26th September 2024 > > Congratulations, options, & US politics.

tl;dr

Spot BTC ETF options open up yet another avenue of demand for BTC, in the face of ever-dwindling supply. Autumn months might give us a hint of the future. The crypto-friendly pivot of US politics continues.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Today’s Bloomberg headline to add to yesterday’s is “China’s Politburo Supercharges Stimulus”. They won’t be the only ones, especially with a knife-edge election coming our way in the US. The impact is that Chinese stocks are having the best week’s performance in a decade. This is what happens to hard assets when fiat is deliberately devalued to cover up politicians’ and central bankers’ incompetence.

Occasional Series – Happy Birthday …

… to a very special lady who just this week received confirmation of being granted her PhD in physics from the University of Oxford, styled as a DPhil at that institution. Top work, Robin! I am so very, very proud of you.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Spot BTC ETF options

The SEC has green-lighted the trading of options – puts and calls – using the Blackrock spot BTC ETF as the underlying asset.

This is a rather surprising development, but one which will be very positive for the wholesale adoption of cryptos by the TradFi industry.

More financial products that are made available for investors allows for ever greater complexity and, crucially, sophistication in developing investment strategies. At the very speculative end, the freedom to buy far out-of-the-money calls with gamma to die for, even after pricing in the volatility smile, will attract a lot of interest. The ability to hedge catastrophic downside risk is attractive to pension fund managers working hard to convince their own investment committees that they cannot be left behind. And these examples are just at the extreme ends of the spectrum. There are plenty of other real-world use cases for options that are much closer to being in the money, but I need not to explain those to you, for I am sure you are already familiar with them.

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The maxis do not like it, but TradFi is camped out in the heart of the crypto world, it is here to stay, and we are all the better for it.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Uptober is heading our way

Soon to be followed by Moonvember, Pumpcember, and Bulluary. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Kamala Harris is at it again

Following on from Kamala’s first comments regarding cryptos at a private fundraising event in Manhattan last Sunday (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/23rd-september-2024-us-politics) Kamala has gone public with her repudiation of Biden’s Operation Choke Point 2.0, though not quite in those words:

"We will invest in biomanufacturing and aerospace, remain dominant in AI and quantum computing, blockchain and other emerging technologies … expand our lead in clean energy innovation and manufacturing the next generation of breakthroughs – from advanced batteries to geothermal to advanced nuclear – are not just invented, but built here in America by American workers."

It is an interesting, if somewhat flawed, view of the world that Kamala believes that the US is “dominant” in blockchain technology. I am certain she would not make such a claim whilst having tea with Warren and Gensler. But I like the ambition – to remain dominant requires becoming dominant in the first place.

Cryptos also get a mention, albeit as brief as the entry about the Earth in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (“Harmless” in one edition, later expanded to “Mostly harmless” in later versions), in Kamala’s eighty-two-page document entitled “A new way forward for the middle class”:

https://kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy_Book_Economic-Opportunity.pdf

This competition between Kamala and Trump to be the most crypto-friendly presidential candidate is just getting going.