4th March 2022 > > Charles Schwab.

tl;dr

Charles Schwab and another crypto related ETF.

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Market Wrap

Today is options expiry day, which can make for some choppy trading. At any price over $42k owners of call options will be much happier than owners of puts.

Occasional Series – Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M)

SPI-M had a huge influence on the Government’s response to the pandemic, especially after Boris Johnson absolved himself of his personal responsibility to make political decisions when he announced:

“… we will be guided by the science”.

But of course there was a dearth of science.

Prof Graham Medley is the Chair of SPI-M. Speaking at the Commons science and health select committee he described their modelling which predicted 6,000 deaths a day at the peak of the Omicron wave thus:

“We could guess, and our guesses might be 10% more accurate than other people’s, but they are still guesses and I think it would be wrong for policy decisions to be made on the basis of guesswork” (my emphasis).

Note that deaths WITH Omicron (not BECAUSE of Omicron) peaked at 306 on January 21st 2022.

Curious Cryptos’ Definition of the Day – Pizza Day

A landmark event occurred on May 22nd 2010 with the first known commercial transaction involving BTC. Laszlo Hanyecz posted this offer on an IRC channel:

“I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas… maybe 2 large ones, so I have some left for the next day. I like to leave pizza to eat later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it at a home delivery place, but what I want is to have the food brought to me in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself. It's like ordering a 'breakfast plate' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you're happy!

I like things like onions, peppers, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, etc., just standard things, nothing weird like fish, or anything like that. I also like regular cheese pizzas that can be cheaper to make or buy.

If you are interested let me know and we can reach an agreement.

Thank you, Laszlo”

I love the phrase “nothing weird like fish, or anything like that”. Presumably he is referring to the ridiculous idea of adding pineapple to a pizza.

In total, Laszlo bought 8 pizzas for 40,000 BTC.

…

At the time the price for just 2 pizzas of 10,000 BTC was worth around $40.

Today it is closing in on half a billion greenbacks …

Jeremy Sturdivant, the man who fulfilled the first order of 2 pizzas, had this to say:

“Give a man a pizza, he will eat for a day; let him buy pizza with bitcoin, it will revolutionise the economy”.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab has $7.5 TRILLION assets under management (AUM).

Just last week Jonathan Craig, head of investor services, said:

“A full 16% of Schwab’s clients plan to put money into cryptocurrencies in the first half of the year.”

Responding to this demand, Charles Schwab has filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a crypto related exchange traded fund (ETF):

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1454889/000110465922029220/tm226059d1_485apos.htm#idSCEETF46482

This ETF will invest in securities that:

“… deliver global exposure to companies that may benefit from the development or utilization of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.”

Note that this fund will not directly invest in BTC for instance.

This filing follows hard on the heels of a very similar offering by Blackrock – the world’s largest asset manager – back in January.

In total there are eight crypto-related ETFs trading in the US as of today with a mere $1.7bn in total assets. This is potentially a huge area of growth for crypto investments.