Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024

with BTC spot ETFs probably listing this week, what's next?

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde ||

Hello all! Finally, the big day for Bitcoin is here, one way or another… What an extraordinary day yesterday!

Apologies for the lateness of the delivery times earlier this week. At least we have now progressed from hanging out in ERs to hanging out in hospital rooms (husband had a bad fall on Saturday while walking the dog), and may I just give a huge shout-out and heartfelt THANKS to all emergency room professionals everywhere who work to save lives amid astonishing chaos and pressure. I did manage to get out a couple of newsletters from waiting room chairs despite terrible WiFi, but this one will have to be short because I may finally have met my match when it comes to focus and bandwidth 😬. Probably just as well, since today, no matter what else is going on, we all want to focus on BTC and maybe ETH.

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IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• Here we go?

• ETH next?

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Here we go?

So, Bitcoin’s big day is finally here. Later today, we either get official approval of the very first US-listed BTC spot ETFs, or we get a surprise delay, or we get a totally unexpected denial.

One case for the delay is the shenanigans unleashed yesterday with the tweet from the SEC that approval for BTC spot ETFs had been granted.

(a screen grab, the original tweet has been deleted)

This was sooner than expected – the BTC price shot up, which I guess gives us our answer as to whether this would be a “sell the news” event.

A few minutes later, SEC Chair Gary Gensler tweeted that the SEC account had been compromised, that the tweet wasn’t from them.

(via @GaryGensler)

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

The BTC price then plunged to below where it had been trading before the fake approval, on concerns that now approval would be delayed pending an investigation.

(chart via TradingView)

Speculation started circulating that it wasn’t a compromised tweet, that it was an internal error – surely if someone had wanted to manipulate the BTC price, they would have tweeted a rejection, right?

Late last night US time, however, the X Safety team confirmed that the SEC account had been compromised because it didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled.

(via @Safety)

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.

I imagine there is going to be a follow-up investigation, and Gensler will be raked over the coals (justifiably). There has been some building excitement over the possibility he would have to resign over this (and how awesome would it be if crypto gets a BTC spot ETF listing AND a new SEC chief all in one week!) – but I don’t see him letting go of this post unless it is prised out of his hands.