5th December 2023 > > Price action!

tl;dr

It’s all about the price action, whilst Schiff calls it wrong again.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

With BTC briefly touching $44k, CNBC responds by reporting this 20-month high point on its front page. Every dollar higher brings in more speculative retail money. It should be the other way round of course – buying low is better than buying high – but some folks never learn.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Pretty patterns

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Spot BTC ETF

Two of the applicants for a spot BTC ETF – BlackRock and Bitwise – submitted new amendments to their respective filings with the SEC just this week.

The sheer number of amendments that are being submitted on a weekly basis testifies to the ongoing discussions between the SEC and the various contenders for an ETF, of which there are twelve at the last count, but it is hard to keep up.

More interestingly is the nature of the amendments, each of which is getting into the nitty gritty of how a potential spot BTC ETF will work. According to The Block, the latest amendment to the BlackRock proposal includes this clause:

"The Sponsor and the Trust will only interact with known third-party service providers with respect to whom the Sponsor or its affiliates have engaged in a due diligence process to ensure a thorough KYC process, such as the Authorized Participants, Market Makers, Prime Broker and Bitcoin Custodian."

This is only about how the mechanics of an ETF will work, not whether the ETF is allowed to exist. Approval is done and dusted; it is simply the timing which is still uncertain.

…

The tsunami of institutional money that flows into spot BTC ETFs on approval might overwhelm the restricted supply of BTC.

Alternatively, all these asset managers have got it wrong, and they have been wasting senior management time and money on a product for which there is no demand, because they do not understand the needs of their own client base.

I wonder which one of these statements might be more likely to be correct.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Peter Schiff

“Gold pulling back below $2,100 has provided a catalyst for BTC to spike near $41K. This could be Bitcoin's swan song. The speculative frenzy around spot Bitcoin ETFs will end soon. Bitcoin's collapse will be more spectacular than its rally. In contrast gold's rally is real.”

…

This is the same Peter Schiff who made this prediction in 2019:

“The Bitcoin chart looks horrible. Not only does the flag that followed the recent breakdown project a move to $6k, but we are close to completing the right shoulder of a head and shoulders (sic) top, with at $14k head, and neck line just below $8k, that projects a collapse to below $2k!”

If Schiff put his money where his mouth is, he would be homeless by now.on BTC.