So yesterday I get a text.
It's from my brother who isn't even into crypto that much.
Just likes to try his hand at day-trading stocks and such.
He tells me the Spot ETF has been approved.
Turns out, not so fast, degenerates!
Multiple news outlets picked this up instantly and ran with it.
It was a surprising turn of events.
Wow, they actually approved it.
JUST KIDDING!
The plot thickens!
Not only do we find out the news was fake, but also that the SEC was "compromised". How were they compromised? Of course they give zero explanation. Many were quick to point out that the SEC can't protect investors. They can't even protect a social media account.
Remember when it was leaked that the ETF was approved and the market pumped and dumped in October? The SEC specifically made sure to tell everyone to only trust them as a source. Pretty funny considering now everyone calls them out on it when even they can't be trusted as a source. The icing on the cake is when Elon Musk pointed out that the SECgov account on Twitter doesn't even use 2FA security. They look so comically incompetent it's actually kind of funny.
And then today happens...
And the SEC approves all eleven ETFs...
I didn't even know there were 11 ETFs.
Thought there were eight.
And apparently a lot of these funds will be open for business within 24 hours.
Wild.
"But do we even want an ETF"?!?
I've seen a lot of chatter recently about crypto enthusiasts wondering if we should want an ETF or not. This is childish sentiment. I want to fly and have laser vision. Who cares? It's like asking if we want the sky to be blue or not. The conversation is totally pointless. The sky is blue: get over it.
What did people think "disruption" meant?
Did they think that all the old institutions were just going to roll over and die while this new thing takes over? Crypto forcing the old guard to adopt it is the disruption. It's happening right before our very eyes and a bunch of idealists are whining about how unideal it is. Welcome to the real world, friends. The entire point of crypto was to be a "good enough", not a perfect one. (See: 51% attack).
The permissionless nature of Bitcoin guaranteed that our "enemies" would use it and even try to co-opt it. We must ask ourselves the hard questions. Who is the enemy of the roads? Is it the big rigs driving down them and causing exponential wear and tear? Who is the enemy of the Internet? Is it streaming video hogging all the bandwidth?
The point here is that Bitcoin doesn't have enemies.
Crypto is INFRASTRUCTURE. The sooner we realize this the better. Nobody complains that "criminals" use the roads, drink tap water, or conduct illicit transactions in cash. Infrastructure is for everyone. It can't play favorites. The alternative to this reality is completely untenable. Permissionless systems are permissionless for a reason. The overhead costs is simply too high and unprofitable to create a license for every little detail of the human existence. At a certain point we just have to let people take a stroll in the park without requiring a special permit to do so.
Blah blah blah blah blah
Is this bitch serious right now?
So the SEC account gets "compromised" and Gensler doesn't even have the decency to be like, "Yeah we are approving it but it's going to happen officially tomorrow." Instead he makes it sound like a hack and that approval isn't coming. Like, dummy... that's even worse optics. So so much worse. Yikes.
While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin.
What a windbag (reading between the lines)
What Garbear is actually saying here is that the only reason the SEC is approving these ETFs is because they got bitch-slapped by the long dick of the law. That actually is a believable narrative for once. That's what happens when you lose multiple high-profile court cases. The Grayscale defeat completely annihilated them. They were legally not allowed to cite "manipulation" as a reason for declining the applications. Checkmate, Gary.
Everything about this leads to this theme of them basically being forced to approve these applications at gunpoint. The language here is clear. "It should in no way signal the Commission's willingness to approve listing standards for crypto asset securities." LoL, did he just say the SEC refuses to do their job of providing regulatory clarity? Said the quiet thing out loud methinks. "We refuse to create listing standards for an industry that we constantly claim dominion over." What an asshole.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what the "Commission" is "signaling".
This event will inevitably lead to other approvals and potentially other lawsuits that the SEC simply cannot win. How could they? This is clear and obvious precedence. Take Ethereum for example. All one has to do is show the similarities between an ETH ETF to the BTC ETF and the courts will once again side against the regulators. The dam has cracked and the floodgates are opening. It is known.
Conclusion
I'm somewhat surprised that the SEC didn't come up with some BS excuse to push the ARK deadline back to March, but here we are. Thus far price hasn't moved that much, although the dominance that BTC gained and since been lost and many alts have gone up 10% within hours as a result. I get the feeling that the market is being suppressed by "sell the news" traders and those who FOMOed in hoping there'd be an instant god candle. The next couple of days should be interesting to behold, especially considering many of the ETFs will be shilling as hard as they can on day one.
"Should" anyone actually put their money into one of these ETFs? I mean... not really. Obviously. Unless of course they have money locked into a retirement fund and this is quite frankly the only way to get exposure. Otherwise it's just an overpriced & custodial option, both of which should be avoided if possible.
A new dawn is upon us as institutional investors continue to line up at the door to take a crack at cryptocurrency. Is this the ideal scenario? Of course not. In fact the ideal scenario would actually be the people in charge of this world being trustworthy so that decentralized consensus was never necessary in the first place. There was never going to be an ideal situation that involved crypto. Funny how many in the industry want to play philosopher instead of living in the real world. It is what it is.