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Bitcoin 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

Bitcoin 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 ago
I 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.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    There are regulated markets for gold.
    - stOneskull 10y ago
      gold is a precious metal. bitcoin is a text file.
      - astrange 10y ago
        Bitcoin is a share of a conversion from electricity to waste heat.
        kfrzcode 10y ago
        Which ceases to exist entirely after a mega-solar-flare. Gold persists.
        Consultant32452 10y ago
        If the mega solar flare is mega enough you might get a few extra gold atoms. Think of the inflation!
        astrange 10y ago
        Unless it also disables the security systems on your gold storage or erases your GLD shares or we forget we'd all agreed gold is valuable.
        shitgoose 10y ago
        physical, bitchez! (sorry, spend too much time on zerohedge...)
- petre 10y ago
  In highly uncertain times, for example when civilization would be reverted back to the Middle Ages or a Fukushima/911 event, bitcoin would be of lesser use due to lack of an Internet connection. People need food and water in those circumstances, not bitcoin or Rolexes.
  - shitgoose 10y ago
    yep. 25 cents per round of ammo will sound like $1 per Bitcoin nowadays.
  - andy_ppp 10y ago
    Yes because you're going to survive an event like that; the Fukushima and 911 references don't make sense because you clearly don't understand what I was talking about. I'm talking about being able to have a reserve that can be converted easily into something useful (fungible) so bitcoin in these events might not be useful but nor would gold or a Rolex. I'm just stating why I think Bitcoin price will continue to rise even though it's not a currency.
joecool1029 10y ago
So yeah, it looks like this ruling will prevent any commodity linked ETF from being approved without surveillance on a regulated exchange. So that's not likely not gonna happen ever. The ruling kills any other bitcoin/virtual asset ETF from getting approved as well.
- omouse 10y ago
  without surveillance on a regulated exchange So we're going to have competition in exchanges, a free market of them with various rules/surveillance levels? Neat!
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    Competition between exchanges based on rules (e.g. paying liquidity takers versus makers) and surveillance (e.g pits versus dark pools or tape delays) has existed for a long time (think: American Stock Exchange versus NYSE versus NASDAQ) [1]. It sped up after the SEC passed Reg ATS [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_system [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.301 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.301
EGreg 10y ago
I put a 50x leveraged short contract trade 10 mins before that at BitMex, and just before it plummeted, it quickly went up to 1327 and I got wiped out. So I didn't get to make a huge return!
- jbooth 10y ago
  The market can stay irrational longer than.. 10 mins.
- zeusk 10y ago
  > 50x leveraged short contract This is partly why SEC wants underlying to be regulated.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    What's stopping him from doing a similar thing by selling deep OOTM options off of money he borrows on his margin account at any other broker?
    - vostok 10y ago
      Deep out of the money options have optionality whereas BitMex contracts are delta 1 products. They have literally nothing in common. The relevant difference in this case is that the option caps your upside.
      - chillacy 10y ago
        My point is that risky financial plays are still possible even in the SEC regulated market. Maybe I misunderstood the parent poster though.
        zeusk 10y ago
        As per SEC requirements, brokers are required to quiz you to makes sure you understand the risks involved in trading derivatives. Furthermore, selling naked options (Level 3 access) without hedging or verticals requires certain capital and margin requirements, I do not think it is easily possible to get 50x levered in options alone - you'd probably need /ES futures for that.
jdhn 10y ago
Why is the third point a reservation? Is the SEC afraid that somebody could manipulate the share price due to the lack of liquidity?
hl5 10y ago
It's not reasonable in the sense that the SEC should respond to the level of trader interest in BTC with something other than "don't trade it". The SEC has a three pronged mission: - Protect investors - Maintain fair, orderly, and efficiently markets - Facilitate capital formation With this decision they missed on all three. No investor was protected. The BTC market today was not fair, orderly, or efficient. There was excessive capital destruction.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  SEC isn't saying "don't trade it". They're saying don't register a security linked to it. Registration means you're complying with certain laws. Those laws, in turn, make diligence easier for investors. If you remove those baseline expectations, marginal transaction costs go up.
- johnwheeler 10y ago
  Says you... According to their ruling, they're doing this exactly to protect investors.
- branchless 10y ago
  How was their capital destruction? People can buy in at a lower price. It's a zero sum game.
  - hl5 10y ago
    Traders using leverage means it's not a zero sum game.
    - branchless 10y ago
      Nope. Nothing was destroyed. Usd moved from one account to another. Nobody dug up vegetables. Nobody planted any.
slg 10y ago
>Bitcoin just went from a high of 1327.1926 to 995.9575 in the blink of an eye. That is a loss of 25% of its value. This announcement does nothing to hurt the utility of Bitcoin or its application as a medium of exchange. That drop certainly seems like a speculative investment bubble popping.
- baddox 10y ago
  It clearly reduces some of the potential future value of Bitcoin, and predictions of future value are baked into the current market price. I guess you could consider that under your definition of "speculative investment bubble," but it really applies to any market price of anything.
  - slg 10y ago
    The only way it reduces its future potential value is by making it harder to speculate on its future potential value. Nothing about the currency actually changed.
    - askmike 10y ago
      While technically nothing changed, the SEC approving an ETF directly tied to bitcoin would have changed how Bitcoin is perceived by a lot of people. > Nothing about the currency actually changed. You can say this about about everything: "while nothing about the pound changed, brexit caused the price to go down."
      - slg 10y ago
        Brexit had real world impact on how the currency would be used in the future and the strength of the economy of the country that stands behind it. The SEC decision does none of that.
        askmike 10y ago
        > The SEC decision does none of that. That's because Bitcoin isn't directly tied to any economy. But just as Brexit had a real world impact on the pound, the SEC decision had a real world impact on bitcoin: It is directly tied to how people perceive Bitcoin, which is an import aspect just as well.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
thinkloop 10y ago
The next step seems to be to create a regulated market - anyone know what that means, or whether there is something inherent to Bitcoin that doesn't allow it? Coinbase has KYC, banking relationships and tax integration, I'm sure that can be extended to an exchange.
- kolinko 10y ago
  You'd need to force all the unregulated exchanges to close down, and block ability to run smart contracts or any other software on it. And do it in all the major jurisdictions?
  - thinkloop 10y ago
    That doesn't sound right. The etf is pinned to a single exchange (which they complained wasn't liquid enough) and there are thousands of informal unregulated gold markets all around the world. > and block ability to run smart contracts or any other software on it. How do you think smart contacts play a role?
  - djrogers 10y ago
    Not "all" of the exchanges - I think the key is the term "significant markets". You need to have most people who do significant amounts of BTC transactions on regulated exchanges as opposed to everyone.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > You'd need to force all the unregulated exchanges to close down No, you'd just need for the regulated exchanges to control a substantial share of the total volume of trade, which could happen by shift in trader preferences, unregulated exchanges becoming regulated, or, yes, unregulated exchanges shutting down.
- bb88 10y ago
  I would think regulated means the following: (Note that I don't believe this needs to be done by a government. It could be private.) 1. A governing body that can create rules and regulation for the market. 2. An enforcement body that can enact penalties for rule violations. The problem I think is not so much the governing agency, it's the enforcement for rule violators. It's one thing to punish Mt. Gox for violating the exchange terms, but what if it's some shady anonymous bitcoin exchange broker in China?
drharby 10y ago
> 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. I'd challenge ANY government to regulate cold, hard, cash
iaw 10y ago
When the Winklevoss twins became aware of BTC (or at least shortly after they started talking about it publicly), some classic market manipulation ploys began appearing. It could be coincidental, but I've always been suspicious that the Winklevoss twins were the first people of a mind and with the capital to start gaming the BTC market as one can any other financial institution. The Winklevii are not people I'd like to distantly do business with. Edit: I'm trying to find articles but it was years ago. What I recall were cycles of Ramps and Bear Raids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation
- ericjang 10y ago
  I almost read that as Wink-evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)
- noja 10y ago
  Can you go into more detail on what kinds of market manipulation ploys exist?
  - socialist_coder 10y ago
    Buy coins, create positive news & watch the price go up, sell coins at the new high. Sell coins, create negative news & watch the price go down, buy coins at the new low. Same as what unscrupulous people have been doing since the beginning of commerce.
    - sneak 10y ago
      Back when bitcoin was pennies, I bought BTC and then listed a bunch of nonexistent desirable drugs shipping from a convenient location for sale on the silk road, then dumped the BTC a few cents higher, without ever taking an order. I only made a few bucks, but I was curious if it were possible then to move such a tiny market. It was.
      - 10y ago
dnautics 10y ago
to be honest, creating an ETF exposes bitcoin to even more debt-backed trading, increasing the risk of bubbliness. In the medium run, this decision is probably "better" for bitcoin, since I think there is still trepidation about the realness, uncertainty, and misunderstanding about the market for the "intrinsic" value of bitcoin - a medium of exchange built on distributed trust.
drharby 10y ago
> 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. I'd challenge ANY government to regulate cold, hard, cash
brianpgordon 10y ago
Frame this and put it on your wall- https://i.imgur.com/tct42F0.png https://i.imgur.com/tct42F0.png
- asciimo 10y ago
  Eh, it'll be back. It has died a thousand times.
- hughes 10y ago
  Can you mark the exact moment the ruling was made public? Could this image contain evidence of trading w/ insider knowledge of the SEC ruling?
  - peterhadlaw 10y ago
    This is an incredibly interesting observation. I wonder if this has shown in other non-BTC graphs as well
    - dnautics 10y ago
      http://imgur.com/a/czfbC http://imgur.com/a/czfbC This was etherium, which is also very interesting; etherium and BTC have been highly correlated over the last few months. I suspect that the crazy dip is just bots trading on that fact and the immediate correction is humans.
    - gburt 10y ago
      Yes. Evidence of early releases of this sort of information shows up in market data regularly.
  - h1d 10y ago
    The drop started at the exact time SEC made the announcement through their web. Interesting part was, it went from 1250 way up to 1350 hours before the announcement making people feel someone bought on insider information but turned out that was some FOMO buyer. I was trading right then sticking to the monitor for 8 hours straight waiting for their announcement.
elastic_church 10y ago
The irony here is that CME Group - which provides futures and derivatives - is waiting on the sidelines watching if an ETF like this could get approved and sustain a liquid market before providing bitcoin futures.
Vadoff 10y ago
It dropped before the announcement though.
nodesocket 10y ago
I'd say this is just a correction from over bought levels. Even better the correction is based on actual negative news, which is a sign of market strength (vs going down on no substantial news).
- hueving 10y ago
  What kind of logic is that? Just because it goes down on negative news doesn't mean it wouldn't go down on other rumors.
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    I'm saying perhaps it shows a sign of maturity. Don't get me wrong, anybody who thinks Bitcoin is a solid investment instrument as a whole is not informed. Bitcoin investing by definition is highly speculative and you should have an appetite to sustain massive swings.
olalonde 10y ago
FWIW, it's now back at 1137$, about the price level of 2-3 days ago.
anonu 10y ago
> I'm a bit disappointed that there is no ETF but this is pretty darn reasonable. You can trade the OTC product with ticker GBTC [1]. It is a sponsored note - has quite a bit of volume on OTC markets. AUM is about 230mm. Expense ratio is around 2% (atrocious). I noted that - before bitcoins drop on Friday afternoon - GBTC was up about 135% over 2 years - versus bitcoins 200% appreciation. So the tracking error is quite bad. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbtc?ltr=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbtc?ltr=1
elif 10y ago
Look at the price now. I would encourage anyone trying to read into the future of bitcoin based upon daily min/max to learn about the difference between day traders and hodlers. At this point, hodlers have been through so many scares that there is very little left that can weaken their hand. The volume this week is actually down. It is only a handful of people trying to intentionally spike the price, and trade off the news to turn a daily profit. The only suckers are other day traders, and hodlers actually suckered some of them by buying in the dip they created. weekly volume: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&r=week&t=b https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&r=week&t=...
- geofft 10y ago
  But the ETF isn't going to distinguish between day-traders and long-term holders. In particular, Gemini's price was also in the $1300s before the news, and dropped significantly. If Gemini was giving the hodlers' price, that would be different. If a handful of people trying to spike the price and trade off the news can cause BTC-USD to be 30% more than what it "should" be (i.e., what the price would be in a high-information, high-liquidity, low-shenanigans market), then the SEC is absolutely correct to say that the ETF is too wild to be approvable at present. For comparison, on June 24 (Brexit), GBP-USD fell from about $1.50 to about $1.35, a 10% drop, and that was (IMO) much more significant news about the long-term future of the pound.
kurmouk 10y ago
A cryptocurrency that doesnt have the ability to go on a shared marked isn't reliable and is a true rupture between what institutions believe in and what the people share in common.

andy_ppp 10y ago

I 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.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  There are regulated markets for gold.
  - stOneskull 10y ago
    gold is a precious metal. bitcoin is a text file.
    - astrange 10y ago
      Bitcoin is a share of a conversion from electricity to waste heat.
      - kfrzcode 10y ago
        Which ceases to exist entirely after a mega-solar-flare. Gold persists.
        Consultant32452 10y ago
        If the mega solar flare is mega enough you might get a few extra gold atoms. Think of the inflation!
        astrange 10y ago
        Unless it also disables the security systems on your gold storage or erases your GLD shares or we forget we'd all agreed gold is valuable.
        shitgoose 10y ago
        physical, bitchez! (sorry, spend too much time on zerohedge...)
petre 10y ago
In highly uncertain times, for example when civilization would be reverted back to the Middle Ages or a Fukushima/911 event, bitcoin would be of lesser use due to lack of an Internet connection. People need food and water in those circumstances, not bitcoin or Rolexes.
- shitgoose 10y ago
  yep. 25 cents per round of ammo will sound like $1 per Bitcoin nowadays.
- andy_ppp 10y ago
  Yes because you're going to survive an event like that; the Fukushima and 911 references don't make sense because you clearly don't understand what I was talking about. I'm talking about being able to have a reserve that can be converted easily into something useful (fungible) so bitcoin in these events might not be useful but nor would gold or a Rolex. I'm just stating why I think Bitcoin price will continue to rise even though it's not a currency.

joecool1029 10y ago

So yeah, it looks like this ruling will prevent any commodity linked ETF from being approved without surveillance on a regulated exchange. So that's not likely not gonna happen ever. The ruling kills any other bitcoin/virtual asset ETF from getting approved as well.

omouse 10y ago
without surveillance on a regulated exchange So we're going to have competition in exchanges, a free market of them with various rules/surveillance levels? Neat!
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  Competition between exchanges based on rules (e.g. paying liquidity takers versus makers) and surveillance (e.g pits versus dark pools or tape delays) has existed for a long time (think: American Stock Exchange versus NYSE versus NASDAQ) [1]. It sped up after the SEC passed Reg ATS [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_system [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.301 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.301

EGreg 10y ago

I put a 50x leveraged short contract trade 10 mins before that at BitMex, and just before it plummeted, it quickly went up to 1327 and I got wiped out. So I didn't get to make a huge return!

jbooth 10y ago
The market can stay irrational longer than.. 10 mins.
zeusk 10y ago
> 50x leveraged short contract This is partly why SEC wants underlying to be regulated.
- chillacy 10y ago
  What's stopping him from doing a similar thing by selling deep OOTM options off of money he borrows on his margin account at any other broker?
  - vostok 10y ago
    Deep out of the money options have optionality whereas BitMex contracts are delta 1 products. They have literally nothing in common. The relevant difference in this case is that the option caps your upside.
    - chillacy 10y ago
      My point is that risky financial plays are still possible even in the SEC regulated market. Maybe I misunderstood the parent poster though.
      - zeusk 10y ago
        As per SEC requirements, brokers are required to quiz you to makes sure you understand the risks involved in trading derivatives. Furthermore, selling naked options (Level 3 access) without hedging or verticals requires certain capital and margin requirements, I do not think it is easily possible to get 50x levered in options alone - you'd probably need /ES futures for that.

jdhn 10y ago

Why is the third point a reservation? Is the SEC afraid that somebody could manipulate the share price due to the lack of liquidity?

hl5 10y ago

It's not reasonable in the sense that the SEC should respond to the level of trader interest in BTC with something other than "don't trade it". The SEC has a three pronged mission: - Protect investors - Maintain fair, orderly, and efficiently markets - Facilitate capital formation With this decision they missed on all three. No investor was protected. The BTC market today was not fair, orderly, or efficient. There was excessive capital destruction.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
SEC isn't saying "don't trade it". They're saying don't register a security linked to it. Registration means you're complying with certain laws. Those laws, in turn, make diligence easier for investors. If you remove those baseline expectations, marginal transaction costs go up.
johnwheeler 10y ago
Says you... According to their ruling, they're doing this exactly to protect investors.
branchless 10y ago
How was their capital destruction? People can buy in at a lower price. It's a zero sum game.
- hl5 10y ago
  Traders using leverage means it's not a zero sum game.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Nope. Nothing was destroyed. Usd moved from one account to another. Nobody dug up vegetables. Nobody planted any.

slg 10y ago

>Bitcoin just went from a high of 1327.1926 to 995.9575 in the blink of an eye. That is a loss of 25% of its value. This announcement does nothing to hurt the utility of Bitcoin or its application as a medium of exchange. That drop certainly seems like a speculative investment bubble popping.

baddox 10y ago
It clearly reduces some of the potential future value of Bitcoin, and predictions of future value are baked into the current market price. I guess you could consider that under your definition of "speculative investment bubble," but it really applies to any market price of anything.
- slg 10y ago
  The only way it reduces its future potential value is by making it harder to speculate on its future potential value. Nothing about the currency actually changed.
  - askmike 10y ago
    While technically nothing changed, the SEC approving an ETF directly tied to bitcoin would have changed how Bitcoin is perceived by a lot of people. > Nothing about the currency actually changed. You can say this about about everything: "while nothing about the pound changed, brexit caused the price to go down."
    - slg 10y ago
      Brexit had real world impact on how the currency would be used in the future and the strength of the economy of the country that stands behind it. The SEC decision does none of that.
      - askmike 10y ago
        > The SEC decision does none of that. That's because Bitcoin isn't directly tied to any economy. But just as Brexit had a real world impact on the pound, the SEC decision had a real world impact on bitcoin: It is directly tied to how people perceive Bitcoin, which is an import aspect just as well.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

thinkloop 10y ago

The next step seems to be to create a regulated market - anyone know what that means, or whether there is something inherent to Bitcoin that doesn't allow it? Coinbase has KYC, banking relationships and tax integration, I'm sure that can be extended to an exchange.

kolinko 10y ago
You'd need to force all the unregulated exchanges to close down, and block ability to run smart contracts or any other software on it. And do it in all the major jurisdictions?
- thinkloop 10y ago
  That doesn't sound right. The etf is pinned to a single exchange (which they complained wasn't liquid enough) and there are thousands of informal unregulated gold markets all around the world. > and block ability to run smart contracts or any other software on it. How do you think smart contacts play a role?
- djrogers 10y ago
  Not "all" of the exchanges - I think the key is the term "significant markets". You need to have most people who do significant amounts of BTC transactions on regulated exchanges as opposed to everyone.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > You'd need to force all the unregulated exchanges to close down No, you'd just need for the regulated exchanges to control a substantial share of the total volume of trade, which could happen by shift in trader preferences, unregulated exchanges becoming regulated, or, yes, unregulated exchanges shutting down.
bb88 10y ago
I would think regulated means the following: (Note that I don't believe this needs to be done by a government. It could be private.) 1. A governing body that can create rules and regulation for the market. 2. An enforcement body that can enact penalties for rule violations. The problem I think is not so much the governing agency, it's the enforcement for rule violators. It's one thing to punish Mt. Gox for violating the exchange terms, but what if it's some shady anonymous bitcoin exchange broker in China?

drharby 10y ago

> 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. I'd challenge ANY government to regulate cold, hard, cash

iaw 10y ago

When the Winklevoss twins became aware of BTC (or at least shortly after they started talking about it publicly), some classic market manipulation ploys began appearing. It could be coincidental, but I've always been suspicious that the Winklevoss twins were the first people of a mind and with the capital to start gaming the BTC market as one can any other financial institution. The Winklevii are not people I'd like to distantly do business with. Edit: I'm trying to find articles but it was years ago. What I recall were cycles of Ramps and Bear Raids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation

ericjang 10y ago
I almost read that as Wink-evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)
noja 10y ago
Can you go into more detail on what kinds of market manipulation ploys exist?
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  Buy coins, create positive news & watch the price go up, sell coins at the new high. Sell coins, create negative news & watch the price go down, buy coins at the new low. Same as what unscrupulous people have been doing since the beginning of commerce.
  - sneak 10y ago
    Back when bitcoin was pennies, I bought BTC and then listed a bunch of nonexistent desirable drugs shipping from a convenient location for sale on the silk road, then dumped the BTC a few cents higher, without ever taking an order. I only made a few bucks, but I was curious if it were possible then to move such a tiny market. It was.
    - 10y ago

dnautics 10y ago

to be honest, creating an ETF exposes bitcoin to even more debt-backed trading, increasing the risk of bubbliness. In the medium run, this decision is probably "better" for bitcoin, since I think there is still trepidation about the realness, uncertainty, and misunderstanding about the market for the "intrinsic" value of bitcoin - a medium of exchange built on distributed trust.

drharby 10y ago

brianpgordon 10y ago

Frame this and put it on your wall- https://i.imgur.com/tct42F0.png https://i.imgur.com/tct42F0.png

asciimo 10y ago
Eh, it'll be back. It has died a thousand times.
hughes 10y ago
Can you mark the exact moment the ruling was made public? Could this image contain evidence of trading w/ insider knowledge of the SEC ruling?
- peterhadlaw 10y ago
  This is an incredibly interesting observation. I wonder if this has shown in other non-BTC graphs as well
  - dnautics 10y ago
    http://imgur.com/a/czfbC http://imgur.com/a/czfbC This was etherium, which is also very interesting; etherium and BTC have been highly correlated over the last few months. I suspect that the crazy dip is just bots trading on that fact and the immediate correction is humans.
  - gburt 10y ago
    Yes. Evidence of early releases of this sort of information shows up in market data regularly.
- h1d 10y ago
  The drop started at the exact time SEC made the announcement through their web. Interesting part was, it went from 1250 way up to 1350 hours before the announcement making people feel someone bought on insider information but turned out that was some FOMO buyer. I was trading right then sticking to the monitor for 8 hours straight waiting for their announcement.

elastic_church 10y ago

The irony here is that CME Group - which provides futures and derivatives - is waiting on the sidelines watching if an ETF like this could get approved and sustain a liquid market before providing bitcoin futures.

Vadoff 10y ago

It dropped before the announcement though.

nodesocket 10y ago

I'd say this is just a correction from over bought levels. Even better the correction is based on actual negative news, which is a sign of market strength (vs going down on no substantial news).

hueving 10y ago
What kind of logic is that? Just because it goes down on negative news doesn't mean it wouldn't go down on other rumors.
- nodesocket 10y ago
  I'm saying perhaps it shows a sign of maturity. Don't get me wrong, anybody who thinks Bitcoin is a solid investment instrument as a whole is not informed. Bitcoin investing by definition is highly speculative and you should have an appetite to sustain massive swings.

olalonde 10y ago

FWIW, it's now back at 1137$, about the price level of 2-3 days ago.

anonu 10y ago

> I'm a bit disappointed that there is no ETF but this is pretty darn reasonable. You can trade the OTC product with ticker GBTC [1]. It is a sponsored note - has quite a bit of volume on OTC markets. AUM is about 230mm. Expense ratio is around 2% (atrocious). I noted that - before bitcoins drop on Friday afternoon - GBTC was up about 135% over 2 years - versus bitcoins 200% appreciation. So the tracking error is quite bad. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbtc?ltr=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/gbtc?ltr=1

elif 10y ago

Look at the price now. I would encourage anyone trying to read into the future of bitcoin based upon daily min/max to learn about the difference between day traders and hodlers. At this point, hodlers have been through so many scares that there is very little left that can weaken their hand. The volume this week is actually down. It is only a handful of people trying to intentionally spike the price, and trade off the news to turn a daily profit. The only suckers are other day traders, and hodlers actually suckered some of them by buying in the dip they created. weekly volume: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&r=week&t=b https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d?c=e&r=week&t=...

geofft 10y ago
But the ETF isn't going to distinguish between day-traders and long-term holders. In particular, Gemini's price was also in the $1300s before the news, and dropped significantly. If Gemini was giving the hodlers' price, that would be different. If a handful of people trying to spike the price and trade off the news can cause BTC-USD to be 30% more than what it "should" be (i.e., what the price would be in a high-information, high-liquidity, low-shenanigans market), then the SEC is absolutely correct to say that the ETF is too wild to be approvable at present. For comparison, on June 24 (Brexit), GBP-USD fell from about $1.50 to about $1.35, a 10% drop, and that was (IMO) much more significant news about the long-term future of the pound.

kurmouk 10y ago

A cryptocurrency that doesnt have the ability to go on a shared marked isn't reliable and is a true rupture between what institutions believe in and what the people share in common.