This entire thread about funds existing is retarded.
If the funds already have the coins then the new investors that perhaps would have bought btc directly will not and all other things equal the exchange rate will not increase or perhaps even decrease. If the funds don't have the coins then they have to acquire them on the open market after they launch. 
Topic: Where are the coins for Winkelvoss Trust & 2nd Market Bitcoin Investment Fund? (Read 3332 times)
October 25, 2013, 10:45:20 AM
October 25, 2013, 03:22:27 AM
IRA investing seems to be a good point for tax mitigation if you are ok with exposing your bitcoin ownership. Options couldn't hurt either. But wouldn't you want you know where these coins are or no?
An ability to invest in bitcoin through your IRA is a HUGE bonus
October 25, 2013, 03:15:25 AM
This entire thread about funds existing is retarded.
October 25, 2013, 02:15:37 AM
Both of them?
Dude get over it. Seriously. Let it go.
October 25, 2013, 01:59:46 AM
Both of them?
October 25, 2013, 01:59:22 AM
Getting off-topic. Certainly one can understand a bitcoin ETF. It should have bitcoins. Where are they?
The fund doesn't exist yet. The funds doesn't own any Bitcoins.
October 25, 2013, 01:56:16 AM
Getting off-topic. Certainly one can understand a bitcoin ETF. It should have bitcoins. Where are they?
October 25, 2013, 01:00:36 AM
That's like advocating people invest in Ponzi schemes since past returns were so great and there's no need to explore any further. One is bound to get lucky once in a while and sell before the collapse. I bet you'd jump on anyone calling bitcoin a Ponzi but it's ok for them to "invest" in Bitcoin with no idea about it?
I'm not the one claiming investing in Bitcoin is like investing in a Ponzi. That would be you.
Many if not most investors invest in at least some of the assets they own, directly or indirectly, with less than perfect knowledge of the asset. Is everyone with stock in an automobile company an expert in automotive engineering who could invent a car top to bottom? Is everyone who invests in Google or Apple an expert in search engines or computers?
Anyone who invests in a mutual fund is invested in dozens if not hundreds of different assets, and often as not, don't know much more than the general composition of the fund, much less are experts in every aspect of the business of every single stock they own. To claim that they have to be is ludicrous on its face.
October 25, 2013, 12:36:31 AM
That's like advocating people invest in Ponzi schemes since past returns were so great and there's no need to explore any further. One is bound to get lucky once in a while and sell before the collapse. I bet you'd jump on anyone calling bitcoin a Ponzi but it's ok for them to "invest" in Bitcoin with no idea about it?
October 25, 2013, 12:25:31 AM
Also if a bitcoin participant understands so little as to be unable to do basic transactions and cold storage it's pretty clear they can't possibly be an informed "investor" in bitcoin. Do you disagree?
Yes. All an investor generally has to know when arranging a portfolio is how assets have performed in the past and how they can be expected to perform in the future, especially in relation to other assets. Especially when a portfolio is diverse, a certain number of mistakes is tolerable, especially when someone has a small position in something volatile or as a hedge, because say, gold performs well when stocks perform poorly.
I think that an investor who simply decided BTC is likely to increase in value in the long term while experiencing a lot of short-term volatility, who knew nothing else about it, and invested some portion of a portfolio in it based solely on that assumption, would probably do just fine.
By comparison, someone who wanted to invest more substantially, or to do things like day trading BTC, would be foolish not to know more than that.
October 25, 2013, 12:12:19 AM
IRA investing seems to be a good point for tax mitigation if you are ok with exposing your bitcoin ownership. Options couldn't hurt either. But wouldn't you want you know where these coins are or no?
October 24, 2013, 11:45:45 PM
ETFs take advantage of economies of scale. Gold ETF can cost less in storage and insurance. Currency ETF has much cheaper exchange rates vs small scale buying and selling. Also don't get me wrong I don't have any tinfoil theories that this is a scam however anyone investing in this without seeing the coins is exposing himself to additional risk. If an employee embezzled the coins the insiders and their trader friends would likely know 1st and you would find out last. Also if a bitcoin participant understands so little as to be unable to do basic transactions and cold storage it's pretty clear they can't possibly be an informed "investor" in bitcoin. Do you disagree?
I disagree, because lots of those people are investing in Bitcoin, knowing what it is, and generally how it works (maybe not the nitty-gritty, but there are many people who want to invest in Bitcoin due to the economics of it, not the technical side), but are unable to because their money is locked in a brokerage due to IRA, or other reasons. Also, they could just not want to have to deal with a 'shady' online exchange, or deal with all the delays that entails. Also, you have to take advantage of the various features an ETF has other than just a method of trade, just because it comes built-into brokerages, like leverage, options, etc...
October 24, 2013, 11:16:20 PM
ETFs take advantage of economies of scale. Gold ETF can cost less in storage and insurance. Currency ETF has much cheaper exchange rates vs small scale buying and selling. Also don't get me wrong I don't have any tinfoil theories that this is a scam however anyone investing in this without seeing the coins is exposing himself to additional risk. If an employee embezzled the coins the insiders and their trader friends would likely know 1st and you would find out last. Also if a bitcoin participant understands so little as to be unable to do basic transactions and cold storage it's pretty clear they can't possibly be an informed "investor" in bitcoin. Do you disagree?
October 24, 2013, 10:55:33 PM
Setting aside my personal opinion that the modern legal ownership interpretation is inapplicable to bitcoin. If an ETF exists backed by bitcoins in an address no one knows do the ETF owners really own the bitcoins or do they simply own a promise of bitcoins? Also why would anyone want to "invest" in the exact opposite of what bitcoin is supposed to solve - counter party risk?
Actually, if one considers the Bitcoin community itself and the Bitcoin network as participants, the possibility of failure of the network or the technology is a form of counterparty risk itself. People who know nothing about the underlying technology are used to the risks of trusting some fund manager, though, or someone whose reputation would require them to make good on their representations. They're not so equipped to judge whether the underlying math is sound, to secure their own Bitcoin wallet, or to judge whether or not the whole thing will just dry up and blow away.
Almost anything in an ETF, whether a foreign currency or package of foreign currencies, raises the same question as to why the people investing in the fund just don't invest in the underlying asset. Because it's messy, to them, and they don't want to deal with it directly, but they do want to participate in and profit from the appreciation in value of the asset.
Really the question almost comes down to the question "why have ETFs at all for anything?" Apparently, people have decided they want these instruments and the market will make them available for purchase.
October 24, 2013, 10:16:21 PM
Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.
These are non-concerns.
Why would you need to PAY an auditor to verify coins in a bitcoin address? These are non-concerns.
Are you serious? Why would you PAY an auditor to verify an SEC approved ETF that will share the same the same space as SPDR? I don't even know where to begin with that...
Like they would hold all the coins in one publicly viewable address?!
Why not? Why have a 3d party auditor, when everyone can do it for you collectively?
Because ETFs, and ETFs have a standard, and not all ETFs can be verified collectively. Otherwise, you'd have to get the SEC to recognize Bitcoin's unique qualities, etc... You don't want to start making exceptions with this type of thing. Thats exactly how scams get started. Its funny how everyone here is always talking tinfoil hat, but basic standards to prevent fraud are laughed at.
October 24, 2013, 09:54:36 PM
Both the SecondMarket Trust and the ETF(will be) are audited. By 3rd parties.
These are non-concerns.
Why would you need to PAY an auditor to verify coins in a bitcoin address? These are non-concerns.
Are you serious? Why would you PAY an auditor to verify an SEC approved ETF that will share the same the same space as SPDR? I don't even know where to begin with that...
Like they would hold all the coins in one publicly viewable address?!
Why not? Why have a 3d party auditor, when everyone can do it for you collectively?
October 24, 2013, 09:35:43 PM
Setting aside my personal opinion that the modern legal ownership interpretation is inapplicable to bitcoin. If an ETF exists backed by bitcoins in an address no one knows do the ETF owners really own the bitcoins or do they simply own a promise of bitcoins? Also why would anyone want to "invest" in the exact opposite of what bitcoin is supposed to solve - counter party risk?
If you can hold direct you probably wouldn't. For many though (likely not people reading this) the ability to buy BTC as easily any other stock or ETF is attractive. I am sure the fund will come up with a way to transparently show they have 1BTC for every x shares issued. The funds ability to attract investors and thus fees depends on it.
October 24, 2013, 09:24:09 PM
Setting aside my personal opinion that the modern legal ownership interpretation is inapplicable to bitcoin. If an ETF exists backed by bitcoins in an address no one knows do the ETF owners really own the bitcoins or do they simply own a promise of bitcoins? Also why would anyone want to "invest" in the exact opposite of what bitcoin is supposed to solve - counter party risk?
October 24, 2013, 05:56:19 PM
Recent history is littered with worthless derivatives and financial shenanigans. Bitcoin promises a solution but ... Winklevoss trust and Second Market Bitcoin Investment Fund promise safety and security but where are the coins? None of their paperwork seem to show it. If anyone has a public address for their coins please post it. Otherwise these "Trusts" are nothing more then empty paper.
Nonsense. Floating a prospectus that is nothing more than empty paper would be a crime and people would go to prison. There are third party audits of this kind of fund, ensuring that this actually exists.
The Winklevoss twins have a reputation within the financial community and pulling off an outright scam would utterly destroy this reputation, rendering any other assets whose value depends on their name worthless as well. This would cost them a lot more than their relatively small investment in Bitcoin.
It is a reasonably good guess that the seed assets are the coins they bought months ago, and I don't know if anyone did any blockchain research to find out which coins, in particular, they acquired at first. I'd guess they acquired them somewhat stealthily to avoid driving up the price while they were acquiring it, but don't know for sure.
There is very little cause to doubt they actually acquired the coins. There would be absolutely no purpose to doing so. I wouldn't mind seeing the transactions on the blockchain, but it's more of a matter of curiosity than of tinfoil hat paranoia.
October 24, 2013, 05:35:57 PM
How would they be multi billionaires if they sold the coins in the trust? The buyers would be rich how does that make them rich? Also I never claimed they are frauds but there are many different frauds. They may have gotten the investment first then went to buy coins. Also how do you know the coins aren't hypothecated to many other trusts? You can have plenty of trusts and show the same coins to many different auditors. Again why wouldn't the trusts show their coins?
If you haven't understood the value of these trusts, how important they will be(are) to bitcoin gaining mainstream acceptance, and badly the trust holders want to shake bitcoin's stigma of illegal activity by now, then I'm just not going to be able to get to you.
I concede.
Its mind boggling that you people are OK with Bitcoin CFDs, with the fact that every major exchange operates without disclosing its Bitcoin addresses, etc..., yet you get all angry when an audited ETF is created. Seriously, its like if you stick a financial sounding name on anything some people here just get pissed off.
The 'point' of decentralization if its bunched into ETFs is that the people who want to and hold liquid usd so they can purchase 'real' BTC that they store in addresses that they are the only controller of the private key, can. Its not to force everybody into doing this, because in many cases it just isn't practical. It isn't to 'force' everybody to mine either, or to 'force' everybody to know their crypto.
In fact, BTC is designed such that only a small group of people need to mine, and only a small group of people need to know the crypto behind BTC. If it wasn't designed as such, it would fail. Thats why the world has these fun little things called 'professions' so that not everybody needs to understand everything.
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