Musical Chairs & The Game of Coin
BlackRock's passion for Bitcoin changes much; we only play with the toys the gods give us, and they've given us one hell of a backdoor to freedom - meanwhile the TikTok ban means new apps ahead.
“IBIT is the fastest growing ETF in the history of ETFs,” BlackRock chief Larry Fink shared in a recent Fox interview.
So much for the people who spent years trying to prevent spot Bitcoin ETFs from reaching everyday American investors. There would be no demand, they insisted.
Wrong!
The ETFs are significant for a number of reasons. Many brokerage accounts offer a low margin maintenance requirement for the major Bitcoin ETFs, providing a number of advantages. Previously, depositing crypto on a major financial platform was sort of “dead weight” — not used toward determining margin, and sort of less useful than cash.
Random family offices and small town wealth managers are reportedly picking off $20 million chunks of Fidelity’s Bitcoin ETF, which is similar in fees to BlackRock’s.
Both have been wild successes, while smaller ETF issuers like Bitwise have also seen recent inflows.
Most of the ETFs are structured in the same way pretty much… they store the Bitcoin at Coinbase, or Bitgo (another custodian) in the case of one of the ETFs.
The Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) is my very slight favorite among them, and I own a little of it, since Fidelity custodies the bitcoin “in-house” — they’ve been building their own custody platform and mining some of their own bitcoin since 2014, giving them more technical expertise than many of these other companies, in my opinion.
Although wealthy interests are buying millions of dollars of these ETFs at a time, the beauty is that investors with brokerage accounts can buy as little as $60 or $100 worth and still be “exposed” to the Bitcoin network’s success.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that gains in weight and likelihood as more believe in its utility; as more begin to believe it is a store of value… so, then, does it become a genuine store of value. As more begin to believe it will be a major transactional alternative in the future, so too does it begin to behave like one in the present.
No coiners see the ETF success and go, “so what, people can now buy digital beanie babies in their brokerage account, what changes?” not realizing that everything has changed.
All currency is a kind of reductive religious order: you believe in it, and as per your belief, you are rewarded by the system. Non-believers don’t participate but also don’t get rewarded.
The difference between being able to practice your religion in broad daylight, versus in fear and under the veil of night, is literally the difference between night and day.
With these spot Bitcoin ETFs now a click or two away for the most mainstream minds and pocketbooks on planet Earth, the fight for legitimacy is finally over, and the game of coin can at last begin: what is this thing really worth to everyone? As its likelihood of future success increases, so too is its present desirability impacted.
People call Bitcoin unfair or a scam, but there is not a more fairly speculated on asset in existence, nor has any piece of open source software been as vetted, tested, and applied in online commerce.
Regarding the possible future TikTok ban in the United States, I saw an interesting stance from entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk — he had a video on there saying he would welcome the disruption of a TikTok ban or other social media ban because it would allow many new creators and ideas to take off during the upheaval, and the “attention” has to go somewhere, as he put it. People still need to watch video, comment to each other on recent issues etc. — so that volume will simply move elsewhere on the Internet.
I’d like to adopt that optimism, while also noting it’s total bullshit that “our” Congress has nothing better to do than outlaw longstanding video platforms in a national election year, and at a time of war abroad. Beyond insulting.
Still, he’s right, the attention will move elsewhere. And our growing community will be here to catch much of that shakeup when and if it occurs.
https://rumble.com/user/FulcrumNews — be sure to follow on Rumble
https://amazon.com/author/davidseaman — check out my research books from years past
Onward,
D