19th October 2023 > > The halving & the SEC.

tl;dr

More halving graphs, mostly for fun. Spot BTC EFTs edge ever closer to approval.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

The leveraged shorts refuse to quieten down despite the liquidations following the fake spot BTC ETF news the other day. Are they mad? The geopolitical macro risks are in favour of BTC (the leaders of Russia and Iran must surely be very long BTC risk, otherwise why would they desire to create such instability in the world?) whilst the very real prospect of positive ETF news will blow them out of the water again.

10 year yields look like they will break 5% handing long bond portfolios a near 50% loss in just two years. Why do the regulators insist that government bonds are risk-free?

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Another halving graph

I told you – we will see more and more of these as April 2024 approaches. Use as you wish.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – spot BTC ETFs

Of the nine applications currently lodged with the SEC, causing anxiety and sleepless nights for Gary Gensler who is close to capitulating on his dream of denying financial freedom for the masses, three have recently been updated – those from Ark, Invesco, and Fidelity.

The changes are mainly cosmetic, and largely relate to clarification of some risk disclosures. This has led to some speculation that the SEC is (finally) in constructive dialogue about each application, further raising the probability that approval may come soon. Indeed, Cathy Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, appears to have confirmed this:

“We responded to the SEC request for information surrounding our Bitcoin filing. The SEC chose to engage, which is a change in behaviour.”

I stick to my central assumption that the SEC will not pick a winner – all current applications will be approved at the same time. That probably means we need to see amendments to the other six before that happy day arrives.

…

Gensler was interviewed on Bloomberg TV and had this to say:

“The staff is doing work on those multiple filings.”

Appearing to be a touch under-briefed on the subject matter in hand (“… I think it's eight or ten filings …”), finally we have some evidence that Gensler does have a sense of humour:

"I'm not going to pre-judge (those applications) …"