Bitcoin Comes To the Big Board (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0153849371
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/21/10/18/1333240/bitcoin-comes-to-the-big-board
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/business/dealbook/bitcoin-etf-proshares.html
> The E.T.F. will give investors exposure to Bitcoin without having to hold the cryptocurrency directly, via any ordinary brokerage account. "2021 will be remembered for this milestone," said Michael Sapir, the C.E.O. of ProShares. Investors who are curious about crypto but hesitant to engage with unregulated crypto exchanges want "convenient access to Bitcoin in a wrapper that has market integrity," he said. For nearly a decade, crypto entrepreneurs and traditional finance firms have sought permission to launch a Bitcoin E.T.F. in the U.S., but their applications have been delayed or denied by the S.E.C. Many remain pending.
>
> A Bitcoin futures E.T.F. falls short of what some purists want: a fund that holds crypto directly. Gary Gensler, the S.E.C. chair, recently suggested that the agency might allow crypto E.T.F.s based on futures -- bets on Bitcoin's price fluctuations rather than the underlying crypto itself -- that trade on a highly regulated exchange. Approval for the ProShares E.T.F., which is based on Bitcoin futures that trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, won't be announced by the S.E.C., but the firm's final prospectus met with no opposition ahead of its effective deadline, and the N.Y.S.E. is readying for launch tomorrow.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/business/dealbook/bitcoin-etf-proshares.html
Investing in speculation (Score:1)
It's like the Inception of investing. Can we go deeper?
"Big bucks! Big bucks! No Whammies!" (Score:2)
"Big bucks! Big bucks! No Whammies!"
Re: (Score:3)
The smart people left long ago and now all that’s left are old people stuck in their ways. They don’t understand social media or crypto and their opinion is to ban things simply because they don’t like it.
The old paranoid crowd that doesn’t like government meddling should love crypto by all rights. It checks every box on their agenda.
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If you've been paying attention then you should have shorted TSLA too.
Because derivatives worked out SO well... (Score:2)
....let's just built more economic mountains on even-LESS-justifiable financial grounds, like speculating on the climb/fall of completely arbitrary consensus goods that have no real existence.
I feel there is a clear metaphor here for the vast edifice of our Western Financial Structures.
Re: Because derivatives worked out SO well... (Score:2)
Simple. Everything is permitted until it crashes the global economy. Then we take a good hard look at it and let it go on. Last time it was mortgages to the poor...this time it's insane levels of corporate debt to buy back shares for poor CEOs. The next crash will have no mitigation by the treasury. I see now that it will resemble whatever is happening to our global supply chain.
The treasury, federal reserve, and other regulators and industry experts have been begging Congress to address financial market re
Well good for them! (Score:1)
Now they can be taxpayer funded with that 120 billion a month bailout money, as if they weren't already
Crypto Futures? (Score:5, Insightful)
This really is one of those "What could possibly go wrong?" moments.
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Many of us had the same feeling about the Internet
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And look how well that turned out.
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(insert meme: He's out of line, but he's right)
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Except Bitcoin is more like the whaling industry. It's terrible for the environment, and destined to be rendered obsolete when something better comes along.
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Crypto miners consume the same energy that electric cars consume. If one is dirty, both are dirty.
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One of them performs a vital function in our lives and economy in a vastly more efficient way than previous methods, the other gives us a payment system used mainly by nutjobs and criminals that is vastly less efficient than any other method used or imagined.
I'd also like to see a citation because I'd suspect that cryptomining is using a far greater amount of electricity than the world's EVs.
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I hear Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes were driving pretty nice cars.
If your metric for whether something is right is "how much money some people made".
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They were practically early beneficiaries of a pyramid scheme, these days gambling on Bitcoin values is...just another form of gambling. The odds aren't that bad, but there isn't as much to gain as getting in on the ground floor.
Wealth is almost an indicator of malevolence in our society anyway. Once you get into the 6 digits per year you soon run out of ways to make money that aren't plainly destructive.
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Not investing in Bitcoin isn't the worst thing you could've done. Plenty of people have bought and sold at the wrong times and lost their shirts over it. Where do you think that "profit" comes from? It's the result of wealth redistribution from losers to winners, and the losers are often just regular folks hoping to turn a little bit of their savings into something bigger. The ultra rich can afford to manipulate the market to their benefit (see Elon Musk's tweets, for example).
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My question in terms of deciding on whether to take part in the ETF: does the volume or scale of trades on the ETF indirectly contribute to increasing bitcoin fees (aka increasing demand for transactions on the blockchain), and thus, increased mining due to the higher fees?
I assume that the answer is yes, and thus my answer for whether to take part is "no".
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There difference between oil futures and bitcoin futures is?
Difference (Score:2)
Oil futures are used by companies dependent on oil to hedge against price spikes. If you are a plastics or fertilizer company a few dollars difference in oil price can cost you millions of dollars. So, you hedge against price fluctuations so you can fulfill long term orders at a set price without loosing money on the order.
Of course, people also "bet" on oil futures, but that's not why they exist.
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In case anyone was still wondering if Crypto is a pump and dump scam... oh look, "futures" trading on shit that is meaningless and doesn't fucking exist.
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futures are a time honored tradition: I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
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All anyone needs see are all the crypto proponents who claimed bitcoin was the alternative to all the shady shit banks do rejoicing when they start doing all the same shady shit banks do.
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Looks like the next stock market crash will be cause by concentrated weapons-grade stupidity that is 100% predictable even to the layman. Good thing virtually all of the stocks are owned by the rich, if not for the job losses we could just break out the popcorn and enjoy this train wreck.