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SEC Rejects Rule Change for Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund [pdf]
- JamieF1 10y agoYet the price has only dropped around 80 dollars compared to yesterday. Not too bad. For a few minutes it dropped by around 250 dollars but it picked up quickly somehow.
- problems 10y agoIt just happened, not many people are aware of this news yet and Bitcoin tends to be volatile as all hell, give it a few days to sort itself out.
- kitcar 10y agoMore specifically, wait for the news to be translated to Mandarin
- pmorici 10y agoThe publicity from this, even though it was a negative decision, will be a hugely positive to the price in the medium term. For reference Go look at what happened after the Silk Road take down, or the Chuck Schumer news conference where he told the world he just learned how you could buy drugs for Bitcoin.
- endless1234 10y agoIt's dropped around 200 at the moment. http://bitcoinity.org/markets http://bitcoinity.org/markets
- JamieF1 10y agoI'm talking about compared to yesterday, not the highs from today. It hasn't dropped by 200 since I posted my comment.
- paulpauper 10y agoit went up 1000% without the ETF...suggesting anticpation of the ETF only played a minimal role..I would be a dip buyer here
- problems 10y agoOn the other hand, anticipation of the ETF may have been responsible for the last few months of increases from ~700-1250 USD. But that's pure speculation on my part.
- ActsJuvenile 10y agoThat's why you will remain a pauper.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mbrookes 10y agoThis ruling should win an award for plain English - it's exceptionally well written. (not /s)
- matt4077 10y agoYou may enjoy the US Supreme Court's writings. Their judgement are usually really well-written and understandable.
- mbrookes 10y agoFunny you should mention it, as legal judgements are not the sort of thing I normally have reason to read. However (copyright troll) Prenda Law's 9th Circuit appeal on sanctions came up in discussions on HN a couple of days ago and, having watched the humorous video of the proceedings, was curious as to the outcome, so tracked down the ruling [1]. It was similarly well written. As a lay-person I've come to expect convoluted legalese as found in contract terms, but where those are typically designed to bamboozle and obfuscate, or at least keep corporate lawyers employed decoding and negotiating each others writing, judgements and rulings are designed with the opposite goal in mind. If you are potentially creating case-law, it better be clear what you have decided and why. [1] http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13-55859/13-55859-2016-06-10.html http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/13-...
- joecool1029 10y agothat was great to watch, went from $1300 to $975 in about 90 seconds. We'll see how long the dead cat lasts. See you at $600.
- paulpauper 10y agoimho it stabilizes and goes back to 1200. It surged from 2011-2014 without the ETF...Bitcoin is seen as a safe haven against global destabilization. A lot of money on the sidelines looking for a buying opportunity that has come
- ceejayoz 10y ago"Bitcoin" and "safe" in the same sentence is an odd look.
- paulpauper 10y agosafer than many foreign currencies, which have lost 30-99% of their value relative to the USD since 2013
- joecool1029 10y agoYeah but we're talking about a loss of 30% of its value in under 5 minutes. Brexit vote to the GBP wasn't even that bad.
- ratacat 10y agoEh, most of us were expecting it to fall worse.
- Frogolocalypse 10y agoYep. Was picking it to hit the 7's. Quite surprised. Still think it is going to move sideways for a few months though. But hey, I was wrong about the scale of the post-ETF drop, so maybe I'm wrong about that. By any measure, bitcoin has much more support than I thought it did.
- politician 10y ago"The Commission believes that, in order to meet this standard, an exchange that lists and trades shares of commodity-trust exchange-traded products (“ETPs”) must, in addition to other applicable requirements, satisfy two requirements that are dispositive in this matter. First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated. Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated."
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoWhich is exactly right, but couldn't the same argument be used against a gold etf?
- scrumper 10y agoYes this was my question. Do gold ETFs list under the same exchange rule?
- hl5 10y agoNo, the significant markets for gold are very much regulated.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greenyoda 10y agoIsn't gold traded on commodities exchanges, which are regulated? Note that the CFTC, which regulates commodities futures trading, is (or was?) considering regulating digital currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Trading_Commission#Regulating_digital_currencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Trading_Comm... However, it doesn't seem like they've come to a decision yet.
- dragonwriter 10y agoSignificant markets for gold are very much regulated, and exchanges listing gold ETFs have surveillance agreements with them.
- jbmorgado 10y agoAs usual in the bitcoin universe we are going to get a lot of people trying to explain you why something they were saying it would be so great for bitcoin until 1h ago, is actually a very bad thing for bitcoin and that this was actually the best possible scenario.
- orclev 10y agoFirst time I've even heard of this honestly, but my reaction is sort of "meh". Might have been interesting had it gone through, but I don't see how it changes much of anything that it didn't either. The courts ruling seems fairly reasonable as well in that bitcoin is a relatively unregulated commodity (in as much as a currency not controlled by any government is unregulated) so I can't really say the ruling was unfair. Given a choice between increased regulation of bitcoin and allowing the exchange to go forward vs. keeping the current relatively lax regulation and no exchange, I'm of the opinion no exchange is the better option. There's also the minor fact that a significant chunk of wallstreet already treats most of the bitcoin markets like commodity exchanges anyway. A significant driver of the massive instability in the bitcoin market is directly attributable to wallstreet treating bitcoin as a commodity. One possible upside of having an actual commodity exchange is that it might have helped stabilize some of that by decoupling the speculation from the actual bitcoin market a little, but I guess we'll never know at this point.
- Meekro 10y agoCan you point to someone who said one hour ago that the ETF is good for bitcoin, and is now saying that the ETF is bad for bitcoin?
- JoshTriplett 10y agoIt's interesting, based on the rest of the ruling, that they're not particularly concerned with any other aspects of it as a commodity (they acknowledge various interesting properties of it but note that those wouldn't themselves prevent them from approving this), but instead solely concerned that the rest of the Bitcoin market isn't controlled and monitored well enough for them to regulate activities on it.
- joecool1029 10y agoConsidering that most of the exchanges have been reduced to being stuck loading, are they wrong?
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe criteria of surveillance agreements with regulated markets for the underlying asset appears to be (based on the discussion in the paper) well established, clear in its application to the facts, and dispositive in this case. That doesn't mean it's their biggest concern; regulatory entities (and courts) tend to focus on criteria that meet those qualifications over other because they produce decisions which don't require creation of substantial new rules/precedent, and are more difficult to challenge.
- jacquesm 10y ago> First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. > And second, those markets must be regulated. So, essentially: bitcoin does not and can not satisfy these two conditions (nor can any other such scheme) and therefore you can't trade anything that is directly or indirectly representing bitcoins.
- mrb 10y agoIn summary: "First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated."
- chollida1 10y agoBitcoin just went from a high of 1327.1926 to 995.9575 in the blink of an eye. Wow. From the ruling.... > First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated. > Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated. I'm not sure I entirely understand if they mean that Bitcoin itself must be regulated or just that the SEC needs to see that the major exchanges are regulated. If its the former, then I think this is game over, if its the later then............hmmm I really don't know. EDIT Having gone through the ruling it looks like they have a few reservations. 1) Most of the bitcoin trading happens on unregulated markets 2) Most of the volume happends in China and not the us and is therefore hard to regulate. 3) The ETF is tied to the Winklevoss own Gemini exchange which has little volume and often inferior pricing to other more liquid exchanges. 4) They bring up the lack of a liquid futures market, though I'm not sure this is really a concern. > The Commission has, in past approvals of commodity-trust ETPs, emphasized the importance of surveillance-sharing agreements between the national securities exchange listing and trading the ETP, and significant markets relating to the underlying asset. 144 Such agreements, which are a necessary tool to enable the ETP-listing exchange to detect and deter manipulative conduct, enable the exchange to meet its obligation under Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act to have rules that are designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to protect investors and the public interest So until bitcoin markets are regulated by the SEC or similar no ETP/ETF products I suppose. I'm a bit disappointed that there is no ETF but this is pretty darn reasonable.
- andy_ppp 10y agoI don't look at bitcoin as a currency I look at it as a fungible reserve like Gold or a Rolex. Both of those things usually appreciate in value, especially in uncertain times; I'll be using this price decrease to buy more I think.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago"bitcoin" itself is unregulated in the same way gold itself is unregulated.
- niklasbuschmann 10y agohttps://cryptowatch.de/kraken/btcusd https://cryptowatch.de/kraken/btcusd - chart gravity is strong here
- jzig 10y agoCoinbase is down.
- joecool1029 10y agohttps://status.coinbase.com/ https://status.coinbase.com/ What a lovely shade of red, it really matches the charts!
- sixQuarks 10y agowow, that's really bad.
- tradersam 10y agoWas just going to say the same thing. Looks like everyone is rushing to sell.
- keketi 10y agoOr rushing to buy.
- st3v3r 10y agoI mean, by definition, it has to be both.
- tradersam 10y agoGood point.
- dragonwriter 10y agoIt has to be both for trading to take place, but either on its own could overwhelm an insufficiently robust platform.
- anonova 10y agoCoinbase/GDAX is incredibly unreliable during "big news" moments like this. Time and time again this happens, and they haven't quite figured out their scaling issue yet.
- mahyarm 10y agoSo if you have a rare-earth metal commodity ETF that can be dug from the ground in conflict areas and have exchange markets in these wild areas, would the SEC deny that commodity ETF then because they wouldn't have surveillance-sharing agreements with those markets?
- remarkEon 10y agoYes. At least, that's my reading of this. Surveillance-sharing between markets appears to be a requirement.
- twic 10y agoWhy would the exchanges be in the areas where the metal is mined? The London Metal Exchange seems to do pretty well despite the scandalous lack of zinc mines or steel mills inside the M25.
- mahyarm 10y agoIn this hypothetical situation, lets say it's because the countries that the occur in want a cut of the proceeds, so they force the sale of these metals to be in their country. And instead of rare earth metals, lets say it's iron? Something that is mineable almost anywhere, kind of like bitcoin. So you would have exchanges with these agreements, but you would also have exchanges without the agreements.
- paulpauper 10y agoThis is the same committee that approved VXX and UVXX ,which have lost 99.999% of their value There is an OTC fund that holds Bitcoin...but at a large premium to NAV
- djrogers 10y agoIt's not the SEC's job to judge the value of the funds traded, but their compliance with SEC regulations. Your argument is like blaming the NYSE for the failure of a public company.
- tcoppi 10y agoAre you seriously comparing the type of fund that VXX and UVXX are to a hypothetical Bitcoin ETF?
- frgtpsswrdlame 10y agoVXX and UVXY buy and hold contracts in a contango futures market. They are always going to decrease over long time periods. That is their design.
- owenversteeg 10y agoPeople that don't understand VXX talking about VXX is one of the funniest things on the entire Internet. For some good laughs, take a look at the comments section on this post: https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2013/04/how-does-vxx-work/ https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2013/04/how-does-vxx-work/ A choice quote from elsewhere on the Internet: "Write call spreads, collect $$$ when they expire... this worthless stock is a goldmine!" I have no words.
- meric 10y agoXIV is the inverse fund, it looks like the real gold mine, rising 9 times in a few years.
- 15155 10y ago> This is the same committee that approved VXX and UVXX All of the popular volatility ETFs/ETNs are traded according to SEC regulation. > which have lost 99.999% of their value Did you read the prospectus? Leverage isn't free. This is by design.
- dhosek 10y agoHere's the basic thing: Bitcoin is fatally flawed. Is it meant to be a payment method (in which case an ETF or otherwise treating it as an investment vehicle is roughly as nonsensical as having an ETF that deals with blank checks) or is it an investment (and if it's an investment, what on earth are people investing in?). The volatility of Bitcoin plus the constrained supply leading towards upwards pressure on the price of bitcoins mean that it's a deflationary currency and deflation is a bad thing as it creates an incentive to not spend. This means that the only real reason to spend Bitcoin or otherwise use it as a payment is for situations where that's the only option and right now, and for the foreseeable future, that means assorted illegal or at best borderline illegal products, which gives it a halo if unrespectability that the Winkelvoss twins are not going to erase. Perhaps a blockchain-based cryptocurrency might in the future resolve these issues, but otherwise it's a doomed product that I wouldn't put a single penny (or watt of household electricity) into.
- dmichulke 10y ago> deflation is a bad thing as it creates an incentive to not spend Positive interest rates would be bad by the same logic
- cortesoft 10y agoWhat, why? Positive interest rates are meant to compensate FOR inflation. Because there is inflation, people can't just hold onto their money in cash; they have to put it into an interest bearing account in order to not lose money over time. Keeping your money in a bank account is NOT the same as hoarding a currency, because the money in a bank account is lent out to other people to spend. Money in a bank account is still participating in the economy. Bitcoin investors are not like this; they are holding onto the money in hopes the value goes up. The bitcoins they are holding are not being used for any financial transactions. Those bitcoins are essentially out of the economy while they are being held. This is bad for an economy, when the currency is more valuable as an investment than as a vehicle for economic transactions.
- hndamien 10y ago
- antocv 10y agoTime for people to start using https://byteball.org https://byteball.org
- gchokov 10y agoPff
- subverter 10y agoCoin Center executive director Jerry Brito: > The Winklevoss ETF proposal was rejected because the SEC found that the significant markets for Bitcoin tend to be unregulated overseas markets that are potentially subject to price manipulation. But this creates a chicken and egg problem. How do we develop well-capitalized and regulated markets in the U.S. and Europe if financial innovators aren’t allowed to bring products to market that grow domestic demand for digital currencies like Bitcoin? Source: https://coincenter.org/link/coin-etf-statement https://coincenter.org/link/coin-etf-statement
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe SEC's job (relevant to the issue at hand) is not to make it easy to drive demand in the US on the hopes that that might create conditions for mature markets in $COMMODITY, it is to assure that exchanges listing derivatives of $COMMODITY have adequate rules in place to protect against manipulation, including manipulation of the derivative through manipulation of the underlying commodity. If the key driver for domestic demand for the commodity is readable derivatives such that one needs to create such in order to drive demand, then, well, too bad. If there is sufficient inherent utility in the underlying commodity, you won't need to violate normal exchange criteria to create derivative markets to stimulate demand for the commodity, the commodity will drive itself, and create the conditions where it won't be unduly onerous to create derivatives markets that meet the normal criteria.
- elastic_church 10y agoYeah, you willingly ignored all the incumbents sitting on the sidelines that rely on validation from the regulators.
- blusterXY 10y agoHow did oil ETF pass with OPEC in existence? Did they just stop doing their job that day?
- jbmorgado 10y agoIt's easy. If your product practical application was actually more important than it's speculation aspect then price manipulation would be greatly reduced. As bitcoin exists right now that's not the case of course. Bitcoin is now a mostly speculative asset since the amount of transactions you can do is extremely small compared to the market value of bitcoin at the moment.
- saycheese 10y agoWhat is the best real-time source for Bitcoin's value?
- modo_ 10y agoOne of my favorite tools is https://bitcoinwisdom.com https://bitcoinwisdom.com. They have real-time interactive charts of price for all of the large exchanges.
- theseatoms 10y agohttps://tradeblock.com/markets/ https://tradeblock.com/markets/
- anonova 10y agohttps://cryptowat.ch/ https://cryptowat.ch/ is great. The front page gives a good overview of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Click on one to see charts.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- saycheese 10y agohttp://bitcointicker.co http://bitcointicker.co
- bitcointicker 10y agoThanks for recommending the site. You can also use telnet to watch the price via: telnet ticker.bitcointicker.co 10080
- fryguy 10y agoI use realtimebitcoin.info
- apaprocki 10y agoXBT Curncy on your Bloomberg :)
- brilliantcode 10y agoHaving sold all of my bitcoin at ~800 at a small loss (a significant portion coming from commission fee( ~$150+ to convert low four digit USD amount of bitcoins to fiat.) I am paying attention to the bitcoin prices closely. As USD gains more interest it's going to put downward pressure on gold and bitcoin. There's no way this is going to gain mass adoption by being this expensive. More importantly, this signals strong government regulation in the bitcoin and cryptocoin industry in general. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing security laws being applied retroactively to all the scams like initial coin offering (like IPO but unregulated and heavily manipulated) on Bitcoin and Ethereum. To the wary trend watcher, this is exactly what VC's feared and noted by the significant decline in VC investment in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups.
- wyldfire 10y ago> There's no way this is going to gain mass adoption by being this expensive. I struggle to understand what you mean. What sort of anchor are you using for how much the exchange rate should be for adoption? Cost of electricity, cost of mining equipment, cost of running a node? Satoshis are so abstract that "this expensive" seems irrelevant to everything except for historical rates. Conventional wisdom on BTC is that one element that would improve adoption would be lower volatility and that in order to get that, the market cap would need to be much, much higher. Given the fixed inflation rate this usually suggests that the exchange rate has to be correspondingly higher.
- Taek 10y agoThis is a good thing for Bitcoin. The ETF rules in my opinion gave too much power to miners. The rules stated that the ETF would follow the chain with the most work after just 48 hours. Miners need income, because mining is actively expensive. In the long term, this means they have to mine on the chain with the most valuable block reward. This means the economy really gets to decide the longest chain, not the miners. But the ETF likely would have been large enough to tip the scales. Miners can stomach 48 hours of loss to push an agenda. And it's probably not good to have such a huge portion of the economy in one place anyway. An ETF will make more sense when bitcoin has more maturity.
- Analemma_ 10y agofunction generateBitcoinNewsReaction(oldPrice, newPrice) { if (oldPrice > newPrice) { return "This is good for bitcoin."; } else if (oldPrice < newPrice) { return "This is good for bitcoin."; } else { return "The price is stabilizing; this is good for bitcoin."; } }
- SilasX 10y agofunction generateBitcoinSkepticism(oldPrice, newPrice) { if (oldPrice > newPrice) { return "It was a bubble all along."; } else if (oldPrice < newPrice) { return "Deflationary currencies can't work"; } else { return "The market cap is too low to support a stable currency"; } }
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kaleidoscopica 10y agogenerateBitcoinNewsReaction(); generateBitcoinSkepticism(); generateButteryPopcorn();
- colordrops 10y ago
- gregshap 10y agoSo what are the expected benefits of a bitcoin ETF? Many of the traditional benefits of ETFs are obsolete when you can just buy and hold an equivalent amount of bitcoin The biggest benefit I can think of is that some institutional investors have restrictions on the types of securities that they can buy. Someone could solve this by creating a company to buy lots of bitcoin, and then having an IPO to list that company on a public market. Then pension funds would be allowed to buy it, Jane Doe could buy some in her IRA, etc. Any reason this wouldn't be just as good as an ETF?
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> institutional investors have restrictions on the types of securities that they can buy Those restrictions exist for a reason. Trading unregistered things over-the-counter, e.g. private stock or Bitcoin, carries unique risks. One of those is around fraud. Most investment funds aren't equipped to do fraud diligence (and benefit from not having to do it on ETPs).
- dnautics 10y ago> Someone could solve this by creating a company to buy lots of bitcoin, and then having an IPO to list that company on a public market. Then pension funds would be allowed to buy it, Jane Doe could buy some in her IRA, etc. You're repeating yourself. That is more or less what an ETF is.
- gregshap 10y agoGot it thanks, that makes sense. I guess I was expecting this proposal to somehow be more complicated, and didn't realize that the bar is this high for listing a company thats a bucket of X holdings.
- piker 10y agoI can imagine that custody was considered to be a good selling point. If you can get exposure to BTC through an ETF without having to secure your own BTC, there's significant value there. I.e., centralize security in HoldCo, sell shares in HoldCo to give safe access, share security expense and take a small piece off the top for your troubles.
- tormeh 10y agoCan't they just file in another country? I mean, it doesn't really matter where it's traded; any decent bank will give you access to at least the LSE and Xetra in addition to the two big American exchanges.
- olegkikin 10y agoIt matters, because the US retirement funds (401k, IRA) can't invest into some other country's ETFs, correct me if I'm wrong.
- bbcbasic 10y agoAustralia would be a good place though. Compulsory superannuation
- fennecfoxen 10y agoThis would be news to me. US 401k / IRA accounts can, and do, buy stocks in a variety of markets, whether directly or through instruments such as NYSEARCA:VEU (also available as the mutual funds VFWAX and VFWIX.) I'm not aware of any special reason why foreign-traded ETFs would get special treatment that foreign-traded stocks don't?
- wnevets 10y agoBitcoin fans will still try to spin this as good for bitcoin and that everyone needs to buy bitcoin now
- stOneskull 10y agoi don't need anything on silk road at the moment.
- astrodust 10y agoOn sale, 25% off!
- conanbatt 10y agoProof that the system knows bitcoin will take it down! They cant stop the machine! BUY U$S U$S U$S
- aric 10y agoUnrealistic security should be the only reason to disapprove of a bitcoin ETF governed by the SEC. Not only is it poorly suited for reckless centralization by thousands of indirect investors, but bitcoin as a whole would be setup up for massive government retaliation once the keys are compromised. MtGox x 10,000.
- hisabness 10y agoHow did you find this? I was unable to do so from the SEC's main page.
- hisabness 10y agoHow did you find this? I was unable to do so from the SEC's main page.
- hirokiky 10y agoI selled my BTC in these days but I didn't know this topic. Always charts of BTC is too reactive so I think it's not for investment...
- choxi 10y agoCould someone explain what a Bitcoin ETF is? My understanding is that ETFs are like index funds, which group other stocks into one basket. There's only one Bitcoin though, so what would a Bitcoin ETF collate? The "Description of the Proposal" didn't really make that clear to me.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoETFs group arbitrary assets into something that can be traded like a stock. So the closest comparison would be something like a gold ETF, which lets you buy and sell something like you would a stock with gold's approximate price. A Bitcoin ETF would let you buy and sell something like you would a stock with Bitcoin's approximate price. It's basically a wrapper class that lets people interact with things as if they were stocks.
- bellajbadr 10y agoi don't know why people get surprised it was obvious from the begining sec won't approve the request i am afraid it was just a trader manipulatioin
- lajy 10y agoSurely you made a lot of money shorting the market today then, right?
- johnyzee 10y agoThis is a pretty big blow. The ETF has been the talk of the town for the last four years, and it is not unreasonable to think that it has been holding the hand under the price, since to a lot of people it represented the coveted inflow of institutional investment into bitcoin. With this gone, the immediate outlook for bitcoin is bleak. There is little market adoption to speak of, in fact bitcoin is probably losing market share, as the initial hype and attention grabbing announcements of bitcoin support have died down, and a lot of merchants have decided that the miniscule business it drives is not worth the trouble. Also, the network is straining even under the current load, leading to (much) longer transaction confirmation times and higher fees. The average fee for a bitcoin transaction is now almost one dollar - this rules out a lot of use cases that previously people would have said were ideal for bitcoin. Which leads me to the even bigger problem: The bitcoin community and ecosystem is in a massive deadlock, between two sides that are equally rabid and antagonistic, and dividing the project down the middle, between the developers and the mining operators. Few outsiders likely know how bad it has become, but visit r/bitcoin and r/btc on reddit if you're curious. This would be concerning in itself for the future of the project, but it also means that right now no major updates can be made to the bitcoin network, because each camp runs a big percentage of the network and block any new initiative from the other side. All of this makes me very bearish for bitcoin in the medium term. I am very sure that bitcoin has a future, but how long out that is, and how big it is, remains doubtful and could well be influenced negatively by particularly the issue of governance. Satoshi once said something like "in ten years bitcoin is either worth a huge amount or nothing". I'm starting to fear that might not be true - bitcoin could also become a small niche platform for a very limited set of use cases.
- elastic_church 10y agoI like how what your wrote is just about market share to other cryptocurrencies. The transaction backlog is so high because people are using bitcoin more than ever, alot of times to get to those other cryptos
- anonu 10y ago> since to a lot of people it represented the coveted inflow of institutional investment into bitcoin I would say coveted inflow of retail investment. I don't think any serious institution would invest in bitcoin. The risk is too high given that the AUM can go to 0 instantly with one data breach.
- jtlien1 10y agoSomething useful like bitcoin etf gets rejected. But look at some of the stocks that are allowed to trade... Magnegas for example has been an ongoing fraud for 17 years. Fake delivery of machines to Kazahkstan. It would be easy to prove this a fraud but the SEC does not care.
- celticninja 10y agoThis is the same SEC that ignored multiple warnings about Madoff because they didn't want to know the truth.
- celticninja 10y agoThis is the same SEC that ignored multiple warnings about Madoff because they didn't want to know the truth.
- nradov 10y agoMagnegas trades OTC which is completely different.
- jtlien1 10y agoSomething useful like bitcoin etf gets rejected. But look at some of the stocks that are allowed to trade... Magnegas for example has been an ongoing fraud for 17 years. Fake delivery of machines to Kazahkstan. It would be easy to prove this a fraud but the SEC does not care.
- COMPUTERLOSER 10y agoJokes going to be on them when the dollar crashes and they won't have easy access to their liquidity in bitcoins.
- nibbler_death 10y agoWe don't have a ton of time, but i'm just here letting you know that the Winklevoss ETF will get approved at the end of the day today, and when that happens the price is going to skyrocket. Don't say I didn't warn you.
- appcloud 10y agoThe Bitcoin markets don't have to be regulated for this ETF to be tradable. The Winklevoss could still list their ETF on the OTC Markets and anyone with a brokerage account would still be able to trade it. There's already a Bitcoin Investment trust that is currently tradable on the OTC market though as one commenter mentioned it's currently trading at a premium.
- PaulHoule 10y agoAt least somebody has some sense.
- Mikeb85 10y agoGood. It makes no sense to base an ETF on an unregulated crypto-currency. It was pretty much just a scam to juice the Bitcoin price...
- waynenilsen 10y agoI am surprised to see how many people on HN do not understand the value proposition of Bitcoin.
- oska 10y agoHN is notoriously bad where discussion of bitcoin is concerned.
- Frogolocalypse 10y agoYes, it's a bit weird.
- nassirkhan 10y agoI wonder what assets are resistant to mass systemic failures arising due to calamities such as war etc. Bitcoin: without the internet, it would be hard to transact Fine Art and Gold: hard to carry around Dollars, land, guns, alcohol?
- nikolay 10y agoBubbles burst. Even the current price is pumped by China and the miners who can't survive at a low price. The crash to $0 is way overdue.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- delieum 10y agoThis seems to be a victory for bitcoin. Why would a government entity know what to do with a purposely designed non governmental decentralized currency? Especially a profit seeing ETP loaded on top with 0.xx% commission? It's ludicrous to imagine the SEC jumping on this train, BTC will outlive them. As for the Wrinkles twins, they are profit seekers, nothing more. The purpose of a decentralized currency is to be a decentralized currency, enabling peer to peer outside of sovereign intervention economics. This is a non sovereign movement regulated by supply, demand, peers sprinkled with occasional robbery here and there. This digital currency which will outlive many sovereign states that currently exist.
- h1d 10y agoPBoC must be pissed if their intention of suspending leverages from Chinese exchanges was to smooth out the ETF approval.
- aphextron 10y agoCan someone please explain to me the logic in treating Bitcoin as an investment vehicle? I get that fiat currencies are traded like equity, but this is not that. I also understand that there is a huge potential for short term gains, but the risk is just as great for a total loss. Bitcoin is a means of transferring wealth. It is a tool, not a commodity. When are people going to stop this speculation and treat it as such?
- EternalData 10y agoThe volatility of bitcoin to regulatory announcements is basically sky-high, and I imagine a money making opportunity. Checked Coinbase right about 30 minutes after it cratered down to 995. Text price alerts don't seem to be working :/
- nonbel 10y agoThere is another proposed ETF being ruled on in a couple weeks: >"The Commission, pursuant to Section 19(b)(2) of the Act,9 designates March 30, 2017 as the date by which the Commission should either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change." https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-delays-decision-solidx-bitcoin-trust/ https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-delays-decision-solidx-bitcoin-...
- jabgrabdthrow 10y agoThat's a bummer I always hoped I could invest into an Exchange Traded version of exposure to Bitcoin ha ha ha, now china gets all the exchange data, morons
- cgb223 10y agoWhats the advantage to buying into a Bitcoin ETF vs just buying the same value directly in Bitcoin?
- myowncrapulence 10y agoTax avoidance on capital gains since it can be added to your IRA. Also it would allow bitcoin to be purchased from any trading station in the US rather than a website you have to sign-up for
- HMehr 10y agoI very much agree with SEC's decesion, just for other reasons. The usuall ETFs are baskets of bonds, stocks and commodities. Regardless of the level of volatility, they are all priced per the capacity of those stocks/bonds/commodities to create economical value. That means you have a solid economical logic to price them. Of course, supply and demand impacts the price, but even if no one wants to buy a certain stock, that stock has a marketable value. You can take the assets of that company, sell them and divine the cash by the number of stocks out there. Without going to too much details, I fail to understand how bitcoin can be treated like a stock/bond/commodities? Bitcoin value is purely based on the supply and demand forces. Without supply and demand, bitcoin has no value. On its own, it has no value generation power and therefore cannot be compared or traded like a stock, neither can be packaged into an ETF. As much as I do not like to agree with SEC, this one is a right decesion!