General Cryptocoin Discussion

[lexluthermiester]

SBF guilty on all counts after ~4 hours of deliberation by the jury.

What a shocker..

 

[cvaldes]

Binance founder & CEO Changpeng Zhao has plead guilty to one count of failing to implement anti-money laundering safeguards. Binance agreed to pay a $4 billion settlement and must exit the U.S. market. Zhao is also stepping down as CEO.

Largest crypto exchange Binance fined $4 billion, CEO pleads guilty to not stopping money laundering

The founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to a felony charge that he failed to take steps to prevent money laundering.

apnews.com

Zhao -- a UAE resident -- voluntarily surrendered to U.S. government officials even though the UAE does not have an extradition treaty with the USA. Zhao's sentencing is currently scheduled for February 2024 with a guideline range up to 18 months.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland: “The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal.”

 

[lexluthermiester]

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland: “The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal.”

This was funny. Very much a "duh" moment.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Zhao -- a UAE resident -- voluntarily surrendered to U.S. government officials even though the UAE does not have an extradition treaty with the USA. Zhao's sentencing is currently scheduled for February 2024 with a guideline range up to 18 months.

Note: the recent hearing this week is 10 years, not 18-months.

I dunno how the number changed from 18-months to 120-months, but Zhao obviously isn't pleased.

 

[cvaldes]

Next up appears to be Do Kwan (a.k.a. the "Lunatic"), champion of the TerraUSD and Luna crypto tokens (both of which collapsed in 2022).

Montenegrin authorities have authorized his extradition to either South Korea or the USA, both of which are eager to pursue charges against him.

Montenegro court approves extradition of 'cryptocurrency king' Do Kwon

A court in Montenegro said on Friday it had approved the extradition of cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon, leaving a minister to decide if he will be handed over to South Korea or the United States, which both want him.

www.reuters.com

He had been detained in Montenegro for using fake passports. He claims he was not fleeing but circumstantial evidence points elsewhere. The Montenegrin court denied Kwon bail and is currently a guest of the Montenegrin state (jail).

Without a doubt, Kwan will not be the last crypto-bro to be prosecuted. With SBF and Zhao guilty results, they will fall like dominos.

As for crypto tokens being untraceable, well, this speaks volumes.

 

[R-T-B]

As for crypto tokens being untraceable, well, this speaks volumes.

No offense, but it doesn't speak to shit on that front. Making a bunch of people lose money and then getting physically arrested and detained for it says little about how tracable (or not) crypto really is.

 

[lexluthermiester]

No offense, but it doesn't speak to shit on that front. Making a bunch of people lose money and then getting physically arrested and detained for it says little about how tracable (or not) crypto really is.

To be fair, if done right, it's completely untraceable.

 

[Outback Bronze]

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd liven this thread up about the pending ETF decision from the SEC as it's been pretty quiet around here.

Would love to hear what everybody's thoughts are on the matter whether good or bad for the current crypto eco system and if you think prices will be majorly affected.

I have myself been reading some interesting threads about what Blackrock and the likes are going to do if approved.

This one comes from reddit which I found most intriguing:

"I had assumed for a long time that Blackrock and other ETFs were buying for months now ahead of the approval simply because the price was going up.

I was very wrong. At least about blackrock.

Blackrock knew in advance how they would beat Grayscale at this game. (Grayscale's GBTC has around 643,572 Bitcoin stacked already that we know about. They were always the ones to beat and the reason Gensler wouldn't approve any ETF until now.) So Blackrock simply did what they do best, somehow convince the regulator (Gensler) to change the rules to favor them and boom, "Cash Creates" was demanded of all ETFs earlier this week.

In case you haven't read into that yet, the Cash Creates rule demands that the ETF Bitcoin 'shares' be bought with cash. So yes, they still have to acquire Bitcoins to back their ETF shares but they can't already have bitcoin lying around like GBTC does! So now blackrock can start buying with their cash after the launch... Meanwhile Grayscale will have to sell a bitcoin to fiat, then use that fiat to buy bitcoin with into the share... For every bitcoin!

OMG the fees they are going to suffer... Blackrock & Gensler have absolutely destroyed them with this rule.

But the other take-away here is that no large banks have been buying bitcoin this year driving up the price to $44k yet... This is all natural market forces!"

Please, if you have anything else to add like what has been quoted above, I would love to hear it.

Cheers.

 

[Vayra86]

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd liven this thread up about the pending ETF decision from the SEC as it's been pretty quiet around here.

Would love to hear what everybody's thoughts are on the matter whether good or bad for the current crypto eco system and if you think prices will be majorly affected.

I have myself been reading some interesting threads about what Blackrock and the likes are going to do if approved.

This one comes from reddit which I found most intriguing:

"I had assumed for a long time that Blackrock and other ETFs were buying for months now ahead of the approval simply because the price was going up.

I was very wrong. At least about blackrock.

Blackrock knew in advance how they would beat Grayscale at this game. (Grayscale's GBTC has around 643,572 Bitcoin stacked already that we know about. They were always the ones to beat and the reason Gensler wouldn't approve any ETF until now.) So Blackrock simply did what they do best, somehow convince the regulator (Gensler) to change the rules to favor them and boom, "Cash Creates" was demanded of all ETFs earlier this week.

In case you haven't read into that yet, the Cash Creates rule demands that the ETF Bitcoin 'shares' be bought with cash. So yes, they still have to acquire Bitcoins to back their ETF shares but they can't already have bitcoin lying around like GBTC does! So now blackrock can start buying with their cash after the launch... Meanwhile Grayscale will have to sell a bitcoin to fiat, then use that fiat to buy bitcoin with into the share... For every bitcoin!

OMG the fees they are going to suffer... Blackrock & Gensler have absolutely destroyed them with this rule.

But the other take-away here is that no large banks have been buying bitcoin this year driving up the price to $44k yet... This is all natural market forces!"

Please, if you have anything else to add like what has been quoted above, I would love to hear it.

Cheers.

My two cents? Crypto has been relegated to the sidelines as irrelevant, speculative goods and many fools and money will be separated for those who keep believing its more than that.

If something crypto will actually make it to a real currency it will be state driven.

 

[KLiKzg]

Well, at least it is giving you positive interests.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi guys,

Just thought I'd liven this thread up about the pending ETF decision from the SEC as it's been pretty quiet around here.

Would love to hear what everybody's thoughts are on the matter whether good or bad for the current crypto eco system and if you think prices will be majorly affected.

I have myself been reading some interesting threads about what Blackrock and the likes are going to do if approved.

This one comes from reddit which I found most intriguing:

"I had assumed for a long time that Blackrock and other ETFs were buying for months now ahead of the approval simply because the price was going up.

I was very wrong. At least about blackrock.

Blackrock knew in advance how they would beat Grayscale at this game. (Grayscale's GBTC has around 643,572 Bitcoin stacked already that we know about. They were always the ones to beat and the reason Gensler wouldn't approve any ETF until now.) So Blackrock simply did what they do best, somehow convince the regulator (Gensler) to change the rules to favor them and boom, "Cash Creates" was demanded of all ETFs earlier this week.

In case you haven't read into that yet, the Cash Creates rule demands that the ETF Bitcoin 'shares' be bought with cash. So yes, they still have to acquire Bitcoins to back their ETF shares but they can't already have bitcoin lying around like GBTC does! So now blackrock can start buying with their cash after the launch... Meanwhile Grayscale will have to sell a bitcoin to fiat, then use that fiat to buy bitcoin with into the share... For every bitcoin!

OMG the fees they are going to suffer... Blackrock & Gensler have absolutely destroyed them with this rule.

But the other take-away here is that no large banks have been buying bitcoin this year driving up the price to $44k yet... This is all natural market forces!"

Please, if you have anything else to add like what has been quoted above, I would love to hear it.

Cheers.

Hi,
Guess the regulators wanted cash to hehe

Worth is a funny thing
You must have a buyer before any coin is worth anything.

 

[KLiKzg]

Watched BitConned last night...& after FTX, a little bit of regulation is necessary.

 

[dragontamer5788]

This one comes from reddit which I found most intriguing:

Seems like a pretty big conspiracy honestly. I mean the insane kind of conspiracy theory, not the legitimate ones. The issue at play, if you read the SEC documents, is that the SEC didn't trust any marketplace except the futures marketplace (therefore: SEC wanted prices determined by futures, which means you had to buy/sell BTC futures to have an ETF). There was a slapdown in court basically forcing SEC to accept Coinbase and other marketplaces as valid marketplaces and here we are.

SEC isn't doing this because they want to. SEC is doing this because courts have demanded it of them. So if you want some kind of insane deep-state theory, you need to include the judge as part of that conspiracy, but that seems unlikely for multiple reasons.

Spot BTC ETFs seem like they're legal right now, and I'm not sure if there's anything stopping GBTC from being listed now.

All that's left over is for people to feel good about the 2% fees they've been paying this whole time to GBTC, when lower-fee iShares or Blackrock ETFs are on the horizon. People tie their loyalties to insane things, rather than doing what's best for themselves. And they want stories to match their behavior (rather than behaviors to match their understanding of the world). They want a reason to stick with GBTC, and thus feel the need to make up conspiracy theories about why other companies are illegitimate or something.

As to the price action? Hard to say. An ETF is a relatively elegant way to convert stock-market movement into underlying movements on the market. ETFs being listed on a public market could make BTC's underlying spot price go up. But what about the reverse?

GBTC has literally $Billions that have been sitting idle on the market taking 2% fees for literally years. GBTC holders will finally be able to arbitrage: sell GBTC to buy BTC (shedding the costly fee structure) and allowing their money to stay in BTC personally. Or alternatively, maybe a lot of those forced-HODLers want to leave cryptocoins (trying to leave back in 2022 or 2021, but were unable to sell due to regulations). When they're finally able to sell, it could be a big liquidation event.

Or maybe it all just balances out. GBTC holders sell GBTC and then immediately buy iShares or Blackrock's lower-fee ETF. Some BTC changes hands in the background but otherwise the price remains the same before and after.

-----------

In any case, there already have been a bunch of BTC ETFs on the stock market for years (albeit based off of futures rather than spot, but does anyone even give a care about this difference?). Cryptocoin hoarders will need to convince the public about why GBTC is substantially an improvement over BITO, especially since GBTC has 2% fees while BITO only has 0.95% fees.

I'd say that GBTC will likely go up in price as it becomes a real ETF. But I'm really not sure how or why this spot-BTC price issue even is relevant. What was wrong with BITO anyway if you wanted to track BTC in your 401k or whatever?

 

[AusWolf]

My two cents? Crypto has been relegated to the sidelines as irrelevant, speculative goods and many fools and money will be separated for those who keep believing its more than that.

If something crypto will actually make it to a real currency it will be state driven.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[Outback Bronze]

especially since GBTC has 2% fees while BITO only has 0.95% fees.

Thanks for your detailed outlook. I appreciate it.

It seems the Spot ETF is on its way with the latest few asset managers releasing their fee structures:

"The competition among hopeful Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers is intensifying as BlackRock, ARK 21, WisdomTree and Valkyrie have revealed their fees in recently submitted S-1 forms.
Out of the 11 hopeful applicants, only three issuers—Grayscale, Bitwise and Franklin Templeton—have not yet disclosed their fees as of early morning Monday.
As of now, ARK 21 and VanEck's spot Bitcoin ETFs have the lowest fee of 0.25%, followed by Fidelity at 0.39%, Wisdom Tree at 0.50%, Invesco at 0.59%, Valkyrie at 0.80% and Hashdex at 0.90%.
BlackRock's fee structure is particularly interesting, starting at 0.20% for the first six months and increasing to 0.30% thereafter"

"ARK just dropped their fee to 0.25% in an S-1 filed 20 minutes after BlackRock's. I told you all the fee war would break out before they even launched. And this is without Vanguard in the mix," Balchunas said.

Me personally, I'm expecting the price to increase, as these asset managers all have to start buying BTC for their respected ETF's. What will be more interesting is where will they be purchasing it from as
Coinbase has been set for holding custody for most of the asset managers, with BitGo a possibility as well.

Will be interesting to see how far this price goes before there is a correction as its up over 7% over the last seven days.

 

[Vya Domus]

Will be interesting to see how far this price goes before there is a correction

We're also closing in on the next halving, a rather curious coincidence (or perhaps not so much) if the ETF gets approved at this point in time.

 

[Outback Bronze]

We're also closing in on the next halving

Yes correct. It all seems to be happening. The clock is ticking..

Next Bitcoin Halving 2024 Date & Countdown [BTC Clock] (buybitcoinworldwide.com)

 

[dragontamer5788]

Me personally, I'm expecting the price to increase, as these asset managers all have to start buying BTC for their respected ETF's. What will be more interesting is where will they be purchasing it from as
Coinbase has been set for holding custody for most of the asset managers, with BitGo a possibility as well.

ETFs buy only if people out there fundamentally buy ETFs. And vice versa, if people sell ETFs, then a market maker collects all the ETF shares, creates a black hole (destroying "lots", as in round lots, of ETFs at a time), and thereby gaining the right to withdraw BTC (or whatever underlying) from the fund. EDIT: It is assumed that market-makers don't actually want to be holding any shares or ETFs for any more than a few minutes at most. So at this point, market makers would immediately sell the BTC for dollars. As such: market selling of ETFs lead to real-world selling of BTC. Market-buying of ETFs leads to real-world buying of BTC, though indirectly.

If these ETFs hit the market and nothing happens, no one will be buying anything. On the contrary, I think the GBTC crowd have the highest chance of doing something, finally selling GBTC now that their long-term bet has paid off. IE: People sell GBTC, causing the "black hole" to be invoked. Market makers destroy ETFs, withdraw BTC and then the BTC is sold on the open market, depressing the price of underlying BTC.

As I said a bit earlier: BITO already exists as an ETF for bitcoin if anyone actually cared for the past years. But maybe this hype cycle has legs to run on.

 

[lexluthermiester]

a little bit of regulation is necessary.

I've been saying this for years..

 

[R-T-B]

I've been saying this for years..

I agree, but I'd extend that to a lot more financial facilities than just crypto.

 

[P4-630]

Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralised digital currency and is still hardly used for legitimate transfers.

ETF approval for bitcoin – the naked emperor’s new clothes

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.

www.ecb.europa.eu

 

[AusWolf]

Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralised digital currency and is still hardly used for legitimate transfers.

ETF approval for bitcoin – the naked emperor’s new clothes

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.

www.ecb.europa.eu

"For disciples, the formal approval confirms that Bitcoin investments are safe and the preceding rally is proof of an unstoppable triumph. We disagree with both claims and reiterate that the fair value of Bitcoin is still zero." - Oof!

 

[Vya Domus]

It's wild that they'd even say anything at all about this, what the hell.

 

[A Computer Guy]

"For disciples, the formal approval confirms that Bitcoin investments are safe and the preceding rally is proof of an unstoppable triumph. We disagree with both claims and reiterate that the fair value of Bitcoin is still zero." - Oof!

Cough, Cough...

Central Banks: Bitcoin is worthless and used by criminals.

Also Central Banks: Funding behind every war mankind has waged against each other since the dawn of central banks and will say their digital solution is better.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Cough, Cough...

Central Banks: Bitcoin is worthless and used by criminals.

Also Central Banks: Funding behind every war mankind has waged against each other since the dawn of central banks and will say their digital solution is better.

Central banks don't fund wars. They manage currencies that state actors use to fund wars. You may have noticed that war was waged, rather extensively, well before the emergence of central banks.