Unpacking the Bitcoin ETF and What's Next | Roundup

Transcript

uh vanac analysts have predicted I think 2.4 billion combined in inflows into these spot Bitcoin ETFs in the first quarter Galaxy research uh has estimated 14 billion in the first year bitwise as Matt Hogan has said um that their firm is kind of projecting 55 billion into all these funds in the next five years so those are some different levels um physical gold ETFs hold about a hundred billion in assets under management um so people have said that they expect Bitcoin could reach that what's up everyone before we jump into the episode little plug for digital asset Summit coming up in London March 18th to 20th tickets are pacing so far ahead of

schedule that we had to decrease the discount code so instead of Empire 20 it is now Empire 10 head over to the website digital asset Summit Das London March 18th to 20th use code Empire 10 and get 10% off your ticket see you in London this episode is brought to you by PayPal here at Empire you know that Santi and I are really into real world use cases and always on the lookout for the next killer blockchain app we're excited to share that PayPal has arrived in crypto to unveil a way to seamlessly connect Fiat to digital currencies later in the show you will find out how you can use py USD to check out at millions of online stores all right everyone we're back

with the Roundup we have uh Santi and myself and we are lucky enough to be joined by uh Casey who's been on the show a couple of times uh senior reporter blockworks another senior reporter blockworks Ben Stak who has been covering ETFs at blockworks since before ETFs were cool so uh case welcome back Ben welcome to the show for the first time thank you great to be here ETFs moreing cool at some point they've always been cool they've always been cool but uh maybe not to the general public but Ben do you feel is this a is this a big moment for you do you feel Vindicated to have uh been covering ETFs daily for years now and now you're like here we've arrived yeah well definitely to your point they have not been talked about like this um it seems like in a long time so very exciting time for the

space yeah definitely so maybe Ben if you could set the stage for us we're recording this on uh Thursday so things are changing so quickly this will go out Friday morning we're CH we're recording this Thursday around noon um can you just kind of set the stage for us like who like how did we get here and who who's arrived to the table Yeah so I mean the wingle boss twins first for a spot Bitcoin ETF in 2013 that was denied a few years later um so there's been attempts for years to launch these um I think things picked up a little bit when SEC approved the first Bitcoin Futures ETF in uh in 2021 and then from there a few developments last year with black rock entering the race for spot Bitcoin ETF

and then great scale Investments legal Victory against the SEC um for denying their conversion of gbtc grayscale Bitcoin trust to an ETF uh they won that case and that kind of um set the stage a little bit for these approvals that we got yesterday um so now you know Thursday morning 11 Bitcoin ETFs um were set to launch uh including from Black Rock Fidelity as well as you know smaller crypto Focus firms like bitwise and and gray scale was able to convert their gbtc vehicle to an ETF as well so um a lot happening why is it so we've had these Futures ETFs why is it so important that these are spot why was

this the moment that everyone was waiting for yeah I think um for a lot of people spot uh ETFs are just easier to understand they they hold the Bitcoin directly instead of uh Bitcoin Futures contracts um and there are some like roll costs U with with Bitcoin Futures ETFs so I think people were just kind of waiting for for this pure um spot Bitcoin to finally launch case can you maybe TS up on the grayscale side like Ben Ben mentioned grayscale or I don't know if this is also a question for you Ben but um why was this grayscale case so important and why did that like pave the way for for all of this to actually happen yeah I mean the phrase like regulation by

enforcement gets thrown around thrown around a lot in crypto and and also in policy when lawmakers are talking about different agencies and digital assets specifically with the SEC and um this kind of shift into fighting things in the courts has really become a big narrative and a big weapon for the crypto industry um obviously it's very expensive and timec consuming but as we saw today and and this week it it certainly pays off so grayscale's big win was a judge ruled that the SEC is not allowed to deny a Bitcoin ETF or transitioning their gbtc for the same reasons that they have in the past so we knew that that was like kind of setting the stage probably leaning toward an approval before we actually got it

yesterday but what we learned yesterday with the statements from Commissioners is that the win in the courts really kind of set the stage and was really the the motivating factor for the commission to vote Yes on this um Gary Gensler in his statement said that you know given the circumstances and he mentioned this court case specifically um he said the only sustainable path forward was to approve the ETF so I think that they knew that if they didn't approve it they would have been dragged back to court it would have been it it wouldn't have worked out in their favor so this was really like Gensler in his own words said the only path forward yeah I mean it read like so he Gensler posted this thing he basically said look I you know Bitcoin remains this very volatile

speculative asset and you know you could just see him writhing in pain over through that message of like like I really don't want to approve this but you know and he voted yes like he he knew that this was the only way there there was he was backed into a corner he was dragged Kicking and Screaming I would say but yeah I mean his statement it literally said Bitcoin and crypto are used for moneya laundering and drug trafficking and you know terrorist fundraising things that he said in the past he's actually like putting in this statement that go alongside his his yes vote which was interesting to see yeah all right so let's jump to the juicy stuff and then we can actually get into

some of the details of this case where are we today or Ben I I don't know who who has the most upto-date info it's again noon on Thursday so where like what are the flows looking like what are the volumes looking like um or maybe actually if one of you wants to T us up with this idea of like there's flows there's volume and there's AUM and how are those three things different and then we can look at some of the actual numbers from today B right sure yeah I mean so um AUM is the the total assets in in the fund assets under management um that that is based off of flows that are coming in so inflows and outflows going in and out

new money um and but auum takes into account flows it takes into account the seed Capital which was gathered beforehand to help the ETF launch um and also takes into account the performance of the asset and how the price when the price of Bitcoin goes up AUM in spot Bitcoin ETFs goes up as well um yes like the AUM dollar amount versus the actual C like the amount of Bitcoin would be different yeah um so yeah so lot lot to look at so far um we have a uh we have we have a a story up on blockworks doco right now with just the the initial trading volumes um in

the first half hour um there were more than a billion in trading volumes uh so far so a lot of shares trading hands in those funds uh with black rock Fidelity and gray scale seeing the most so far um and yeah that that compares to uh the the first Bitcoin Futures ETF by pro shares in 2021 had about a billion in trading volume for the first day um so obviously well well past the pace there for these so the early winners here it looks like so we've got these 11 firms the early winners are Black Rock Fidelity and grayscale is that right yes I was joking with Ben 11 is far too many I can't keep track I have

too many tops open this is a great chart right here okay grayscale oh okay so anyone watching on YouTube you can actually see it live right here this is great great data yeah and so that story was as of 10 am and we will we will be updating throughout the day um yeah I believe as of now I think Black Rock might be in the lead and we have surpass two billion in trading volumes nice wow so okay so Arc is uh so what I'm looking at is grayscale Bitcoin Tres first ey shares um which is black Ro which is Black Rock then you've got Fidelity then you have Arc uh 21 partnership uh Kathy Woods firm and and 21 shares uh and then coming up in fifth we have bitwise then you've got the Invesco Galaxy

partnership Bitcoin ETF then Valkyrie then Franklin then Wisdom Tree then hash deex yeah and hash deex was a little bit of a different one they converted their Bitcoin Futures ETF uh take your defi to also hold Bitcoin directly and they correct Ben you might know more about this their spot Holdings they're tracking CM CME Futures Bitcoin spot prices right in this fund it's a little bit different yes believe it's a little bit different I would have to uh dig into the details there yeah so not only they converted and also the the underlying assets from what I understand are not quite the same as some of the

other products nice okay so what is let's talk about this um this one of the the most interesting Dynamics I think which is like these fee Wars that have emerged so maybe you can walk us through um what what happened with the fees like I think a lot of folks were expecting maybe 50 bips 60 bips Fidelity came out at 39 bips and this like allout War ensued I'd say so Ben what is the update on the on this fee battle Yeah so because you have 11 funds launching at the same time one of the differentiating factors um is fees so that that that's why there's been such a competition there um we saw Fidelity I think came out one of the first ones with like 39 bips basis points um and we

saw some f some other issuers undercut them at 25 bitwise was the lowest at at 20 basis points and we just kind of saw issuers continue to lower them um constantly like some updated today right still updating even though and you once it's posted you can still update it and bring it down you can change them after yeah Valkyrie was at 80 for example they went down to 49 and then they went down again to 25 this morning so um everyone's trying to stay competitive U yeah and there's also some wavers um believe black rock for the first 12 months or until 5 billion it's a little bit lower um some have zero fee

for the first six months right bit Y is an arc I think or or there's some um Ben and Casey At what point will we know and understand uh the type of buyer and the concentration like the cohort like who's buying it um you know the retention like the average holding period I know it's first day but you know any big like institutions buying ETF is mostly retail I would so in the leadup to the Bitcoin ETF approval and and why people thought it was so important a big part of that obviously was like being able to hold Bitcoin and have exposure to this asset in something like a retirement account

or that type of fund where you can't like an A registered investment adviser cannot like make a coinbase account on your behalf and like buy Bitcoin for you so this product is like giving Brokers an opportunity to you know on behalf of their clients get exposure to this asset so I'm I'm assuming and Ben I'm curious what you've heard as well I think that the the retail Trader of like crypto and the the retail Trader of of this fund are are not the same yeah so I think a lot of this initially is is retail investors um we know that advisors uh you know independent registered investment advisors are very interested in these ETFs because we saw in a bitwise and verify survey a little while

back um that 80% of advisers were saying they were unable to buy crypto for clients or unsure whether they could and that an ETF is a a vehicle that they're very familiar with um so that would be a Gateway into this space for them um advisers have a little bit more ability to go into these quickly if they want to um whereas some of the the wirehouses the larger you know full service brokerages like Bank of America meril Lynch well Fargo they will have more of a due diligence process where they won't be jumping into these funds right away um there might be certain hurdles that these ETFs need to clear whether it's certain levels of

AUM um or you know Comm committees voting to to allow them to enter those funds Why did um every so everyone pulled pulled fees down what about grayscale what what are your thoughts on Gray scale strategy here in terms of keeping fees at what did they keep it at one they brought it from two down to one 1.5 1.5 yeah what's the strategy here the highest a lot yeah well they I mean they obviously um they get a lot of revenue from from the fees on on those assets in gbtc uh there were about 28 billion uh in assets under management in that fund um that

trust launched in 2013 uh they grayscale disallowed redemptions in that trust years ago um so investors would have to trade those shares on the secondary market and those were trading at a discount for the last couple years um so some investors were kind of Trapped in that vehicle um the ETF changes that essentially bringing the eliminating the discount um so yeah so I think some some people we've spoken to expect large outflows from gbtc now that it's an ETF to kind of go into some of those uh lower cost funds I'm also curious if we might see

grayscale launch another Bitcoin ETF product at a lower fee that's not under the gbtc ticker say more about that case would that cannibalize they existing well I think so with and this is something that um also kind of goes back to the approval process and and what we saw and learned I guess from the SEC yesterday these ETFs are all cash Redemption and most issuers um Arc Invesco Galaxy tried to do a in kind Redemption process but they we assume were told by the SEC that that wasn't going to work so I've talked to a lot of analysts and also people I don't want to say uh people close to the matter I know people get

upset when I say that but um talk to people that know a l lot more than I do and they seem pretty confident that we're going to see a lot of issuers file for Bitcoin ETFs um that use in kind Redemption so I'm curious if grayscale might try to take that route in which case maybe we would see um maybe double click on that if you're U gbtc investor you've been it for years uh maybe did in a tax advantage account like an Raa Roth IRA uh if it's cash settled for you to pull out of that vehicle it has a tax implication well if you bought it maybe not in this in this tax advantage accounts but like in a regular account to keep the matter simple if you were to pull out of that you have a taxable impact and if you want so if you wanted

to save on fees you would have to do the math around I'm going to pay taxes on this and so like it's probably not worth it to pull out and so if they launch a new product it's really to capture the new inflows that are obviously not going to pay 1% um and but it's yeah yeah I'm just kind of curious how you think about the retention of the pool of capital of gbtc and how that rotation might kind of happen yeah no that's a good point I think with the in kind versus cash redemptions I think the issuers are definitely I mean it's it's tax advantageous for them to use inine so with inine redemptions

we see the issuer exchanges the funds underlying asset so in this case Bitcoin with a market maker in a cash Redemption they are actually like using cash to like buy the underlying asset to buy the Bitcoin um which creates a taxable event but yeah I mean I'm like Ben said with this transition it's giving gbtc holders an opportunity to pull out and and pull into something else for the first time so I am it's day one so I'm really curious to see what we'll see um also with like the Futures product we saw initially Bido uh which which was pro shares Bitcoin Futures ETF it was the first one to launch like Ben said in 2021 that like did amazing so far this

week and last week and now we're kind of seeing that back off so there's a lot of different Trends here and it's hard to know exactly what everyone's thinking and just to uh just about gbtc you know grayscale is kind of positioning this as you know they are the fund with the most liquidity um the tightest spreads the the decade long track record so that's how they they really leaning into that 13 yeah um but uh yeah and and to the point too of potentially them launching a another fund we've seen in the past uh GLD the largest physical gold ETF by uh State Street they they launched a cheaper um gold product uh so even if it kind of even if that product would kind

of cannibalize their own fund they'd rather do that potentially than um those flows going to other issu that's interesting it's probably actually a smart strategy by them let's say you lose 50% of the let's say even you lose 50% of the AUM but if you don't drop your fees by more than 50% you're technically making money there so that that makes sense and a shout out to James safer at Bloomberg intelligence who kind of has circulated that theory more recently um yeah nice um what are the like broad maybe you know we're talking we're talking very like hourly and daily what are the broad maybe flow and asset and AUM predictions for this year like what is kind of consensus on

the street what are the what's kind of consensus maybe the more like Crypt native I'm I'm assuming more optimistic consensus what are people thinking right now I have heard estimates for initial inflows from like 1 billion to five billion so massive range for the for the for the day for the year what like what's the time we'll say like first week I think some saying a day but I'll I'll try to I'll say week I don't think that's possible um but yeah I mean I and and this kind of goes back to the question of like is it priced in or not um and I think in the short term we saw yesterday and we're seeing today that maybe the initial news of approval and like first trading day was priced in we haven't seen like a ton of Bitcoin moves

honestly ethereum's moving way more but last night as we're seeing these approvals come in from the SEC bitcoin's like barely moving at all um so I think in the short short term a lot of that was priced in when you look longterm though I mean we don't really know what's going to happen an inflow of a billion versus five billion in the first month is a huge difference so like of course Bitcoin is going to trade differently based on that yeah we have a few uh vanak analysts have predicted I think 2.4 billion combined in in uh inflows into these spot Bitcoin ETFs in the first quarter um Galaxy research uh has estimated 14 billion in the first year and uh and bitwise as Matt Hogan

has said um that their firm is kind of projecting 55 billion into all these funds in the next five years so those are some different levels um physical gold ETFs hold about a hundred billion in assets under management um so people have said that they expect Bitcoin could reach that what is the c how do you think this might be a really dumb question um how do you think about the impact of flows uh impacting the direct price of Bitcoin so like if there's 100 billion of flows into Bitcoin how does that impact bitcoin's actual price you mean like because the fund is buying the Bitcoin fund buying the

Bitcoin yeah yeah I mean it's it's good I mean I talked to a lot of analysts that were like there's really no downside here like it's cash is infinite and like there's interest in this product but like I said I mean depending on these different predictions which there's a massive range we don't know what's going to happen that's kind of where it gets a little bit more dicey um so yeah I mean I would say again I think shortterm it's very priced in long term I'm doubtful yeah I'm like think about um some of the math and this goes back to our 2024 predictions it's like you need to think about how much Bitcoin is actually available because a lot of it might be in the hands of people that don't want to sell might be lost wallets you know there's different estimates of

how much is circulating versus where you need to make the distinction around and this actually becomes more relevant for a proof of stake system like if when we have an ethereum ETF which by the way you know now there's the focus is on that like black rock already there's like people are speculating that it might be as early as August but like simplistically total Supply is not as relevant as circulating Supply and like what is actually available to be traded in the order books um because you might have you know in a worst scenario there's like no liquidity right no one wants to sell so you have all that those impls like just the price goes to Infinity I guess um so that's the thing to really monitor you know how much of

of bitcoin's actually you know people look at order books to to make this kind of Assessments of like for an incremental billion 10 billion of flows how much is actually in the order book at any given time um and it's kind of hard to piece it because sometimes there just like shadow you know not all of it is like it's an iceberg and so like it's sort of a bit of a difficult exercise to do perfectly but you can get a good estimate yeah galaxy digital research Associate Charles U had a report in October that kind of looked at the price of gold and how that reacted after gold ETFs launched in 2004 uh basically finding you know gold has increased by four times the price has increased by four times since then um I think he

projected a 74% increase for Bitcoin in the first year of spot Bitcoin ETFs trading um so that was an interesting report to check out potentially what's up everyone quick break from the show to talk about digital asset Summit this is going to be block works' eighth Das we've been hosting this since 2019 it's our longest running conference series coming up March 18th to 20th in Sunny London Town Spring in London you don't want to miss it it's a crazy lineup definitely our craziest D yet just added Michael sonen Shine from grayscale the head of digital asset research at Franklin Templeton we've got drw we've got KKR we've got Marshall was tme group we have Bloomberg we have Visa we have wintermute we have

Vanek we have FIS we've got the framework folks joining us 1kx coin shares JP Morgan Standard Chartered qcp Morgan Creek Santi is coming of course Ledger CEO and chairman Pascal will be there it is going to be a phenomenal event you don't want to miss it tickets are pacing so far ahead had a schedule that unfortunately we can't offer 20% off anymore there's a new code it's empire 10 Empire 10 is going to get you 10% off see you in London the days of not using crypto for really anything in the real world are over it is time to start using crypto in everyday transactions whether that's shopping online or just buying a bagel on the street we're excited to tell you about py USD PayPal's entrance into web 3 PayPal is proud to share an open letter

to the crypto community that out lines their commitment their road map and their goals in the digital currency space py USD seeks to transform how you interact with your digital assets available today you can send your crypto to your PayPal account swap it for py USD and then use it to check out at millions of stores PayPal invites you all the Empire listeners to be a part of this journey hit the link in the description of today's episode to read PayPal's open letter to the community it gives you a really good sense of what their vision is take take the next step by signing up for a PayPal account today the future of crypto payments starts with PayPal what about the eth ETF um it

feels like the I mean our industry is the uh attention SP of goldfish so you know we celebrate for a day or two the Bitcoin ETF and then all eyes go on the ethereum ETF what is the kind of Target deadline for for the E ETFs and also is it the same issuers different issuers what's this looking like yeah so we saw um saw Arin vest and 21 shares they filed for a spot ether ETF in September believe Vanek uh did the same and we've seen others Invesco and black rock even uh come in a little bit later with that so that September filing will go through the same sort of 19 before process that these spot Bitcoin ETFs went through which is

essentially a 240-day process if they take the full time um so I think there will be some sort of ruling by by next May around then um but I think a lot will a lot of discussion will need to happen before we see those um I saw you know to the point earlier case he mentioned Gary gensler's statement with approving These funds uh he mentioned that this ruling does not signal anything about the commission's views to the status of other crypto assets um so there will be there be work to do on on getting those approved for those issuers yeah I mean there was there were two years between approving Bitcoin Futures ETFs and ethereum Futures ETFs so like

if that's any indication it's not E's trading like an e ETF is going to be approved tomorrow but um I'm pretty skeptical like Ben said really based on gensler's language um that we'll see this happen quickly I think that again based on what we've seen um it prob it will Happ eventually but I'm not I'm not holding my breath and the difference between Bitcoin and ether compared to the other assets is they they do have uh Futures markets regulated by the cftc right now um and and like Casey mentioned the E the first ether Futures ETFs launched um a few months ago in October so nice yeah I saw some folks talking about a ripple

ETF my my understanding is that is a farfetched um product uh just because there's no robust Futures market around anything other than Bitcoin underneath yeah and like Ben said I mean just because the SEC rules that Ripple's not a security doesn't mean anything in terms of of ETF approval like it's all about the security of the market and there's a lot to be done yeah what else is interesting here guys want talk about coinbase let's talk about coinbase what what should we talk about coinbase case um Ben probably knows more than I do they're the custodian for nine of the 11 I think nine yeah that sounds right um their stock is down a lot today which is I thought was makes

sense um was it 145 now is okay we'll see um yes some analysts were predicting that obviously with them being you know are raking a lot of these custody fees but I was seeing estimates from like 25 million to 30 million in annual fees which obviously isn't a um and then of course there's the the thought that if you can buy an ETF why would you make a coinbase account to purchase Bitcoin again I think that those two categories of investors are different but it is something to think about I mean I know that my parents for example would rather buy this ETF than

get on an exchange even though I've told them and do you know the economics here so let's say okay so I'm looking at our uh the blockworks ETF tracker you've got grayscale bitwise is basically everyone except for vanck and Fidelity uses coinbase to custody their Bitcoin what is the split there so let's say um you know bitwise here their fees are going to be 20% what percentage of that goes to coinbase and what goes to bitwise do you know I do not know um Ben I'm not sure if you have any updated numbers um I'm not sure what the breakdown is I don't this isn't something is this something that they have to disclose I can pull this in edar it's probably actually in the um in the coinbase annual filings um that that

would be an interesting uh yeah I mean that's something to watch I guess for their q1 2024 earnings report because we'll have this data yeah that's interesting so yeah that's definitely something to watch I was again I was surprised that coin itself that the stock was trading so low today it didn't really move that much last night on the approval and aftermarket trading but not doing so hot today you would have thought would move in one way or the other either positively because it's a big uh big step forward for the industry or negatively because yeah like you said maybe people aren't buying Bitcoin on coinbase anymore in terms of maybe case I'd throw it back to you like in terms of ETFs in context of the broader secc war against crypto what what are you

hearing on the ground well I would say so do you mean like in terms of approval what does this mean for the SEC going forward or like yeah like the SEC was coming after folks like uh coinbase pretty hard was coming after Kraken pretty hard I don't know if what you're hearing in terms of like are these you know coming after some of the defi protocols pretty hard like is this still gonna continue um less more okay continue I think that like I said this um regulation by enforcement has really encouraged this litigation process and fighting it out in the courts versus settlements which is really important for the industry

because the Court ruling help set a precedent exactly like we saw with this Bitcoin ETF um when we see all these settlements with the SEC it's difficult because it doesn't really create any precedent for any other you know actor in the space it doesn't help to change any rules or or to provide Clarity to the industry um that being said I mean it's really really expensive we saw it with ripple we saw it with grayscale we're currently seeing it with coinbase Kraken I mean it takes a lot of resources to go up after the SEC and fight these matters out in court but it's what we've seen so far really the most effective path forward in in terms of getting I would say like more concrete change um the other side of

that with the drama that we saw this week surrounding the approval announcement I'll say um so we had the sec's official Twitter X account whatever you want to call it compromised um there was a false tweet that they put out that said that the ETF was approved that happened on Tuesday night we obviously saw bitcoin's price fluctuate a lot after that it took about 15 minutes for the SEC to correct the narrative and state that the ETFs had not actually been approved immediately after this we saw a lot of um feedback from lawmakers mostly Republicans um criticizing the secc saying that this

obviously was incredibly irresponsible it impacted markets um um and it's unacceptable for a government agency to not have better security around these accounts um so that happened on Tuesday a lot of lawmakers were very fired up and then on Wednesday uh we had another fun little incident with the SEC where the approval document was posted I believe at like 3:45 PM it was just before 4: which everyone found very surprising the SEC tends to keep these announcements until after the market Clos but it came up and then I think Ben you can correct me I think it was up for maybe five to 10 minutes before the post came down maybe even less than that but

yeah less than that frantically reading it and uh and then it disappeared did so then obviously um you know coming right on the heels of this compromised Twitter account everyone is wondering was the SEC hacked is this true why is the page gone um the sec's office is not responding to anyone we were frantically calling their press office no one saying anything it took half an hour to to then get the actual real news um that was that was posted so none of this is looking good for a lot of these lawmakers that have long criticized the sec's enforcement practices um you know it's it's not winning them any favors in Washington right now I would say

particularly on the right um I was hearing some speculation from Democrats that the Twitter situation was not actually the sec's fault but it was a problem of x's security um X obviously came forward and said that that wasn't true I don't know about that one yeah yeah um I I was talking to someone that said they just hate Elon Musk so much and this was just a perfect opportunity to blame Twitter it's a good political opportunity of course yeah I mean everything's gonna get a spin on it and obviously we we have to take it all with a grain of salt but I am curious to see I mean we saw there was a congressional hearing for Taylor Swift ticket sales like we're going to see a congressional hearing over this SEC situation I no doubt about it great so I'm curious to

see how that impacts um some of the the bills that we're currently seeing that are that are targeting SEC and um every something to watch nice well Ben case uh this has been great anything else that um we should talk about that we that we have not and that we're missing have you bought has anyone bought I actually want to try to buy I saw I I saw on Twitter that folks who were trying to buy through you know Vanguard uh JP Morgan and stuff are getting like a big warning symbols it's like you know approve three different times click this check box like are you sure you want to buy so uh six confirmation sir yeah exactly so I'm gonna I'm gonna try to buy through right

JP Morgan account today and see see what happens I did some take did a little bit of trading this morning yeah what' you buy which one a mix and and some coinbase stuff I'm on the sidelines for now every day I talk to Santi Santi how you doing just got some more coinbase stuff well today Bu The Dip not Financial I mean the other thing that's interesting we talk about is a circle IPO so basically um uh circle's looking to go public so we actually reported this maybe six to 12 months ago um that they were looking to go public but it had been kind of put on hold a little bit or it's been slowed down um the company just announced that

it filed the draft regist uh registration statement for its IPO um and they said that uh the ipo's expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process which is subject to you know market and other conditions and uh this is a this is a really big deal I would say it's maybe not as big of a deal as the Bitcoin ETF but it's still a colossal deal that I think will probably be swept under the rug just because everyone's so focused on the ETF but if you look at the um state of capital markets in crypto today the only ways for people to actually access Bitcoin if you're an Institutional or crypto if you're an Institutional Investor it's now the Bitcoin ETF it's coinbase stock and it's a publicly traded Bitcoin miners which

are essentially just beta on bitcoin um Circle IPO basically gives folks access to broader crypto businesses and even more importantly there are about six to 10 companies that are waiting to see how cires IPO is received and if it's received successfully um I think a lot of other companies are going to push to IPO which just having several publicly traded crypto companies other than just coinbase and and the miners I think it's a huge unlock for an industry so you wonder what mic straty micro strategy and micro strategy of course yeah there's mic there's also Galaxy which trades in Canada but it's a it's a big development having um it's just a sign

of a maturing industry um there's the the obvious other one is Kraken probably follow suit in 2024 and then there's another cohort that I would say is one level below Kraken uh who who probably looks fire blocks yeah who probably looks to 2025 this would be you know chainalysis Anchorage fire blocks maybe consensus Works block works yeah exactly Alchemy bitgo Gemini etoro you could probably bucket in there Ripple I've heard um has talked about it a little bit internally so uh there's there's a whole swath of companies that are now looking at Circle to say how successful are they going to be how's the market going to receive this and if it's received well look we'll we'll start to file as well

so does anyone have a favorite uh Bitcoin commercial they've seen on X or uh you know we saw we saw bitwise kind of Come Out Swinging with the most interesting man in the world I I mean Matt H so Matt I'm I'm biased Matt Hogan's an adviser to block Works um and has been very helpful Through The Years through the ups and the downs so you know I'm I'm always biased towards bit bitwise commercials that especially when they feature Matt Hogan so I like that one I didn't really like the hash deex one I thought that was kind of half-ass um I've been loving everything that comes out of vanc like I think vanek's been doing a really good job for the industry since for a long time for six years now um and they've had they've had some good stuff but it's cool I mean NFL

playoffs are coming up like it's going to be interesting to see how many commercials are you know you're watching the playoffs like how many Bitcoin ETF commercials are there going to be we can all finally take a back seat and let Wall Street do the sales and marketing for the industry and that's a huge Machine Sales marketing department grew orders magnitude and I have a question actually for this so I'm looking at our story spot Bitcoin ETFs estimated volume you've got grayscale Black Rock and Fidelity then Arc 21 shares then bitwise where where is Vanek here they were pretty significantly lower I think Arc was behind the top three and fourth and

then the rest were pretty significant did get delayed or they got approved too they're good to go they were approved I will say not every single fund started trading exactly at 9:30 oh okay okay so take that with a great assault especially with so this story that you're looking at Jason was published like 10 something so some had like truly been trading for half an hour and some hadn't gotcha um but yeah I was a little bit surprised their ticker is also huddle so I was curious go over nice awesome well okay Spen thanks for everything uh incredible coverage of of uh of this Bitcoin ETF um excited to see it develop and start to move into EF conversations starting in Q2 and yeah

good work on everything thank you guys thanks thanks guys STI see hey everyone thank you so much for watching today's episode really hope you enjoyed it we wanted wanted to take a second to just remind you about our upcoming digital assets Summit in London March 18th to 20th Santi and I got your back seats are limited and we hooked you up with a 20% off discount code it is Empire 20 if you heard it earlier in the podcast there's a little competition running at blockworks to see who can drive the most number of tickets so when you register for the digital asset Summit make sure you use our code Empire 20 see you in [Music] London [Music]

yeah