on my inner sides in regards to possibilities of Grayscale not being approved for its spot ETF conversion.. but his discussion of the concerns about the Gold ETF having way greater advantages over any other gold-related ETF seems to be part of the justification why he seems to be also suggesting that Grayscale is likely to get approved at the same time as the other BTC  spot ETFs because of some of the unfairness that can develop (and seems to have had been learned by the SEC) if they were to approve ONLY one and give favorability to any of them over others.  He also seemed to have had been describing Grayscale as an already existing large base of about 30 million BTC exposed clients (through the current Grayscale product and expectantly converting over to the spot ETF in a kind of immediate way).

im inclined to think because coinbase is grayscales sister company. it makes grayscale more complex case for the whole "separation" of shares-coin custody/access detail, which this little back and forth discussion in recent days started with

where as blackrock<>coinbase share less relations thus appear as less of a risk to nefariously collude internally, which is another factor thats a pro for blackrock and a con for grayscale

and yes with the grayscale and coinbase legal battles with SEC
            with the US attorney general suing DCG and genesis last month
            with the SEC suing genesis in january
vs SEC experience with blackrocks many old school ETF is another pro for blackrock con for grayscale

DCG with the FTX-DCG-genesis mismanagement of funds saga is another con for grayscale.

analogy:
if a guardian is trying to adopt a kid. but one kid is causing enough trouble that guardian takes him to court or he takes the guardian to court for allegations of misbehaving.. you dont then adopt him and call him the best choice of kid all other foster kids should emulate if they want to be adopted too. they are not going to become the poster child for the foster-adoption system

..
with DCG CEO B.S being charged with defrauding upto 230,000 investors and the public by trying to conceal more than $1.1 billion in losses.. i dont think the SEC is going to approve a DCG sister company as the "best representation of funds management". well not untill the case is settled or DCG is found innocent

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other conclusions summarised about points raised in last couple days (ontopic)
it was said that JJG was not completely sure that SEC/wallstreet is purposefully creating barriers of entry to avoid competition. and yet year long battles with the SEC show the SEC isnt so open handed about what their preferences for acceptance are. they are not so transparent about minimal standard or any standard and instead want to build the standard to then be precedent for all others to follow

it was also said by JJG that unit bias was not a thing.. yet just look at ark21.. shares are $0.59 and their total cap is about $5m meaning they have only 150btc collateralised.. compare that to grayscales.. and also the annualised fee's between the two... people will make different decisions based on that alone

lets go one step further.
with only 150btc collateralised in shares21. they dont even have enough volume/liquidity to take to market. yes there are lots of microshares. (like penny stocks) but not enough to cater to millions of people. imagine it they only have $5m of collateral which is like only 10k people putting one month of minimal grade pension money aside($100)

if we go back to the discussions about impact on the spot market(CEX) of agents buying baskets.. grayscale wont need or want to adopt agents untill they sell their own shares and buy up new baskets to not have competition to supply to investors.. however shares21 wil definitely need to call around to brokers to become agents and go on a buying frenzy of basket of btc to increase the pool of coins available to collateralise as shares

I already addressed a lot of this in terms of suggesting that framing a bet is a good way to figure out the extent to which a member will stand behind their assertions.  Of course, sometimes the terms of the bet could be changing, and sometimes there can also be utility in terms of presenting the sticking points, especially if dealing with someone who might be genuinely trying to figure out the extent to which there is differences of opinion rather than just arguing for the mere sake of it.  I think that I already sufficiently outlined my parameters as kind of talking points, but it is getting a bit weary to have you get so worked up about various things.


I was not trying to make any kind of deal, I was ONLY trying to clarify some matters in the form of a bet, so anyone can look back if they wish to attempt to sort through something that you seem to be wanting to muddy rather than clarify... with a little bonus franky drama, and I was not even trying to provoke you since you were mostly making good points until you are now seeming to get worked up about nothing.. or nearly nothing.


I don't even dislike you Franky, even though you make it a bit difficult some times with the level of your tackiness.  At this point, I don't think it is worth getting into any of the details of the matter, except maybe to say that if a member brings something to another member through PM, there should be some appreciation for that rather than seeming to get overly paranoid about the matter... but hey, you do you... You are the best person to do you.. even though there probably are a few forum members who might be able to imitate your a little bit crazy style... I don't really want to go that far, yet.. because I was mostly attempting to talk about substance rather than to attempt to beat up on you in any kind of specific way,... even though you might deserve a wee tad bit of mocking when you end up going a bit overboard from time to time....

@fillippone.. are you getting mad at us yet.. sorry for some of the extent to which we may be deviating from the topic. and gosh how many posts has it been that we have not really weaved very much about Grayscale into our discussion. except maybe a few comments on the side, here and there along the way.. and my guess is as good as anyone else if there ends up being some BTC spot ETF approvals if Grayscale ends up being in the mix of the approvals.. or even if they would be able to accomplish their conversion in a similar timeline as the other ETFs might end up going live.. I suppose that could be a bit of an issue in terms of how long it takes for each of the kinds of processes to end up going live. As I already mentioned, I am inclined to think that Grayscale would be in the mix of the approvals, even though some of the charges against them could constitute some rational basis to delay (or even deny) approval of their attempt to convert their BTC fund into a BTC spot ETF without some kind of specific assurances regarding that the Grayscale conversion process is not otherwise causing injustices towards various claimants or even being in the public interest to do so..

unit bias is a thing
imagine 1btc was $100,000 where 1 share pegs to 0.001 each share is $100. meaning someone putting aside 10% of their minimum wage
(40hrs*4wks*$15)/10= $240 someone cannot invest 2.4 shares.. so end up losing investment potential of $40 or has to invest more then 10% to round up to $300

where as if shares are 0.00001 meaning $1 a share.. anyone can buy.. even on things like robinhood. in dollar amounts without having to round up or down
the $240 can buy 240 shares. thus has 0.00240 pegged exposure

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JJG get over yourself.. you seem obsessed to think theres any chance of a bet
i already told you i dont gamble, trade on this forum.. GET THE HINT

you have been now trying to poke me in my private messages begging.. you are desperate.. chill out. read the room.. there is no deal thr never was. dont get desperate

posting my reply to the PM for all to see me telling JJG to chill the hell out

I only used "4" because you had said something like probably only  one BTC spot ETF would be approved, yet if the SEC were to approve more than one then no more than 4 would be approved at the same time.

I had only thrown 6 out there because it seemed more realistic than all of them to be approved (such as 12), but I did not really have any reason to believe that any of them might be denied (once the threshold is broken and some the first one ends up getting approved).


That's a good point.  I was further thinking about potential non-monetary bet terms that could test conviction, but I really doubt that we are as far apart as you had initially suggested that we are, and surely it is much harder to enter into any bet if you are NOT really putting out your own ideas, but just see yourself as contesting the ideas of others.. which I see myself in a similar kind of situation.. and even if I might talk about a lot of ideas, I don't necessarily get very convicted about x, y or z happening for the reasons stated in my earlier post... and so if ever I do say anything with conviction and/or strength, I do not mind that people point those kinds of things out to me, and if they propose to bet on such thing that I said, the surely there could be some instances if we might be able to hash out some kinds of mutually agreeable bet terms in which we are able to take opposite sides of such bet.


I don't see how unit bias makes much difference.  there are going to be some employers who have these options in their various 401k plans, and then the workers can choose the extent of their exposure through the plan, and they might ONLY be able to choose based on which ones are offered in their plan.   Some employers do not have very many options and others have greater number of options, and there could be various reasons that employers will set up their plans in certain ways that may well limit which ETF might be available. 

Certain brokers might offer some plans but not others, and some of the BIGGER players might be able to shop around for the plans and to be able to the terms of what is offered to employees or versus what a pension fund might choose which one to get into based on prior relationships with the entity and what that entity offers.


To the extent that employers even have pensions, the employee is not usually able to negotiate what is in the pension plan like they are able to select options within their 401k, and surely today 401k options are greater than they were in the 90s when they first were coming out, but there are still some employers that do not have very many offerings, so there could be questions about whether some employers will add ETFs as options to their plans... including government sector employers that might not have as many options in their plans as private sector employers, but they might have better terms than some of the private sector plans that might have fees already built into their 401k plans.


That is called discussing various possible bet terms.  My position has not changed very much, even though we have batted around a few ideas that may or may not be helpful in terms of tweaking my thoughts.. or allowing me to look out for certain things that I might not have had considered previously.. but I doubt that I have changed very much because sometimes just the passage of time could change how a bet might be considered and/or negotiated.

im not the one making claims and setting deadlines.. im doing the opposite. im dispelling peoples "certainty's"

for me the odds of 1 application in 2024 is higher than some at same time in 2024
for me the odds of some at same time in 2024 is higher than most in quick succession but separate in 2024
for me the odds of most in 2024 is higher than 1 in 2023
for me the odds of 1 in 2023 is lower then majority of alternatives
all 12 at same time. lowest of all alternatives

there is also no point in blanket statements of "four get approved" because although readings of previous applications in last few months may indicate only 4 may be fairly treated. the companies can re-file and adjust any day and change before 2024.. but im sure that 2023 is not an approval year. and if more then one is approved in 2024 it wont be most/all at same time.

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you also made a comment in other posts about the "let the market choose" well seeing as these spot etf will all be shadowing the bitcoin price the ups-downs of the market would be the same and the fiat-share-fiat of triggering cap gains/losses will be the same. the only main differeince of choices will be
a. preference of the company brand (grayscale, ark, blackrock)
b. preference of the agent brand
c. fee's
d. share/sat rate

many people that are big income earners would invest in ones where 1 share is 0.001
many people that are min wage earners would invest in ones where 1 share is 0.00001

the markets will play the same market patterns but minimum wage earners investing in their pension wont be able to put their 5% monthly to buy a whole 1 share of one brand. but can buy dozens of shares of other brand
so the differences between the ETF offerings is their peg rate and fee's

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have you noticed how you went fro a stance just days ago of meriting others suggesting 2023 approval OR 12 at same time suggestions.. and you repeating them suggestions as high odds
to now have a more rational possibility of 4 within first quarter of 2024..

im not setting deadlines.. instead im hedging against the suggestions/ calming down the suggestions.. the only HUMOUR i will give is 50 merit to you if one was approved in 2023

Sure, sometimes some primary sources may well need to be looked at besides what people are saying, and there are various levels of research that others might have had done, if they are linking their sources, and maybe sometimes you might end up being a good source for some primary materials if you link the materials, but you don't always link your resources either, so some times guys will need to have faith in regards to your resources, and surely sometimes it may well not matter to do "further" research on a project or to do "better research" because sometimes it will take a long time to suss out some of the primary sources and even some needs to interview people or to travel or to otherwise be resourceful with some documents, whether they are legal documents or reading various kinds of bitcoin-related code... to the extent that might be part of the topic.

Sometimes you say that you do research, but you come out with baloney ideas, so sometimes the research is not leading, even you, to very decent conclusions and/or presentations that are either unclear, misleading or wrong.


Based on speculation that does not even matter as much as you are seeming to now make it out to be.

You are placing more concreteness into my statement than I had meant to say.. and even when it came down to framing our potentially earlier bet (that you rejected but I proposed), I had mentioned that I would be willing to bet more than 6 applicants would get approved at the same time and suggesting that if you wanted to take the other side of such bet, then you would be saying 6 or fewer would get approved.. which seems quite great since you had affirmatively said no more than 4, and maybe it would be better for me to get 5 and above especially since I don't have as much confidence as you seem to have, and if you seem to have confidence of no more than 4, then maybe we should adjust the bet in order to account for the certainty of your claims rather than my already conceded uncertainty that you are trying to suggest that I said something that I did not.. even though I said that all of them might get approved, but you are correct, I did not do any research except for my undstanding that they SEC is getting all of them to update or refile their applications and the SEC would likely need to distinguish them on some kind of a rationale basis.. which in my thinking the ONLY one really distinguishable is Grayscale because of its many civil lawsuit issues and even some allegations that could end up converting into criminal allegations, especially if we are talking about fraud..  

So you have already come off as pretty confident in such a bet, and I have already stated that I am only around 50/50 confident, and I hardly know shit, so I am not even placing much weight on how much that I am inclined to suggest that I am right, except to say that I am more inclined towards my side than your side, and the more that we go back and forth, my opinion might end up changing, but at the time that I proposed the bet, that was my inclination...

so my making the proposed bet does not even necessarily mean that I have a lot of confidence, but I do have enough confidence to see if you are willing to stand up for your words enough to take the other side of the bet.  Maybe we could bet 10k satoshis or something like that, even though it might not even cover fees.. and surely you may well not be agreeable (you party pooper) to using the lightning network to receive your BTC transaction if you were to win..... that saves on current fees which current fees are probably right around the same amount that I am currently proposing for our bet. .. anyhow, we would not need to bet in BTC or satoshis or whatever, we could just make a bet that might result in some kind of concession from the other, and those are known as gentlemen bets, if you know of such a social and interactive and sometimes funzies concept... if you are supposedly human, as you claim to be, then you should know about these kinds of practices.. ie fun.


I am still willing to take a bet that more than 4 will be approved at the same time, even though I have not done shit for research, and I don't think that I need to based on how busy I am writing long posts to guys like you... not even claiming that you are not unique in your own right.. but recall we had one or two previous similar battles in one of the Craig Wright related threads? or was it another thread?  I cannot remember exactly which thread it was, and I am not going to research into the matter at this particular moment.. I do recall that at one point I was arguing with you about how you said that people needed to reach bitcoin's fair market value or some other thing that I considered to be worth arguing about at that (or those) particular time(s).


Well, that would be grounds to deny the ones that do not meet SEC's minimum standards, and so does that mean that you are still wanting to not take the bet about no more than 4 get approved, and I will blindly bet that more than 4 get approved (let's say within two weeks of the first approval).  Let's say that I am saying that more than 4 of the applicants get approved (that may or may not end up including Grayscale) within 2 weeks of the date that the first one gets approved.. .and you are taking the opposite side of that bet... and maybe we can put a time-limit for the running of the bet.. by no later than 1st quarter of 2024... or something like that.


You make some good points there.. .and there is some validity to any kind of claim that the SEC wants to maintain some standards so that it does not have to approve shitcoin ETFs merely because they had approved some BTC ETFs.. and other standards as well... but surely, there can be some difficulties regarding where to draw the line and your research may well have helped you in that regard, but I am still willing to bet you about the 4 or more getting approved within 2 weeks by no later than the end of the 1st quarter of 2024 thingie.


Ok.. so with all your supposed previous research and your further thoughts on the matter, are you sticking with your no more than 4 are going to get approved claim, or do you need some wiggle room in regards to that?  Even with more wiggle room, I might still be willing to take the other side of the bet, even though I have done hardly jack for research beyond what I have heard and maybe I can look at a few documents.. I am not a dummy but I also don't feel like I have a lot of time to be trying to figure out some of these kinds of potentially irrelevant details... even though you have concluded that they are relevant and a kind of insightful (if not superior) knowledge that you have based on your having had done more due diligence than this here cat.

i dont make claims of superior knowledge but i do admit i do do research. my claims are of opinion based on math logic common sense and research..
the parts that get me annoyed, (and yes i confess i do show my annoyances when i write. im human, not a script bot)..  is when people pretend to be influencers or hope to send their message out to go viral or get attention, trying to shout deadlines of big news to cause some media hype.. but they themselves have not even done any research.. (not personal to just you. a few have done it which is multiplying the annoyance..  which then requires poking at suggested reasoning)

for instance
december is not actually a deadline of approval/rejection of the 12.. yet some keep saying it is

for instance the hype of
"all 12 will get approved at same time"
based on what!!!??

if people even took a non-superior, common sense glance at all 12 they would see many of the applications fall short on even basic/standard fiat asset  ETF practices of fund management security/processes.. so it does annoy me when blanket statements are made to suggest market movements are approaching due to all ETF being approved on X date.. but lack any reasonable justification for why they think all of them will be approved at same time(non superiorly, just logically, commonsensically based on even a glance of the applications)


but thats the thing.. a passing glance at all applications shows not all of them meet the min SEC standards. and the SEC is not there just to rubber stamp any boiler room scam into running on nasdaq and just play "let the market decide". there would be lawsuit hell if the SEC took that much of a back seat  (though yes decades of seeing fiat boiler room scams and inaction of SEC may appear the contrary)

however mentioning it again. the SEC also wants to ensure the first approval "sets the standard" as its a precedence. setting minimal requirements for the next application to reach/exceed.

you might be right that the SEC doesnt want to set a super high bar/barrier of entry standard so "might" approve more than one/in quick succession/same time. but looking (even at a glance) at the applications. not all of them have the basic kinks worked out

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you know what.. just for pure humour. non mometary. not a gamble
if approval happens 2023.. ill merit your post
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.63181711
with 50 merits..
if not 2023 you merit any post of mine you like with just 1 merit

I am tending not to take any of it personally, so I otherwise stand by what I already stated, even if you are saying that you are trying NOT to either be patronizing or overlygeneralizing.. so no problem... I just pointed out what I had sensed in that part of what I was responding to.


I find that sometimes you are trying to suggest that you have superior handles on facts and logic, so that can be a bit irritating.. but no problem, I will try to stick with the topic, but it is difficult to resist when you are making those kinds of claims to superior knowledge.. it just seems unnecessary, even if it might be true from time to time.


Yes, and it would be a mistake to select the winner as Blackrock only, even if they might be superior.   The market can choose in regards to which product is superior as long as each of the products have mechanisms in place that protect consumers in regards to rug pulling, price manipulation, lack of truthful disclosures or whatever it is that the SEC is supposed trying to protect when it comes to different ways that the various ETF applicants might set up their ETF and try to distinguish themselves from other players.. whether it is fees or liquidity or some other kind of term/service that they might offer.


You are not saying anything that I don't already know, and my main reason for bringing it up is in regards to some financial motivations that might sometimes end up existing if someone else holds the keys and they might not be obligated to share forks or to recognize forks, which may well end up having ramifications on customers.

We both should agree that clients would buy shares are entering into a kind of contractual relationship that likely is not going to allow them to directly and immediately take possession of coins, so it can surely become problematic for anyone who does not have possession of coins and their is a limited supply and they might consider that they have a lot of coins (let's say 100k coins), and then some kind of drama happens and they might not be able to get what they thought was their coins... we have enough examples with these kinds of problems in the last year and a half, so why should I have to point out more potential products even though we would be dealing with a different kind of product when referring to a spot ETF as compared with an exchange and some of the things that they were doing and other kinds of third parties who either did not end up having the coins or they were engaging in questionable practiced with what coins they did have.


These are moving targets and it is not just specifically US regulatory proposals that I am referring to.  There are various patterns of demonizing self-custody and trying to put restrictions on it, and I cannot help you if you do not recognize some of those attempts to control BTC and to scare people from getting involved in BTC.  Sure there are some times exaggerations and misunderstandings about what is happening, what has been passed, proposed or what is likely to pass and what might happen if it is passed.  Sometimes the exchanges will impose their own restrictions based on waht they think might be required later.. for example the recent  announcement of a Gemini rule in the UK that withdrawals/deposits can ONLY be with authorized services... which seems to be an attack on direct BTC transactions with the exchange... even if they might not immediately enforce it, there are all kinds of those kinds of examples of restrictions that I could describe and you are blind if you believe none of that is happening and/or it is not "significant" enough to matter.


Could make it interesting, and I am not even referring to any need for any significant amount.  There is another possibility of setting the terms of the bet, and it would not need to be money but instead could just be something non-monetary.  I have probably proposed more than 10 bets, but I cannot ever recall being able to work through the details of the bet in such a way that the terms were clear and the bet was actually entered into.


We are probably not very different in regards to how you seem to be maintaining your stash, even though my techniques are a little bit different from yours, I still consider that I am not playing news and/or sentiment, and largely I established most of my BTC position in 2014 and 2015.. so I have largely been in maintenance stage rather than accumulation stage since then - while at the same time, I do have my practice of selling on the way up and buying on the way down,

but I hardly consider any of that to be changed by the news.. even though  there will be times in which I will identify certain price ranges that I believe are either resistance or support or that I might be consider to be pass through areas, so sometimes I might adjust some of my orders in those ranges once I have identified them, but it tends to be tweaks rather than any large changes, and also it keeps the overall dynamic of selling on the way up and buying on the way down.. and surely some day there might be some event (or BTC price movement) that happens that triggers me to whimsically take some kind of a buy or a sell action that I had not previously planned on doing.. and those kinds of things have happened a few times in my BTC history, but so far it seems that those kinds of triggering things happened outside of bitcoin rather than anything in regards to bitcoin or bitcoin price movements.  

So for example, if the BTC price were to shoot up from our current price of $37.4K-ish to about $374k in a relatively short period of time (let's say less than a year), I might choose to sell a bit higher percentage of my BTC than what is in my usual allocation BTC sales that tends to be no more than 10% sales for every doubling of the BTC price.... and frequently it seems that my levels of sales is even lower than that... It seems to be something like 5% for every doubling of the BTC price.. even though I know that I am allowed and authorized to sell up to 10% for every doubling, and even deeper down, by just doing the math, many of us likely realize that if the BTC price doubles, then our profits have gone up 50%..

So for example if we have 10 BTC and the price goes from $30k to $60k, then the value of our BTC holdings has gone from $300k to $600k, so usually at the price of $60k per BTC, if I were to have 10 BTC, I would be authorized to sell up to $60k (1 BTC), but usually I am selling more like $30k (0.5 BTC), and some people would be tempted to sell half of their BTC at $60k which would be 5 BTC and $300k in profits, but part of the problem with that is those guys end up losing a lot of the power of the compounding effects of bitcoin, so all the way from 2015 when the BTC price was $250, it had doubled at least 8 times.

1) $250 to $500

2) $500 to $1,000

3) $1,000 to $2,000

4) $2,000 to $4,000

5) $4,000 to $8,000

6) $8,000 to $16,000

7) $16,000 to $32,000

8 ) $32,000 to $64,000

9) $64,000 to $128,000

And, even though the BTC price was in the start of the 9th doubling, we regressed back into the top of the 6th doubling, but then we can imagine a difference if we were to take out all of the profits each of the times, then our BTC portfolio would not have advantaged from the compounding effects, but if we take out somewhere between 5% and 10%, we still have a remaining 40% to 45% of the profits that rollover and add to the profits for the next time around with a kind of compounding effect that has already happened 7 to 8 times for anyone who had mostly been holding their BTC since 2015 and allowed most of their BTC to compound rather than pulling out a higher percentage of their profits along the way.

Sure, we never know which way the BTC price is going to go and/or whether we might be able to benefit from the compounding effects that are possible in BTC and that have significantly and materially happened over the years.. even though there might be times that some of us might be worried about how BIG is the correction and whether the BTC price is going to recover after it had corrected so greatly.  So I guess that I am saying that systems can be put into place to try to take advantage of the price going up and even benefiting from the price going down too.. yet anyone who had gotten into BTC in more recent times would be starting out with higher numbers and they might have troubles going through as many doublings as someone who had gotten into BTC at earlier times.

i have not, dont and wont do ass-kissery, hug a newbie games... dont take it personally, most of the time although i say the "you" word when quoting someone. i also recognise that hundreds of other people read these topics too, so it can apply to them too if they had similar opinions. so its not always pointing at the person i quote but others reading it that have similar idea's

but when forum topics do have their facts straight there's nothing i need to add to the topic, i mostly get involved in adding in details that are either incorrect or lack the finer detail.
most friendly styles of messaging is less about facts and more about trying to win someones trust to say any BS. and i find that tactic even worse than my direct approach


thats why the SEC doesnt want to make mistakes and less likely to broadstroke approve several in one go


when it comes to development/fork decisions. who holds more coin doesnt matter.. its who owns the most economic nodes(services) and who owns most successful mining pools.. that what chooses the vote.. and with added sponsorship of devs to add features that align to a corporations mission.. that pushes things more then how many thousands of coin they custodianised


the US regulations/proposals are not even suggesting self-custody is bad.. thats just the mis-representations of a few of the mixer crowd not liking that their affiliated service is in hot water so they are trying to pretend the whole bitcoin ecosystem is at threat to garner support for a cause they dont even understand


i dont bet, gamble or trade on this forum. nice try though


news/social drama pumping is temporary.. those are pump and dumps..

actual lumpsum buying and hoarding to then collateralise to give shares for pension investors to buy and hoard shares for years.. where those shares are not sold back into baskets to unlock bitcoin again.. those types of events are the value riser stuff i look for.. things that keep prices up so the next 'bottom' is higher then last bottom.. the next top is higher then the last. im not interested in the daily whims of news speculation temporary pump and dumps

i dont do day trading any more.. i just hoard and play it long. i look for the actual events that cause long term change good/bad. i dont value my hoard in the daily whims of media

I kind of agree with you even though I find your way of saying it as a bit patronizing and maybe even overly generalizing.

There are ways to have opinions about topics that are not ONLY just based on the number of bitcoin that we might hold or whether we might be better off if our bags are pumped, and sure there are differences between people who directly hold BTC and people who get exposure through markets through third parties or even if there might be pension plans and retirement accounts that are able to buy third party offered products and not able to buy BTC directly.

For sure, there are a lot of potential disadvantages to having so many BIG players starting to hold BTC for people and those people NOT being able to take direct possession of such BTC unless they sell their share(s) and buy the BTC directly.  So, surely there are a lot of possibilities that open up for shenanigans, and it is unclear if some of them will end up getting reckt if they are not HOLDING the underlying BTC, but then when it comes time for making certain kinds of votes about BTC and/or forks, then the fact that BTC are actually held by entities rather than individuals, some of the BTC incentives could end up getting perverted by such dynamics of normies putting value into BTC so that Blackrock (and some other larger players) can hold and/or control potentially large quantities of BTC and the forks off of such BTC.  It might not be clear how many years it might take before some of the dynamics of bitcoin ends up being perverted, especially since legislators are already trying to proclaim that BTC is ONLY valid if it is held by third parties, and those kinds of dynamics could cause quite a bit of challenges for various individual BTC HODLers...   

There are likely going to be continued informational campaigns regarding the value of BTC self-custody. and so it is difficult to see in advance how self-custody versus third party custody is going to end up playing out with the passage of time.


We can agree to disagree, and I am not going to claim to have had studied the details of the various offerings.. but maybe we could make a bet.. and if more than 6 get approved, then I win... hahahahahaha.. I am not really willing to bet very much, but it could be fun, even though we would need to find a mutually agreeable escrow and otherwise work out the terms... which I might end up getting screwed if I am not even very comfortable with my somewhat SOMA speculations in this direction.


Even though this is a grayscale thread, I doubt that Grayscale is a good example, because purportedly they already have enough BTC (600k or so) to cover all the shares, so the GBTC shares would get converted into Grayscale ETF shares... so yeah, maybe BTC have to be moved around, but on net there is no additional BTC purchases from the mere conversion. .even though there could be desires to get in and out of them when the new shares start to get traded.

The other ETFs would presumptively be purchasing BTC at the same rate that clients pile into the ETF products, so as soon as the ETFs go on the market, and whether there are any special acquisition abilities in the first 90 days, prior to the ETF actually going live, then surely I am not sure if that might create some market pressures, and I am not even aware of how it works with any kind of particularity.


You don't seem to be saying anything different than me in the pumping expectations arena.  I was largely proclaiming that pumping would be likely to come from the news of the BTC spot ETF approval in part based on the regulatory clarity that it helps to provide and the other part based on the desire to start to front run the actual product, which seems to be possible by retail and other folks who might have cash that is sitting on the sidelines and wanting to participate in some BTC pumpening.. which surely may or may not end up playing out, but I am more inclined to believe that there will be pump upon the news of whatever BTC spot ETF approvals end up happening rather than no pump or rather than a dump..

...and sure there could be some other counter-vailing news coming out at the same time, so I am not the kind of person who plays around in these kinds of plays anyhow.  I have been employing my own same system since about late 2015, which is to sell on the way up and buy on the way down, so I hardly give any shits because if the BTC price goes up I sell and if it goes down I buy.  I don't change much of anything based on what I believe might happen, except maybe on the margins.. or maybe I might change the intervals of my sales or my buys depending on how fast I might speculate that the BTC price might more in certain ranges... but ultimately, I rely little on predictions and I am more or less like a bot... but doing my resets manually since I know jack shit about how to get a bot to cooperate with my ideas of what to do without screwing things up.

the reason i say about stop hoping for spot approval in 2023.. because the only people wanting it are impatient people hoping for market reaction..
most bitcoins want to hold bitcoin not shares, so most bitcoins excited about ETF approvals are not exaggerating how soon a approval will happen for the ability to themselves buy shares. but instead they want it soon to see markets reaction...

as for thinking 12 will get approved at same time. that again is a pipe dream.. half the applications dont meet all specifications.. so they are not all going to get approved at same time.. at best id say 4.. but personally id say 1

..
as for the last part about the agents buying baskets
(for scenarios sake of mentioning a company lets use the topics brand: grayscale)
as soon as an approval is done. 90 days later the GBTC ETF is operational and grayscale is giving out its shares(EG 600k coin = XXXmil equivalent shares)
meaning the supply of shares is high on the 91st day.
it will take a while before greyscales own allotment of shares are sold to the public. meaning plenty of time from application approved to needing to add more baskets to supply later demand. maybe 3-6 months. so agents wont need to buy on approval day in large lumps. to then custodianise into coinbase to then collateralise to get greyscale to offer shares to agents to then sell shares to customers.. it would be a 3-6 month thing not a 1 day mega event.

grayscale wont want to accept agent openings on the 91st day as thats competition against grayscales own share allotment. so i doubt we would see agents flocking in on the 91st day buying and hoarding baskets of thousands of coins each all at once
(grayscale will have their own internal vetting process of who can be a agent/broker/dealer of their shares)

so again not some 1 day event where everyone goes on a BTC lump sum purchase event of thousands of coin in one day

yes of course there will be sentimental FOMO pumping. but not what id describe as lump sum basket buying the day a ETF is approved... my opinion ofcourse

No problem.  We have differing underlying theories about what we believe might end up happening, and in accordance to my theory, I doubt that the SEC is going to approve any of them until all of them have had a chance to update their application in order to have the liquidation/acquisition avenues/procedures clarified.

Under your theory none of this matters because Blackrock already knows what they are doing .. blah blah blah.. but under my theory Blackrock is going to get approved at the same time as the other 12 or whatever number of the applicants (including Grayscale conversion or not) ends up getting approved.


I will agree that is a good point to support that approval in 2023 does not make any material difference in terms of actual operation of the ETF.. so fair enough on that one... so then the other portion is just for the SEC to have the approval out of the way for whatever Christmas break and/or government shutdown interferences that might be upcoming.


Oh gawd.. here is one of the parts where you get a wee bit annoying again.  For your info, I hardly give any shits if BTC pumps or not, so I am not framing any of my thinking based on pump hopium, even though I do believe that BTC could pump based on news of an approval.. but yeah, maybe they would not be able to materially acquire BTC absent any opening and/or client purchases apart from the BTC that private persons (and private institutions and governments) decide to gather on their own based on these kinds of regulatory clarity ideas and also ideas to potentially front-run the BIGGER players and to front run those who are planning to get BTC through an ETF.

a december deadline has nothing to do with any serious ETF filing deadlines.. its just a consultation period of a filing that is not ticking very many boxes at all. so the december deadline has no connection to any importance of rushing other applications.. that was my whole point

we are already in november so you thinking there is chances of a 2023 operation also fall flat because even if one magically gets accepted it would be another 90days before fully operational.. so again 2024.

you are not going to see an operational ETF in 2023 so stop hoping for spot market pumps in 2023 caused by ETF agent basket purchases
sorry not gonna happen within the next 6 weeks

I already said like 2 or 3 times that I did not provide that earlier link in order to get into any specific ETF application (only to show that there has been a request for clarification from the applications that I believes justifies at least a 2 week delay - until at least December 1 for all of the BTC spot ETF applicants), and so my theory is that several of them are going to be approved at the same time, and maybe or maybe not Grayscale will be included in the approvals.. I am more inclined towards Grayscale also being included.. even though it seems that they may have engaged in something close to criminal conduct.   

I am also inclined towards hearing news of the approvals (so they can actually start operations) in 2023 rather than 2024 or later (or never as you suggest might happen).

And, yes, as far as I understand what you might be saying. You are leaning towards Blackrock first and maybe at a date in mid 2024 rather than early 2024, and maybe not any of the others being approved except Blackrock..  maybe I should go back and attempt to parse other things that you said to the extent that any of us (including you) might have any better clues than anyone else.  I will admit that I am largely guessing based on some of the reasons that I already scatteredly attempted to outline.

ETF's are not a new invention. they have been around for 30 years. things like settling shares for cash and avoiding 'in-kind' swaps to other assets has always been a condition.. so yes applications that want to self custody and do in-kind swps direct to bitcoin wont get accepted..

this again is where some applications are not getting fact tracked. they are trying to re-invent the wheel but not knowing even the standard conditions of traditional ETF. so yes they will be denied..

again its the reason im saying blackrock has better odds then the one you linked

Sometimes you provide some interesting talking points Franky, but sometimes you can be so annoying too when you seem to lecture in regards to some basics and then you seem to either gloss over other basics or to miss some whole areas of basic dynamics.

If the SEC ends up being accused of favoritism or even accused of being arbitrary and/or capricious, it does not necessarily need to be actually true that they are engaging in favoritism or that they are being arbitrary and/or capricious or lacking in a rational basis for their various chosen actions and/or outcomes, but if there are perceptions of favoritism and/or perceptions of lacking in rational basis for various approvals, then those can end up being sufficient hooks for people and/or entities to file lawsuits or to seek to overturn or to interfere with the SEC's decisions.

Also, no matter what there are going to be congressmen who approve or disapprove what branches of the executive are doing and might well end up being active or less active in regards to trying to change the powers of the SEC and/or Gensler, and those kinds of pushbacks can have some effects depending on how extensive they might be.. and maybe even sometimes back and forth with the White House in regards to what the President wants (not claiming that Biden knows much of what is going on, but Biden has people who are engaging in those kinds of interactions with the SEC and/or with Gensler.. the Exec is the boss of Gensler and can actually fire him.. congress can make life miserable for the SEC and Gensler but they might not be able to get the President and/or the courts to go along with their various grumblings about the SEC/Gensler).


It seems that the SEC is requiring a kind of assurance that the applicants are going to be using "approved" liquidation (acquisition) channels... so in that regard, when the SEC is soliciting amendments to the application (or the refiling), they are letting those ones who do not do it that they are going to be denied if they do not have the approved liquidation/acquisition channels with their anticipated procedures.

applications are not a "first-in" "first-accepted" policy.. some applications can get filed years ago and go for years being delayed, declined, appealed, re-filed, delayed, denied, appealed, refilled. (repeat repeat repeat) whilst others can be fast tracked and just tick all SEC boxes and get approved before the "first-in"

looking at all applications.. blackrock ticks more boxes then greyscale.
im not saying SEC will accept blackrock before THEIR deadline.. but im saying its more then likely the SEC will delay, deny-appeal,re-file process all the others

the SEC knows whomever gets accepted forms the precedence of criteria which other companies can then emulate/copy as a template to fast track their attempts for second, third place acceptance.. so the first acceptance needs to truly tick all boxes

there are other details like wallstreet/regulators want to have a high barrier of entry. its to prevent cheap competition offering similar services. so companies want to follow regulations to a point where its difficult for other companies to emulate.

i wouldnt call it favouritism for the SEC to pick blackrock first. id call it blackrock know how to do ETF applications, know what the SEC needs. and has experience in operating ETF.
its kind of like a job interview. would you recruit low barrier of entry inexperienced person with no skills with some legal trouble.. or a skilled/experienced recruit..

im playing the odds that 2024 WILL see a ETF operating.. but no announcement as soon as december.. and definitely not some unpopular untested brand like the one applying that wants self custody and share redeems 'in-kind' direct to crypto to avoid cash settlement (gain triggers)

my personal belief on favouritism would be if SEC was waiting for "roth", JPmorgan or Chasebank or some other commercial bank to apply

You make a lot of decent points Franky.. and I am not even that attached to any opinion that I have expressed in regards to my inclinations for December... but I do have some beliefs that underpin why I am inclined towards some of my thinking about some of the balancing that is going on in Gensler's thinking and/or the SEC.. and sure sometimes I am conflicted too since I am not really any kind of expert to know how much weight he or the SEC might give to some of the tradeoffs.

The SEC has been engaged in a quite a few legal battles and losing them, not only their legal battle with Grayscale, but also several aspects with their legal battles with Ripple and some of the other projects that they are wanting to label as securities.. so they have pretty strong opinions about everything else but bitcoin is a security, but the courts are not going along with them.

So just in regards to the bitcoin related ETFs, Blackrock has ONLY been in the application game for a few months, but once Blackrock filed (was it after the SEC lost the Grayscale or the Ripple case.. anyhow those two cases were lost right around the same time anyhow), it seemed that the sentiment changed towards the likelihood that an ETF would be approved in a fairly soon manner.

There is a kind of balancing regarding whether Blackrock could get approved first when there are around a dozen other applicants, and surely the Grayscale conversion does not fit into the same bucket as the various other ETF applicants... but a lot of the ETF applications are setting themselves up in similar ways, in accordance with back and forth communications with the SEC.

It seems to me that the SEC has to go through their approval process without appearances of favoritism (towards Blackrock for example, or unduly beating up on Grayscale, even though the court had beaten up the SEC pretty badly in their Grayscale decision).  If they are going to deny any of the ETFs or distinguish one situation from another they have to make sure that they have pretty sound reasoning since the court had already ruled that the SEC's prior reasoning had little to no reasoning involved (which is part of the definition of arbitrary and capricious) including the SEC's attempt to suggest that a futures ETF product is superior to a spot ETF product in terms of following the market (or not being able to be manipulated).

I hate to even say much more because I feel that I am getting out of my depth.. and surely there are some theories that are similar to yours Franky in which some folks are saying that Gensler is not really going to approve, just delay delay and delay, and even if you might not have that strong of an assertion, Franky, I am just not persuaded that the SEC remains in that kind of a mode - even given some of the ways that Gensler has recently been talking about the status of the Spot BTC ETFs and even the level of the SEC's seeking various clarifications and/or coordinations which just seems to support that they are imminent to be approved.. and that they are likely all to be approved.. even Grayscale with some of what seems to have had been fraud going on.. .. and again, I am not necessarily going to be surprised if a rabbit gets pulled out of a hat in regards to some kind of a new reason to delay everyone.. maybe even if some new criminal charges were to be brought against Grayscale that might force them to get bought by blackrock or some other Big company and/or they would like to get rid of Binance too.. but those all seem to be wishing for too much too soon, and I have my doubts about whether they are going to be able to get their list of wishes and just be faced with so much pressure to approve a Spot ETF.. even quite a bit of vocalization and various ongoing threats coming out of congress too.