Tuesday, Oct 17, 2023

why the misinformation is significant, and why it isn't

“Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.” – Bertrand Russell   

Hello everyone! They’re already putting up Christmas lights in public spaces where I live, which I find very disconcerting. It’s still warm outside!

You’re reading the daily premium Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, where I look at the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. There’s also usually some market commentary, but NOTHING I say is investment advice.

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IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• A spot BTC ETF is not priced in, part 2

• Manipulation misunderstandings

• US housing affordability

• Rates and stocks

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

A spot BTC ETF is not priced in

In yesterday’s email, I gave some reasons why I thought the likelihood of a spot BTC ETF was not priced in, despite a report by Coinbase analysts saying that it was, at least partially.

To recap, the main reasons I gave were:

• The BTC price performance has been weak.

• ETH has been even weaker, and a spot ETH ETF is likely to follow soon after that for BTC.

• The recent gain in BTC is more likely to be attributable to a shift in risk sentiment.

Well, now we know it isn’t priced in. After CoinTelegraph tweeted out a report (which turned out to be false, more on this below) that the SEC had approved the iShares/BlackRock proposal, the price of bitcoin shot up 10% to just over $30,000.

(chart via TradingView)

Why it matters:

As healthy skepticism kicked in, the market started to correct. This was accelerated by a confirmation from BlackRock that no such approval had been granted. The price of BTC plummeted back to where it had been before the CoinTelegraph tweet started circulating… but then continued to climb.  

Why? In part, I think it’s growing awareness that, “hey, this approval thing may not be real today but it could come through soon and look at that upside!” There’s some new ETF positioning going on.