Topic: GBTC Bitcoin Investment Trust Observer - page 20. (Read 262354 times)

I will research it.

Oh, look, GBTC is no longer insured: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/5im4x2/gbtc_premium/db9o1c0/

Hmm, and now, yesterday, it was the lowest percent difference since the end of March.

GBTC's at its lowest percent difference compared to the BTC price since the middle of April.

do you really think the winklevoss will sell their own bitcoin?

Sure they might sell some of it, but I'm pretty sure the winklevoss plan to drive up the value of bitcoin so that their insane stash will be worth much more. And they'll probably be about the richest persons on the planet.

I think they use most of the 300k stash as a buffer, so that they can re-buy bitcoin when it's profitable to do so, and just sell some of their own stash to the ETF when bitcoin is prohibitively expensive. So that they can leverage even more from their own ETF than they would have been able to do if they didn't ave that stash.

Even if they didn't want the price of bitcoin to increase, they would want the price of their ETF to increase, so that their investors would be happy. But since the two are linked, the rise of their ETF price will result in driving the bitcoin price up and vice-versa. So either way, directly or indirectly, the winklevoss have a high stake in making sure the bitcoin price goes through the roof.

They're huge players in this game, they will stand to make obscene amounts of money if this ETF can finally get approval (at some point in our life time )

winklevoss already have huge amounts of BTC (around 300k)

http://moneymorning.com/2016/09/09/why-the-first-bitcoin-etf-could-double-the-price-of-bitcoin/

It could just be a coincidence, but the GBTC selloff last week might be seen as a signal that someone knew ahead of time that all the chaos that went down today was going to go down.

Yeah, the idea is that they'd be buying BTC proper, as the price is predicted to go up if COIN or XBTC gets approved (due to the predicted new investment demand coming in from the stock market).

Instead, the BTC price just dropped.

Mind you, it seems that the BTC price always drops whenever good news comes out.

It might be better based off of that number, and that's because of the ETF getting in on the value of Bitcoin while it was going up during the past 7 months, but the trend for the ETF is going to mellow out very quickly, especially if Bitcoin doesn't go anywhere for a while. It's not bad though, being worth 2.1x the amount you were 12 months ago. I know a lot of companies that would kill for those kinds of numbers to put on their sheets.

isn't big price movement mainly down to it being a much smaller and less liquid market? its link to the raw bitcoin price is relatively far removed when you take into account all the factors in obtaining and trading it.



if they knew something, and surely no one does, not even the people who might approve it, i think we'd be seeing alot more real bitcoin action.

In the past year, it's up 210%. That's significantly better than the Bitcoin price.

Not sure but it's been a big flop as far as I can see. Promised so much yet delivered so little.

Disappointing.

Insiders pricing in future ETF approvals?

The GBTC price has been dropping since July 15th, a total of ~$30 per share (meaning ~$300 per bitcoin), which was a few days after the SEC cease and desist. In the same time period, the Bitcoin price has only dropped ~$30. Any theories?

Wow, jstolfi's comments to the SEC on XBTC are bad: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630.shtml

Reddit discussion on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4sxtw7/professional_bitcoin_troll_jorge_stolfi_comments/

I think you nailed it. I was wondering what will happen when xbtc and coin goes online. I totally agree that more competition will compress premium; more ETF will increase demand. The end result through, I suspect you are a little bit over estimated, I will be happy if reach 1k.

I anticipate GBTC will simply move from having no competitors to having many*. This will simultaneously reduce the premium, while increasing the demand of Bitcoin in general, thus increasing the price. I further speculate that the current premium represents what that future valuation of (Bitcoin price + premium) will be equal to the current GBTC (Bitcoin price + premium), or ~$1200. Maybe it goes from $650/550 to $1100/100.  Then finally, once that equilibrium exists, more gains across all Bitcoin investment vehicles, all with a lower relative premium than before.

I recently moved from GBTC holdings to a self directed IRA which can hold Bitcoins, through BitcoinIRA ( www.BitcoinIRA.com ) . The premium over spot 5-7% neighborhood as opposed to 50-100%.

*Already there are several. GBTC is available to most investors. Self directed IRAs are only available to accredited investors.  Already this represents two tiers of friction, or ease of entry. Friction will be maximally reduced when offerings on BATS or NASDAQ allow virtually anyone with access to the stock market the ability to invest.

It's hard to say. The GBTC price has been at an 80%+ premium to the Bitcoin price over the past week, but it's tended to be priced at a significant premium for practically its entire existence -- and this only seems to have gradually increased over time -- so I don't know whether this really matters at this point. Due to the way it's designed, it may always sell at a significant premium to the Bitcoin spot, and keep in mind that it's done better that the Bitcoin price over recent periods. Until we get the COIN or XBTC ETFs this may be your easiest, closest exposure to the BTC price with a Roth IRA brokerage account.

One thing that's been on my mind is what might happen to the GBTC price once COIN or XBTC are actually approved. Some people have argued elsewhere that once one of them is approved, it could put downward pressure on GBTC's price. It's hard to say just how much of an impact there would actually be, though, and it might depend on how much time we have between the announcement of one of these alternatives and their actual roll out. I, for one, would prefer to be in one of them as compared to GBTC, given that they will be designed to better track the BTC price, so I'd be one of the people wanting to sell GBTC and buy COIN or XBTC.

Other people have argued that a COIN or XBTC approval would immediately help the BTC price, which would, at least in the short term, also help the GBTC price, so developing the optimal strategy to play these scenarios is still up for discussion.

Given the recent SEC fine that the Bitcoin Investment Trust has paid for past unregulated behavior, I also have to wonder what our options would be if the SEC ever wanted to play hard ball and actually shut GBTC down. Would a forced liquidation of BIT/GBTC's holdings at least get us back the BTC value of our individual shares, or would we end up taking a significant loss? This would be something to consider, given the premium we pay for our shares versus the actual Bitcoin price.