Crypto in a snap
It’s been almost eight years in development and dozens of apps have been rejected along the way, but finally there will be a loosely tied bitcoin ETF that gives average investors access without worrying about keeping digital data safe having to worry about assets.
ProShares filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday an amended application for a Bitcoin futures ETF that met all of the requirements for regulatory filing that could soon lead to a rollout, said Todd Rosenbluth, director of ETF research and mutual funds at CFRA, in a telephone interview.
The ETF isn’t the expected US fund directly backed by Bitcoin like our northern neighbors, but it’s something to hang their hats on, and many see this as a turning point for an asset that did not exist until 2009.
In any case, the craze for the ETF has helped drive the price of bitcoins and the complex as a whole, with the world’s leading digital asset by market value slipping out of the hands at $ 61,749 surge from 8.2%, which is close to a record high of $ 64,888.99 on Friday afternoon, according to CoinDesk. (Our colleagues at Dow Jones Market Data hold this record of $ 63,381.20, set April 15th based on values at 5 p.m. ET)
Ether on the Ethereum blockchain rose 2.6% to $ 3,876.92, with a record high of $ 4,379.11, according to CoinDesk, and the Dogecoin meme asset fell 0.1% to 23.4 cents, well below its record high of 74 cents.
Will they come?
In the wake of the news about the ProShares Futures ETF, and likely a steady stream of similar fund products, we spoke to Ben Cruikshank, a director at Flourish, an investment platform owned by insurance giant MassMutual that works with hundreds of companies, Registered Investment Advisers, or RIAs, who are a Supervise $ 1 trillion in assets.
Flourish said there was a lot of interest in cryptocurrencies, but advisors are reluctant from a fiat perspective to recommend a Bitcoin futures product to customers when there are better options for owning cryptocurrencies like Coinbase Global or other digital pool exchanges.
“The feedback I get is inferred, it’s a less efficient form of ownership,” Cruikshank told MarketWatch in a telephone interview.
RIA wonders, “As trustees, are we going to recommend a complicated futures product that is more complicated than … opening a Coinbase account in 5 minutes?”
It’s difficult to justify an inferior futures product, he said. This is less my feedback and more what companies tell me.
Cruikshank estimated that around 50 million Americans have already invested in cryptocurrencies, and said the feeling among RIAs is that “investors always prefer direct access when it is available”.
People value convenience and I’m not saying there will be no adoption … but the companies we speak with are extremely skeptical about a futures ETF, Cruikshank said.
| Biggest gainers | Price | %Weekly return |
| Stacks | $2.03 | 40.63 |
| Perpetual Protocol | $18.20 | 30.70 |
| Telecoin | $0.02272 | 28.58 |
| Polkdadot | $41.91 | 23.43 |
| Bitcoin BEP2 | $$61,731.03 | 13.18% |
| Biggest losers | Price | %Weekly Return |
| Arweave | $52.64 | -18.15 |
| Terra | $37.44 | -15.62 |
| Fantom | $1.96 | -15.38 |
| Internet Computer | $43.32 | -14.57 |
| Shiba Inu | $0.00002498 | -13.20 |
Bitcoin $100,000 in 2023?
We had a quick chat with Jurrien Timmer, Director of Global Macro at Fidelity Investments in Boston, about the outlook for Bitcoin and his recent tweets suggesting that Bitcoin is headed for $ 100,000 by 2023, according to his fundamental analysis.
Timmer said a combination of network effects, the theory that value is based on increased use of a good or service, and stock-to-flow models, which are a way of finding an asset based on supply / demand metrics to evaluate converge over the next two years or so.
“You get a lot of hyperbolic course targets … which are not course targets,” said Timmer. “The only number I’m comfortable with has some research basis,” he told MarketWatch.
He said that Bitcoin offers a unique value proposition and that some investors see it as digital gold. In fact, Timmer said that Bitcoin may participate in the gold market and that the allocations to Bitcoin are likely a fraction of what is allocated to the precious metal.
Timmer says Bitcoin could fit on the 40% side of traditional 60:40 “model” portfolios, with 60% being an allocation to stocks and 40% being a typical allocation to bonds.
‘Crypto’ banks
Morgan Stanley analyst, led by Ken Zerbe, published a list of what he called “crypto banks”, otherwise traditional institutions that “offer crypto products or services.”
Morgan Stanley’s list is made up almost entirely of mid-cap financial institutions, which lag far behind top-tier institutions like its own bank, as well as rivals JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group, which offer varying degrees of crypto and blockchain services to individuals or institutional investors or both.
Morgan Stanley, however, says its list reflects institutions that have “been most active in the cryptocurrency ecosystem”.
Morgan Stanley acknowledges that the list may be subjective and advises that the composition of the list should change over time.
As it stands, it includes Signature Bank New York Community Customers Bancorp Inc. Silvergate Capital Corp. National Bank Holdings Corp. Metropolitan Bank Holding Corp. Triumph Bancorp. Blue Ridge Bankshares Inc. and Provident Bankcorp Inc.
Morgan Stanley writes that crypto banks have significantly outperformed some of their larger competitors.
Many of the mid-cap cryptocurrency stocks are seeing triple-digit year-to-date returns, slightly outperforming Bank of America (53% to date), Morgan Stanley, 49% up, and JPMorgan Chase, up more than 31%. (See attached chart with some comparative returns in 2021).
Tether, Bitfinex fines
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has worked with Tether Holdings Ltd. Fees for misleading customers about the quality of the reserves that support their stablecoin, writes Chris Matthews of Tether MarketWatch. an unregistered futures commission dealer.
The CFTC said in a press release that Tether misrepresented the stablecoin when it claimed the token was “locked” by fiat currency investments.
“Rather than holding all USDT token reserves in US dollars as shown, Tether relied on unregulated companies and certain third parties to hold the funds in the reserves; Reserve funds mixed with Bitfinex customer and operating funds; and it held reserves in non-fiduciary financial products, ”the CFTC said.
The Tether Stablecoin, of the same name, is a popular asset in cryptocurrency because its price is said to be “stable” and is pegged to a fiat asset such as the US dollar, without the volatility associated with Bitcoin and Ether.
Tether’s CFTC settlement comes about eight months after the New York attorney general’s office concluded a two-year investigation against Tether and Bitfinex. That bureau also noted that the companies had made several public misrepresentations regarding the approval of dollar reserves for Tether in 2017 and a situation in 2018 when Bitfinex lost access to approximately $ 850 million of its clients’ funds, which it had placed with an external company.
Mining USA
The move comes after China cracked down on mining and trading cryptocurrencies over the summer, resulting in a mass exodus from Beijing.
A crypto sheriff?
Coinbase Global Inc. made a major change to U.S federal regulation of digital assets and calls on Congress to create a new agency to regulate the industry under a different framework than that used to oversee the old financial services industry.
“There should be a government regulator for the digital asset markets,” Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s chief policy officer, told reporters on Thursday.
Crypto companies, funds
Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy Inc. rose 3.6% to $ 749.85, adding to a weekly advance of 5.8%. and the shares of Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. rose 12.2% to $ 48.89, a weekly gain of 23.8%. Shares in another mining company, Ebang International Holdings Inc. Cl A, rose 7.7% to $ 1.97 and rose 9.4% over the course of the week.
Overstock.com Inc. was up 1.6% to $ 77.67 but fell 0.8% for the week while Square Inc. rose 0.6% to $ 249, with a weekly gain of 4 , 4% and the shares of Tesla Inc. by 3. rose% to $ 843.03 on Friday which helped Elon Muskrun gain 7.3% weekly.
PayPal Holdings Inc. was up 0.7% to $ 268.35 for a weekly gain of 3.2%, and NVIDIA Corp. rose 0.5% to $ 218.62, adding 5% weekly gain. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. rose 0.1% to $ 112.12 for a weekly return of 6.7%.
In the fund space, Bitwise Crypto Industry Innovators ETF, which focuses on pure crypto companies, rose 4.2% to $ 25.10 and rose 4.6% over the week. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which tracks the market price of bitcoin, rose 5.6% to $ 47.41 and achieved a weekly return of 12%.
New Funds, the Invesco Alerian Galaxy Crypto Economy ETF rose 5.3% for the week and 4.3% on Friday, and the Invesco Alerian Galaxy Blockchain Users and Decentralized Commerce ETF posted a weekly return of 4.4% with an increase of 3.3% at the end of the year week.
