Topic: GBTC Bitcoin Investment Trust Observer - page 65. (Read 262357 times)

Nice to see investors keep buying, even after the auction.

Apparently most people don't think this will happen, hence the current price.

http://www.coindesk.com/secondmarket-ceo-barry-silbert-talks-big-picture-vision-bitcoin-investment-trust/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-a-bitcoin-etf-risk-isn-t-virtual-1410120108
(Search google for the link, and you'll be able to read the whole article.)

Dude, are you shitting me?

You think the winklevoss twins are starting an ETF to be able to dump their 110,000 BTC?

Hahahaahaa.

Dude, wake up, that 110,000 BTC is used as needed liquidity to start the fund.

The twins will make billions - BILLIONS in fees alone from the ETF [AND ON TOP OF THAT] they will get to keep ALL of their Bitcoins too.  

It is their ETF fund - they get a cut of all the fees.  Imagine the number of massive buys once this fund launches.  Every mutual fund in the world will be able to legally buy BTC at that point.

I predicted last year the ETF was a done deal and I explained why.  I predicted last year ( in September) BTC would match gold price within one year and it did.  I predicted they would switch to bits and explained why.  Trust me on this ETF thing - it's gonna change everything [again].

I cannot believe so many people have no idea what this ETF really means and where Bitcoin's price is gonna go once it launches.

Next year $10,000 per Bitcoin will be considered cheap; hence the need for "bits" as the common household name when referring to Bitcoin.

Buy all you can now - BIT should go to OTC very soon (January at latest) and COIN is very close behind.

"Facts" are things that really happened.  Things that one just makes up are not facts.

Barry said that they did not enter bids of their own.  That he said so is a fact.

The syndicate members wanted more than 120'000 BTC.  It would be pointless to enter all of them in the auction, so SecondMarket picked the highest bids that until they had 50'000 BTC, and said sorry folks to the rest.  Even so, they got only 48'000 BTC, so some of the chosen members too walked away without coins.  If SM had entered the auction themselves as syndicate member or on their own, and won, those members who didn't get anything would think that SM picked their bid price after seeing theirs, so as to outbid them.  That is why any bidding by the syndicate organizer, within the syndicate or outside it, would be terribly unethical.  That is a fact too.

Perhaps SM did enter their own syndicate.  That would mean that they cheated on the other members.  I have no reason to trust Barry's honesty, but neither any reason to believe they did that.


Draper bought 30'000 coins at 600 $/BTC.  Why do you think he did not want to go for everything again?  Barry pocketed 150 grand, he got ...  Lol.

Why do you think that Barry created SMBIT, or the Winkles want to create COIN?  Hint: if one has 100'000 coins, how could one sell them without crashing the price?

What does this  have to do with Bitcoin--as "modern" as a spark gap Morse code radio in the age of smartphones?

They did not bid themselves [separately] because they were also part of the syndicate bids.  Bidding separately would have been a conflict of interest because they would be bidding against the pool, their own customers. 

Pooling ~$20 million together - INCLUDING their own money is completely ethical as the bids are made with the entire pool so everyone wins their fair share should any bids succeed.

You obviously don't understand why Barry Silbert put the syndicate together in the first place.

Hint:  It wasn't to get a petty hundred grand.  lol 

They explicitly said that they did NOT bid themselves.  Look for their statements to CoinDesk.

Doing so would be terribly unethical because they would know the bids of all the people who entered the syndicate.

Where are you getting those "facts" of yours? 

You're clueless - it's a fact that secondmarket was also a bidder themselves [as part of the syndicate] and will therefore, keep a portion of those Bitcoins won at the auction.

Try adding 2 plus 2....it's an amazing feeling.

Yes, 1% from any winning bid, IIRC.  That must be at least 150'000 USD in fees -- presumably, for a couple of days' work by a couple of people.  Not bad.

That's less than irrational. They said in their press release and twitter feed that the coins will be distributed to the bidders that they amalgamated into the syndicate which, by the way, does not even include them. They just gathered together a bunch of "finance experts" to bid -- they just played middle man (and probably took a fee for it, too).

So, this isn't just nuts. It's Bull trolling scam artistry.

That "Open Transparent and Connected"  thing looks even less transparent than SMBIT...

EDIT: Do you have a source for that claim about Barry looking at OTCMarket?


Bitcoin lost ~50% of its value in 2014.  No one can (or wants to) explain why it skyrocketed in 2013 or why it crashed in 2014.  No one can give any solid argument why it should go up in the future.

Anyone who recommends people to put their retirement money into bitcoin should be thrown in jail.

Bingo.

I think Barry held off on the application to grab these Bitcoins from the auction so it may not be until January.

But yes, I don't get why people don't get why this and coin will create a massive spike in the price.

People would no longer need to understand the tech or secure the coins or trade on scammy exchanges.  They would simply buy Bitcoin like they would any shares of stock.  This simplicity would make Bitcoin instantly more popular with millions of investors.

Add to that $8 trillion in the US alone from IRA and 401K account which would now be able to legally buy BTC.

Do you guys think all those money managers are gonna sit and not buy any of the biggest new tech since the Internet? 

Impossible.

Even if 1% of that $8 trillion goes into Bitcoin we will easily get at least a $10,000 price.

But I think we will get a much higher price next year as hundreds of billions go into Bitcoin and quickly, as money managers and investors race to be the first ones in ahead of the big [ETF] wave.

Sounds like derivatives to me. 

What's in this black box?  It's AA rated, trust me.

2007

LOL

A frustrating aspect of bitcoin is that there is essentially no data about the "bitcoin economy".  Every indicator that we would need to predict the price and evaluate its investment potential is hidden by the anonymity and globality of the protocol and by the private and unregulated character of the companies.  There are practically no public audits, market statistics, open policies, ...  One can extract lots of numbers from the blockchain, but most of the traffic there is just coins trashing around between addresses that belong to the same person, and no one can tell how much meaningful transactiosn are there, and what they are.  Investing in bitcoin is like jumping over a cliff in a foggy night, without seeing the other margin.  It cannot be a rational decision, only a statement of blind faith, that only fools would do.

In particular, we do not really understand how SMBIT operates, whether those numbers are real investments by the public or or self-investments by the managing company, who are the clients and why they choose to invest in SMBIT rather than buy bitcoin directly.   The contract terms are revealed only to investors that they have approves, it seems.  Are they required to strictly hold 0.1 BTC per share, and buy them immediately? Or do they have some leeway, to wait a few days for the best price?  Or are they only bound to return the right amount of dollars at the end, as defined the current market price?

I don't understand how they can sell their shares to US residents and citizens without approval of the SEC, even without an open market.  Perhaps they don't, and only sell to non-Americans?  Is the SMBIT managing company based in the US, or in a foreign country?

Someone claimed on this thread that they have been ordered by the SEC to stop liquidating their shares, but can still sell them -- which does not make sense to me.  Is that true?  If so, what is the reason? Would they tell investors if that is true?


I do not see why having an open market for SMBIT shares (or even the possibility of trading them over-the-counter) would bring more money to the bitcoin economy.  OK, people would be able to invest less than 25'000 USD on SMBIT shares --- but, at that level, they could buy bitcoin at the exchanges instead.  Clients who have SMBIT shares would be able to liquidate them in the market instead of with SMBIT; but they could do that with bitcoin too.  Since the liquidation value of SMBIT shares is pegged to the BTC price, and they pay no interest or dividends,  their market value cannot be much higher than their face value.  The market for SMBIT shares is likely to be a lot less liquid than that of bitcoin.

By the way, the Falcon bitcoin fund closed because of low demand:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-08/falcon-global-capital-closes-bitcoin-fund-because-of-slow-demand.html

GABI is having problems with their banks.  Does anyone know how Pantera's PBP is doing?  And what about that fund in Malta, that Matonis was advertising a couple months ago?

596 XBT bought yesterday

Barry is working to get the BIT listed here: http://www.otcmarkets.com/marketplaces/otcqx

Barry will deliver and I expect it to happen soon. And when it happens... To the moon 

Have to second this. After figuring out that Barry is often long on promises and short on delivery, he doesn't excite me as much as he used to.

I wouldn't rely on this. Year ago Silbert stated we are 3-6 months away from Wall Street moving big way into BTC. After a year I can't see anything of that.