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Clichéd, I know, but this is good for Bitcoin. For the first time, people have the ability to express short interest in Bitcoin. Sure, there are sketchy credit

Clichéd, I know, but this is good for Bitcoin. For the first time, people have the ability to express short interest in Bitcoin. Sure, there are sketchy credit markets inside of the various cryptocurrency exchanges, but soooo sketchy. The biggest was FTX, for example. But now organizations and individuals can actually express short interest in Bitcoin. Ideally the ETFs would be redeemable in kind, rather than the cash-settled ones that are all that the SEC will allow, so there may be disconnects to the spot price, but this is very exciting for long-time Bitcoin believers like myself (as opposed to hodlers) because price stability is the goal.

bb88 3y ago
Shorting a stock often helps get it to the "correct" market price faster. If the market truly thinks that BTC is really propped up by Tether, then well, downward price pressure should help the market price the true value of BTC. I do believe the true price is Zero, like most crypto currency has gone to over time.
- andrewla 3y ago
  Exactly! Price discovery in Bitcoin has always been a nightmare, but now there's at least a chance of getting some serious information into the market.
  - bb88 3y ago
    What I think is interesting is that when a crypto something goes to zero, it never recovers. Whether it's an NFT, a coin, or a so called stable coin. It dies, and there's no underlying value to liquidate. You bought some cryptographically signed number that no one wants anymore.
    - lurking15 3y ago
      > You bought some cryptographically signed number that no one wants anymore. Much like: you bought a slip of paper that's effectively a Nancy Pelosi/Mitch McConnell's Chuck-E-Cheese token that gets conjured out of thin air to the tune of trillions whenever the next mega-omnibus fraud bill that no one even reads anymore needs to be financed. And this is done precisely because the tax burden of all these wars and social programs would be indefensible if it they were actually levied against the voters through taxation. Even billionaires can't finance this size of govt, you could confiscate all their wealth and that only works once. So they go with the invisible tax of currency devaluation, which robs everyone in the present and kills saving which robs people in future. Face it: every fiat currency is on a one-way trip to zero. Every currency in world history has that fate.
      - bb88 3y ago
        So if you hate fiat currency without any underlying value, why are you willing to defend any "currency" without any underlying value? You could proclaim "GOLD STANDARD" I guess, and it might be better, or probably even worse. The big problem is that God filed all the gold under NOT USA. If South Africa wanted to devalue our currency then, they could mine a whole bunch of gold and put it on the market. If you're going to have a currency valued on something tangible, it needs to exist only in the US, something we can control. Also if you want to own gold, BUY GOLD! No one's stopping you! It has an intrinsic value in both jewelry and electronics! No need for this crypto nonsense!
  - paulpauper 3y ago
    the crypto market was huge well before the approval of the ETFs. price discovery was never a problem.
lxgr 3y ago
How can there ever be price stability without any mechanism to buffer changes in economic activity? The demand for money is highly variable and roughly correlated with economic activity (just think of 2020!), so with the supply fixed, large swings will always occur even (and especially) in a world where Bitcoin really becomes a usable currency.
- andrewla 3y ago
  I think that's an interesting question. Long term I feel that there is an arbitrage between Bitcoin prices / block reward and energy prices. You may be right about big swings as demand for money fluctuates, but we need functioning credit markets in Bitcoin for that to even be an option. This is still very far in the future.
paulpauper 3y ago
it has always been easy to short crypto. Futures, for example.
- andrewla 3y ago
  Bitcoin futures on CME are not really accessible to retail investors, and the market there has always suffered from tepid liquidity as a result.
mrb 3y ago
It's been possible for years to short Bitcoin on reputable exchanges. For example Coinbase and Gemini, to name two of the most regulated and compliant US-based exchanges... unlike FTX which was not in the same category, and definitely sketchy. What the ETFs do is not so much help bears place their bets. The ETFs simply make the asset more accessible, to a broader pool of traders, who now don't have to sign up to crypto exchanges, but can trade from their usual brokerage firm.

bb88 3y ago

Shorting a stock often helps get it to the "correct" market price faster. If the market truly thinks that BTC is really propped up by Tether, then well, downward price pressure should help the market price the true value of BTC. I do believe the true price is Zero, like most crypto currency has gone to over time.

andrewla 3y ago
Exactly! Price discovery in Bitcoin has always been a nightmare, but now there's at least a chance of getting some serious information into the market.
- bb88 3y ago
  What I think is interesting is that when a crypto something goes to zero, it never recovers. Whether it's an NFT, a coin, or a so called stable coin. It dies, and there's no underlying value to liquidate. You bought some cryptographically signed number that no one wants anymore.
  - lurking15 3y ago
    > You bought some cryptographically signed number that no one wants anymore. Much like: you bought a slip of paper that's effectively a Nancy Pelosi/Mitch McConnell's Chuck-E-Cheese token that gets conjured out of thin air to the tune of trillions whenever the next mega-omnibus fraud bill that no one even reads anymore needs to be financed. And this is done precisely because the tax burden of all these wars and social programs would be indefensible if it they were actually levied against the voters through taxation. Even billionaires can't finance this size of govt, you could confiscate all their wealth and that only works once. So they go with the invisible tax of currency devaluation, which robs everyone in the present and kills saving which robs people in future. Face it: every fiat currency is on a one-way trip to zero. Every currency in world history has that fate.
    - bb88 3y ago
      So if you hate fiat currency without any underlying value, why are you willing to defend any "currency" without any underlying value? You could proclaim "GOLD STANDARD" I guess, and it might be better, or probably even worse. The big problem is that God filed all the gold under NOT USA. If South Africa wanted to devalue our currency then, they could mine a whole bunch of gold and put it on the market. If you're going to have a currency valued on something tangible, it needs to exist only in the US, something we can control. Also if you want to own gold, BUY GOLD! No one's stopping you! It has an intrinsic value in both jewelry and electronics! No need for this crypto nonsense!
- paulpauper 3y ago
  the crypto market was huge well before the approval of the ETFs. price discovery was never a problem.

lxgr 3y ago

How can there ever be price stability without any mechanism to buffer changes in economic activity? The demand for money is highly variable and roughly correlated with economic activity (just think of 2020!), so with the supply fixed, large swings will always occur even (and especially) in a world where Bitcoin really becomes a usable currency.

andrewla 3y ago
I think that's an interesting question. Long term I feel that there is an arbitrage between Bitcoin prices / block reward and energy prices. You may be right about big swings as demand for money fluctuates, but we need functioning credit markets in Bitcoin for that to even be an option. This is still very far in the future.

paulpauper 3y ago

it has always been easy to short crypto. Futures, for example.

andrewla 3y ago
Bitcoin futures on CME are not really accessible to retail investors, and the market there has always suffered from tepid liquidity as a result.

mrb 3y ago

It's been possible for years to short Bitcoin on reputable exchanges. For example Coinbase and Gemini, to name two of the most regulated and compliant US-based exchanges... unlike FTX which was not in the same category, and definitely sketchy. What the ETFs do is not so much help bears place their bets. The ETFs simply make the asset more accessible, to a broader pool of traders, who now don't have to sign up to crypto exchanges, but can trade from their usual brokerage firm.