17th July 2024 > > Larry Fink.

tl;dr

Take heed of Larry Fink, for he is a very wise man.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Eight straight days of inflows to the ETFs to the tune of nearly $2bn in response to that short-lived sell-off does suggest to me a very hard floor under the price of BTC. Alts are outperforming, especially XRP up by a third or so in a week. An excess of leveraged shorts as indicated by the perpetual futures funding rate raises the risk of short squeeze higher, with $1.5bn set to be liquidated if we reach $71.5k.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Larry Fink on crypto 

Larry Fink, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s most successful financial institution of all time, was interviewed by Jim Cramer for CNBC about his views regarding cryptos. BlackRock was a leading light in the push to gain approval for spot BTC ETFs, whilst also Larry believes tokenisation is a multi-trillion opportunity, so this video is unlikely to surprise to the downside:

https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1812858859800715768

Over you to you, Lazzer:

“… I was a proud sceptic … I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, OK, you know, my opinion for five years was wrong, and here’s my opinion, I believe in it today.”

Portfolio managers will love this comment:

“… it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have uncorrelated type of returns …”

All of us know these to be true:

“… it is an instrument when you believe that countries are debasing their currency by excess deficits …” (that is ALL countries by the way, not just the US and the UK).

“It is an opportunity to invest in something that is outside of your country’s control.”

Larry goes on to claim BTC’s rightful mantle:

“I look at it as digital gold, … and there is a real need for everyone to look at it.”

And finally:

“I believe there is a great industrial use for it, and I think a lot of people are missing that.”

Clearly a reference to tokenisation and a gloriously unsubtle dig at TradFi gold cheerleaders like Peter Schiff, though Schiff and his ilk might not get it.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Talking of Tokenisation

MakerDAO has announced that it will allocate $1bn of its reserves into tokenised US T-Bills with a maturity of up to one year:

https://forum.makerdao.com/t/announcement-spark-tokenization-grand-prix-request-for-proposal/24631?ref=blockhead.co

Obviously, BlackRock will be fighting hard for its share of this pie.

Personally, I have some reservations about MakerDAO due to the algorithmic stablecoin (DAI) at its heart, though I must also confess a very early investment in MKR when it was close to just two figures, has proved lucrative enough that I will stay the course, having already cashed out the initial investment and then some.

DAI isn’t a purely algorithmic stablecoin, for it has elements of a collateralised stablecoin, albeit that collateral has (until now) been largely in cryptos. In theory the peg should always work, but in the long-run, markets can and will destroy the best of theories. This move into T-bills helps to further assuage my worries and concerns.

…

More interestingly, this development is a real-world experiment in tokenising real-world assets in size with full transparency to everyone, one of the many advantages blockchain technology brings to the centralised world.

Larry Fink’s vision of a tokenisation industry in the trillions by the end of this decade has suddenly got a whole lot closer.