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They are selling 200k BTC. Wonder where they got the other 100k.

here is their company,

http://winklevosscapital.com/

Looks like they have 4 investments so far, half of which are bitcoin related.

It is an interesting development. We have speculated that derivates will not be popular, because as opposed to other types of assets, it is practical and easy to just own the bitcoins. Now we will have the answer to that.

They are actually selling worthless toilet paper. With that kind of derivative products, which border line the outright scam, the big investment banks have been manipulating the price of gold and silver for years. It looks like we have two new wannabe market maker on the block.

I agree with this point, but maybe they are doing it for the good of bitcoin, raise more capital to fund more bitcoin startups.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/01/cameron-and-tyler-winklevoss-file-for-20-million-ipo-of-their-bitcoin-trust/

making money from 9 to 5 time to sleep and have fun .... i trade that paper anytime

Looks like they are selling out. It's going to raise a lot of new regulatory issues as it would be a BTC tracking product that falls under the SEC jurisdiction. That is a whole new territory. The NAV of the trust would be based on non SEC regulated exchange prices ( Gox, Bitstamp ect). Things start to get blurred very quickly

They even mention this :


I dont think this IPO will be approved overnight ...

They are effectively receiving USD from clients in exchange for a BTC tracker ... is that money transmitting ? Sounds pretty close to me.

I'll take FUD for $500, Alex.

Just expressing my opinion ... feel free to express you own if you have one
Have you even bothered to look at the filing ?

Typical bear reaction:

Oh noes no liquidity at MtGox, BTC is heading for 0!

Oh noes there's liquidity now but that's only because floodgates open everyone can buy BTC because the Winklevosses are dumping so BTC is going to 0 even though the Fund has to keep buying BTC the more people invest in it but I'm still making sense!

Of course.

And your opinion is ?

Looks to me like they are using their Bitcoin capital to open a Bitcoin business.

the idea is to help fund bitcoin startups, they have done so with bitinstant, not sure who else they have funded besides them.

'Selling out' was perhaps the wrong phrase ... I meant to infer that they were raising cash against their existing BTC as opposed to buying in the market with funds raised and issuing a tracker against those BTC . For what purpose I have no idea ... could very well be to fund BTC businesses.
Regardless, they are effectively cashing out their BTC whatever way you look at it ...

This is going to be very interesting to watch. Just the speculation on whether or not the SEC will approve this as it goes back and forth will cause the the BTC/USD exchange rate to move about all over the place creating all sorts of opportunities for both profit and loss.  

If it does get approved then the real fun will begin. With the opportunity to "short" the paper Bitcoin, trading BTC from your brokerage account and the Wall Street players getting into the act. Buying the units low and then pumping them to their retail investors a la Facebook maybe? If this does get approved and once the dust settles this can actually be bullish for Bitcoin.

They aren't issuing "paper Bitcoins" in the sense that they aren't backed by anything.  The trust will hold Bitcoins and issue shares to represent those.  Each share is worth 0.2 BTC and the trust will hold 0.2 BTC for each share outstanding.  The trust can't issue shares to represent more then BTC it actually has.  If hypothetically the fund was very popular and the fund wanted to issue more shares they are required to obtain 10K BTC (50K shares) before adding 50K new shares for trading.

From my understanding the amount of shares can scale based on demand. If they sell out they will go to the market and buy more, thus raising the price. They can't issue more paper than there are Bitcoin - it's easy to know how many are in existence. This is the easiest way I've seen for large investors to get money into Bitcoin. Hell, at the rate things are going it might be the only way to get money into Bitcoin  :P.

The quote on their homepage is exact copy of:

About — I/O Capital Partners
iocap.net/about/‎
"We partner with a select number of early stage companies to provide not just investment, but a full service approach to driving growth."

Yes that is my understanding. Each share will correspond initially to 0.2 BTC and then diminish by the amount of the Trust's expenses including the sponsor fee, and other expenses. So the BTC value over time of each will drop to cover the expenses of the trust.

You've got to wonder if this news is positive or not...

On the one hand looks like they are selling their BTC.

On the other hand, they are making it fucking easy for the mega whales, hedge funds etc... To take a bite of the BTC pie.

If I ran a managed fund with a high risk profile, why not put a percent or two into this bitcoin thing.

My thoughts... If it goes ahead, there will be a spike in price.

My other thought is, until we know if it's going ahead maybe it'll work as an artificial cap on the BTC price.

After all it's effectively stating that the opening price of BTC is $100.45 no?

This could be a sneaky way to cap the price while they buy up more BTC

No.  The s-1 indicates the quoted price used was solely for the purpose of paying the registration fee.  If approved by regulators and an exchange shares will be priced at the current exchange rate at the time of the IPO.  The S-1 doesn't obligate them to any price.  They could sell pre-IPO baskets of shares at a price of $18.23 or $23.81 per share if necessary.  Baskets will be bought by institutional investors.  They aren't going to pay a huge premium to the underlying asset. 

This isn't unusual, pre IPO generally one doesn't know the exact price the shares will be issued at.  That is the purpose of the pre-ipo.  Pre-IPO investors deliver a deposit held in an escrow account to cover the likely issuing price.  So 50,000 shares * $20 ea = $1M.  XYZ Capital wires $1M USD.  The actual share price ends up being $18.23.  XYZ Capital gets their 50,000 shares plus $88,500 from the deposit is returned.

deathandtaxes says they'd get exemption for brokerages

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=248013.msg2631106#msg2631106

aha, thanks for clarifying.

Perhaps you can explain how the trust will buy new BTC.

Say my retirement fund allocates 1% of it's high risk package to BTC. That would no doubt increase the price of the winkelvii stock above the market price of BTC, how do they compensate for that?

Quickly can somebody tell me what this is:

Exchange Traded NOTE (i.e, troll derivative but I'll still probably be trading it)

or

Exchange Traded FUND (which means that its actually backed by bitcoins)

thats the thing, with an ETN they essentially just issue you debt not backed by anything but... debt. With an ETF they have to actually back it by bitcoins. Now presumably in the case of ETN they'll hedge by buying bitcoins, but still.

Man this news is breaking hard.. Getting some major coverage now.

I'd say the biggest positive news for bitcoin in months!!!

Some of the biggest news in fact, compared with the nonsense FUD news like California sues bitcoin foundation. Seems like a joke

I reckon we'll be back at 100+ soon.

Initially the trust will need to acquire 200,000 BTC from large investors prior to the IPO.  The W twins reportedly have 210,000 BTC so they "may" use some or all of their BTC holdings to set this up, otherwise the fund would need to buy sufficient BTC on the global market to "back" the shares they will issue.

once trading if demand pushes the price above NAV, the sponsor of the fund or another institutional investor will buy 10,000 BTC, deliver them to the trustee who will issue 50,000 shares (0.2 BTC per share).  The fund now has 50,000 more shares and holds 10,000 more BTC.  The investor can then sell the shares collecting the difference between the NAV and selling price as a risk free arbitrage. In your example, the retirement fund being an institutional investor would never buy overpriced shares (shares trading > NAV) that is for retail schlubs, they would simply deposit with the trustee (wording of S-1 is unclear if one needs to deposit BTC or USD equivelent of BTC and trustee will use that to buy BTC) and receive newly issued shares directly.

All this is routine stuff and has been done for years using physical commodity trust ETFs. Take the GLD fund for example http://www.spdrgoldshares.com/media/GLD/file/SPDRGoldTrustProspectus2012.pdf   Replace "Gold" with "Bitcoin" and everything about it from issuance & redemption, to the creation of a holding trust, to audits & secure storage, etc is very similar to the structure of the S-1 proposed here.

Probably the same way they bought their first 1+% of the entire Bitcoin market, by hiring a market operator(s) to wring out all the weak hands like all the bears you see here

Per the S-1 the trust is obligated to hold 0.2 BTC per share outstanding so it would be an ETF.

It's an ETF. The shares of the ETF can be converted to bitcoins, or bitcoins converted into shares of the ETF. It would let you buy and sell bitcoins through participating stock brokerages. It would be like Mt.Gox but completely legal and "for real."

It's not practical or easy to own Bitcoins. Thats why so few own any.

I'm dumbstruck.

It's 3 steps.

1) https://www.bitaddress.org  (60 seconds)
2) Print & Store (60 seconds)
3) Publish Address and get to work. (A life time)

Ok great. Now the question becomes (at least in the medium to short term): Do the Winklevoss dudes use this as a way of selling their Bitcoins with flare, or are they actually buying new bitcoins to finance this?

My guess (just a guess) is the reason for acquiring their 200,000 BTC quietly and without a splash last summer was specifically for this or something like it.  There is a lot of regulatory headache to launch an ETF.  If one wanted to simply divest there are easier, quicker, and cheaper ways to do it.   I wouldn't expect them to do any panic buying driving up the price prior to an IPO though.  Since a S-1 is a public document my guess is they made sure to have the necessary BTC before filing the S-1.

No, I mean, clearly they'd need to issue more shares of the ETP, meaning they'd need more BTC right?

Correct they would however that wouldn't happen until after IPO which I think people should realistically expect it to take at best a large number of months.  If the ETP is popular and demand forces issuing additional shares that may be bullish on the "physical BTC" price in ... 2014.

I can wait till 2014. As long as its before spring next year I'm perfectly OK :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5973971

I find these comments quite interesting:

Exactly my thoughts. Serious fun ahead.

The second statement isnt true. There is no way of doing direct arbitrage but its still possible. You can just take the shares directly to the admin to settle them. There is just risk of extreem decline in value of underlying asset while you're doing so. A true ETF will stay pegged to the underlying within reason assuming nothing weird is going on.

So overall this is an incredibly good thing right?

The buying behaviour of the trust is likely to inflate the price of BTC, without really doing anything that could negatively affect it.

Or you can see it as a pseudo-sell of 200k coins.

Well perhaps. But at least they're not dumping them onto Gox.

I don't think they just suddenly decided to turn bear onto BTC. They must have been planning this from the start.

In practical terms it can only push the price up

I dont actually belive this. But one could argue that goxxers will remove their bids and buy the etf if gox rallies, making the etf functionally the same as a gox dump.

Any price change on Gox is likely to be reflected in the ETF.

Similarly if people want to buy on the ETF, they'll effectively end up buying from Gox.

I think we'll see what the real deal is when NY wakes up.

Personally I think this is the biggest news for BTC in a while, it opens it up to a whole new market, a market where people have serious coin

The other question that pops into my mind is what if, what if the Winklevii don't have the BTC to back it.

Seems unlikely... but according to the press they only had $10Million back in April (during the bubble!)

That doesn't equate to 200k worth today.

If they didn't have more, doesn't that mean the trust's would need to buy BTC?

That would inevitably cause a price rally

They should keep buying BTC to stabilize the price if they know what's good for their fund  ;D

this looks like an incredibly smart way to sell out of a lumpy position in bitcoin while avoiding the illiquidity of mtgox and the limited size of the order book. With daily volumes on gox of what 50K? there is no way they could sell their bitcoin holdings in a reasonable timescale on that market without seriously impacting the price.
By launching an ETF they ideally attract new capital into the market to hold these bitcoin, the ease of ownership and the ability to buy via brokerage accounts makes this a far simpler method for individuals to acquire bitcoin holdings than setting up a wallet and going through all the fuss of creating an account at one of the exchanges and then waiting days/weeks for the FIAT to move to the right place so that you can actually buy the bitcoin. If they can parley the ETF into a BTC lending business as well then they can probably earn sufficient additional BTC to make dividend payments viable on the ETF as well.
Hell the right sort of ETF might even work for pensions and other tax efficient savings.  Who knows what 1% of your pension pot in BTC might be worth in 20years.

If they can get the ETF off the ground it has the potential to make BTC a real investment option for the general public - which could provide a real impetus to drive the price of bitcoin up. But if this ETF fails and those BTC have to be sold on the exchanges because the twins choose to sell their excess BTC, well then hitting the exchanges in 100,000 bitcoin? - That's going to put a serious dent in the price.

Oh please let this happen, I want to buy 2100 BTC for $10k please :)

I think you read too much in this move. Its just a way for the Winklevoss to profit, while trying to become some kind of "market makers" supported by their toilet paper ETFs, like JPMorgan does in the silver market for example.

That's only 20 baskets of coins, I guess their rich friends and relatives already bought them all  ;D

Since the face value is $100 per coin, an investor might consider direct buy at MTGOX, in case he have enough IT knowledge

I'm interested to see how they will handle expansion if institutional money moves in and buys out all $20 mill straight away. What is their profit model from all of this?

This story is spreading, now on bloomberg tv headlines.


https://i.imgur.com/77AK9ts.jpg

Thats mean that they actualy dont have any money and loose hight ammount of USD on april bubble :D

Man this news is massive.. It's broken on so many major news outlets. It's been ages since any bitcoin news did that.

sell ur house take a loan and buy bitcoins  ;D

Maybe Feds are shutting down exchanges so they can control twins & bitcoin

Deferred taxation on the profits on their stash
Avoiding slippage selling on the exchange
Management fees for the trust

Wow so they are selling ALL their coins for a maximum amount of Fiat dollars and some find that its good news..

LOL, Winkl-evil's on Bloomberg, "Winklevoss Twins Make the Best Case Against Bitcoin", pure genius at work: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/winklevoss-twins-make-best-case-against-bitcoin-fund.html

TL;DR:

Sure, they are bulls in denial; grasping every last straw of hope for a news that will make the price rebound.
 ;)

If the demand drives the price higher than the NAV then the sponsor will deposit an additional basket of 10,000 BTC with the trustee and trustee will issue 50,000 new shares.   The trust has now grown by 10,000 BTC and has 50,000 more shares outstanding so each share still represents 0.2 BTC.

Before:
200,000 BTC in trust
1,000,000 shares outstanding
NAV per share 0.2 BTC (200,000 BTC / 1,00,000 shares)

After
200,000 BTC in trust + 10,000 BTC deposited = 210,000 BTC in trust
1,000,000 shares outstanding + 50,000 newly issued shares = 1,050,000 shares outstanding
NAV per share 0.2 BTC (210,000 shares / 1,050,000 shares)


Those shares can then be sold on the market at the current price (higher than NAV) increasing supply, lowering excess demand and moving the price towards the NAV.Note there is an economic incentive here as the newly issued shares only cost 0.2 BTC each but can be sold for more than 0.2 BTC how much more depends on how much of a demand premium is being offered by buyers.

Of course institutional investors can do the same thing so if the sponsor doesn't act then someone else will and scoop up that risk free arbitrage. The process can also be completed by selling 50,000 shares short (sold at price > NAV), deliver the underlying asset to the trustee, collect 50,000 newly issued shares and cover the short with newly issued shares (buy @ NAV).  The institutional investors picks up the difference as profit.

A nice scam.

How is it a scam?  Nobody is required to pay more than NAV if they do it is because they believe the asset will rise and thus the premium paid is just the cost of getting into a position now rather than waiting.  Slippage happens on exchanges is that a scam?  Price is currently $91.08 and you believe it will fall.  You can sell 100 BTC @ $91.08 but selling 500 BTC will drop the price to $90.98.  You are getting less than if you sell slowly, then again if you feel the price will fall below $90.98 before you can unload all 500 BTC @ $91.08 the premium paid for fast execution is worth it.

It would be like saying selling BTC for x on MtGox and buying it for y on BTC-E when x > y thus collecting a profit of x-y is a "scam".  It is called abritrage.  The fact that new shares can be issued or redeemed is what keeps the price inline with the underling asset.

For future reference ... just because you don't understand something doesn't make it a scam.  Many people call Bitcoin a scam using the same "logic".

I still don't get it. Can someone explain me why anyone would invest in this?

The only reason such a trust makes even the slightest sense is for precious metals as they are hard to store in larger quantities. That's a problem Bitcoin doesn't have.

Why would anyone in his right mind buy these instead of buying Bitcoin directly? Unless people that have no Idea what Bitcoin is of course.


In case the reason to invest in this is obvious: This is a honest question.

For many people acquiring and safely storing Bitcoins is really complex. Isn't that reason enough?

Access.

Many people will never want to go through the hassle of figuring out MtGox, wiring a huge sum of funds to "Magic the Gathering Online Exchange" ( a copy then have never heard of before) on the other side of the globe, wait 3-5 days, oops Japanese holiday all service/support enters a blockhole, oops your account is locked and requires validation, please send an apostled copy of your passport (for the record I have NEVER had to send a copy of my passport to a brokerage in my life).  The vast majority of people are simply NEVER (not today, not even in their lives) going to find someone on localbitcoins, grab $1,000 in cash and go to a starbucks to meet "BitcoinRadier487" and make a trade.  It is a pipedream to think otherwise.  Most people are never going to build a mining rig or join a mining pool, etc.

That isn't to say these are "bad" methods for investing in Bitcoins but they aren't for everyone. If you have physical Bitcoins and have jumped through all the hoops this isn't for you but not everyone is you.

If someone has a brokerage account they can invest in BTC just as easily as they can buy a share in AAPL.  If someone has a 401K/IRA this would be the only possible way to invest in Bitcoins in a tax exempt manner. A hedge fund will find Bitcoin more viable if it is traded alongside thousands of other assets on NASDAQ or other major exchange and has high liquidity and depth.  

More options is always better right?

No, this is GREAT news.

This will greatly expand the bitcoin market by allowing many more people participate in bitcoin, which is one of it's biggest problems today.

Presently, you need to be awfully computer savvy just to buy a single bitcoin.

Those 200,000 coins will be bought up very quickly. This is extremely good news for bitcoin. If bitcoin is going to survive, institutional investors need to get involved and this is finally a way they can.

Think of it this way: I have a bunch of money in my retirement account. If I take that money out of that account it gets hacked with wicked taxes. Now that they are opening this fund, I can use the money in my retirement account to invest in bitcoins. Hooray, no tax penalty!

I think if the application is accepted, it will open up BTC to institutional investors who can't risk client money on gox and other startup exchanges whose legal compliance is in question. 

I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end of gox.

Thx. For the answers. I'm still sceptic if that makes sense, though.

Especially of this:


Hopefully not this way. That are only "paper" Bitcoins that have been stripped of their use. So if this would be the way Bitcoin goes, all it would be is a store of value/investment.

This would be enough to financially make me very happy, but the idealist in me would scream in agony.

My ears perk up.

All this is very simple. They are going to raise a lot of money by using their BTC pile as a collateral and then they are going to use that money to fund bitcoin startups and make BTC more valuable. Pretty genious shit.

This.


It took me about 2 weeks to figure out how to obtain bitcoins. And I already somewhat knew what I was doing, as I used Liberty Reserve. Imagine someone who doesn't know what an exchanger is, and has never sent a bank wire.

And how do you get bitcoins once you have your ETF shares?

Also side note, this proves that bitcoin 'deflation' won't ever happen in a healthy economy. People buy the ETF, the ETF funds startups, the startups get bitcoins, boom whatever bitcoins were in the ETF appear to have doubled.

Its just the inflation will be controlled by how much demand for debt there is, and with increased demand for debt comes increased interest rates, so if you save, you will always be making a little money (due to either interest or deflation depending on the economic climate).

I perfectly understand what an ETF is and how it works.

It's garbage, a worthless piece of paper, one of those "financial products" or "derivatives" that add nothing meaningful to the economy.

If you hold your private keys, you are holding the real thing. You can redeem them everywhere, no matter what. Bitcoins was born to be a trust-free, decentralized system to transfer and store value, and you have no need to trust the Winkle-evils to hold on your Bitcoins. How do you know that they are not issuing more shares than Bitcoin they hold? How do you know they won't file bankruptcy? How do you know you will be able to redeem the value their pieces of paper are supposed to have? How do you know their Bitcoins will not be stolen?

You don't know, you just buy a piece of paper that represents some Bitcoins that supposedly a third party is holding for you. Wow, genius, I guess Satoshi created Bitcoin precisely because he was in deep love with these amazing "financial products" based on promises that spread so much wealth between people. How could we survive without them?

It's just another form of debt, and thus essentially a scam. Everybody should man up and hold onto the real thing and throw away that useless paper issued by some guys who have never done anything in their lives (except suing Facebook, what genius entrepreneurs they are).

That said, these could be bullish news if the retard twins succeed. A scam, but bullish for BTC exchange rate. Just do not forget that these derivative crap has messed up the whole economy. I know for sure I won't touch one of those toilet papers with a bargepole.

Maybe, maybe not. As long as the papers are not inflated past their worth and work as a form of receipt for the W-twins to privately transfer their BTC to easily setup wallets... they could pull it off.

its an etf for goodness sake, they are legally obligated to obtain the bitcoins for the shares they issue else they can't issue the shares.

Its not a weird derivative, its an ETF. ETFs are normal and perfectly OK, otherwise you wouldn't even be able to trade things like volatility and futures (which actually ARE weird derivatives) like a stock.

I don't understand why people get so mad about an ETF. When you (or at least, most people) buy a computer, they don't individually pick out each component they need then build the computer. They buy the computer which comes with all the components in a easy bundle. An ETF is the exact same thing - a bundle that allows the seller to make a bit more money due to the convenience factor - except for securities not physical objects. How is that a scam?

Gee, people here are always going on about the free market except when an even mildly exotic financial instrument gets thrown into the situation they completely freak. The funny part is everybody's perfectly OK with CFDs, which actually are 'fake' or 'paper' bitcoins, but a ETF? FREAK OUT TIME.

+1

I like this guy. No bullshit approach to breaking apart FUD.

You don't. This is a product for people who want exposure to something that serves a gold-like (Gold 2.0, IMO) store of value purpose. Yes, it's only "exposure" because people owning these ETF shares will not actually possess the underlying bitcoins. So they'll get the price-action, but be subject to the same counter-party risk that nearly everything in the fiat economy is exposed to.

And that's fine. This product puts further options on the table for people. They can get the hard-asset exposure without having to deal with what many consider "sketchy" small operators (bitcoin exchanges), and they can get in and out of the position as easily as buying/selling a stock, which they're already very familiar with.

Personally, I'll just hold my own bitcoin and trade it directly (if I ever decide to sell any), but I see this ETF product as a way to increase bitcoin awareness and exposure. If it also increases market-cap, that's a big net benefit too; not just to the net-worth of people holding bitcoin, but to bitcoin's utility as a currency too.

Bootstrapping the world's first global electronic currency takes many steps, of which these sorts of "bridge" products are one.

When the underlying asset can be manipulated it's going to be difficult for SEC to approve this.

I truly fail to see why this is absolutely anything but good news.  I'm been trying myself to locate a custodian to facilitate bringing retirement funds into Bitcoin.  This is it; finally.  My only complaint is I didn't get it done first.

Bridging the old pre-Bitcoin world into the age of Bitcoin will take many such arrangements.  Eventually these bridges will look dumb but they are a must for now.

Ok, that's what I thought.

I was confused by those saying "but it's difficult to get BTCs, with this, it will be easy!"

The moderately competent will always just buy their own coins. Unlike gold, bitcoin incurs no premium charge nor cost of storage or delivery so unless you are a knuckle dragger the only function this etf might serve would be to go short.

I for one think this is a move forward for Bitcoin. There will be more interest in Bitcoin from larger players, which means more investment in Bitcoin. As well, it will be good to have an agreed upon price of Bitcoin such that MtGox is not the only determining exchange.

Indeed, you may want to continue buying your coins as you always have, but you can't disregard the advantage of being able to invest in Bitcoin as well as ANY security on just about any exchange in the world. This move pushes Bitcoin into a mainstream buying audience.

Well technically redemption is possible but only in baskets of 50,000 shares (10,000 BTC).  It is in the  S-1 under the section creation and redemption of shares.

You have no idea how many people don't fit into our definition of 'moderately competent' when it comes to buying bitcoins. ALL the CNBC people etc, will all be using the ETF as their ticker symbol when they report on the price of Bitcoin. Most will see that and use that just like any other ETF. Do you realize how many people buy things like the TLH when you could easily outperform it with a bit of work?

To use terminology that seems to have stuck in Bitcoinia: it's a Bitcoin pass-thru for selling on legacy stock/commodities exchanges!

Seems like little more than a clever way for them to dump their massive holdings.  The question I'd be asking is, why are they exiting Bitcoin?  Maybe they see the writing on the wall?

They're not exiting Bitcoin. Most likely they will be buying back their bitcoins on MtGox at a profit as long as the price stays below $100. It's a clever way of keeping the price from dropping further and protecting their investment. :)

How long can they sustain that?

Your thinking very short term here, the people that get involved with things like this (i.e. the winkelvii) aren't looking to exit a possible 100 billion or trillion usd venture for a mere 1000% ROI.

bitcoin is the first p2p digital currency (that I know of) that has gained this much traction and attention capable of possibly disrupting the worlds financial industry and breaking the monopoly of the fed and other world banks.

People like the winklevii don't lose, even when they lose they win, i.e. the facebook lawsuit.

Strange question coming. I don't know too much about ETFs but at least for Gold and silver there has been some manipulation. Can they do the same with BTC, and thanks to this instrument have JPMorgan short to hell all the Bitcoin economy?

If i get 20000 BTC on shares from this ETF. Can I use that as deposit for my own ETF? I mean, can one ETF be based on the underlying of another ETF, making in that way a BTC to exist two times (in paper) but reflect that on the market?

There exists funds of funds, that is funds that their underlying assets are funds instead of single stocks or gold or silver etc.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves here, lets get this first one approved, listed, ipo'ed and trading before we start talking about funds of funds based on btc.

I don't have any intention on creating an etf of an etf. I was asking if this will be a way to remove the 21 million BTC limit effectively.

There are some problems with ETFs at least with gold with some Gold chambers (underlying for ETFs) are half empty and should be full. Inventories of gold not being done for decades and even countries that don't believe other countries storing their underlying. Heck even Texas does not have any confidence on the Federal Reserve and has requested their gold back.
There are also two - three times accountancy for ETFs/ETNs where the same physical gold is sold several and several times.

Is this the end of the 21 million BTC?

Who will guarantee that the private keys or the underlying is still there?

I misunderstood your question then, regarding the end of 21 million btc, keep in mind tgat btc has 8 decimal places, we have more than enough btc for far far into the future.

I think telemaco is asking if the ETF could artificially inflate the apparent number of bitcoins.

What i fear is that they will play around bitcoin & blockchain limitations and do whatever they want like they have always done. Just bribe a few and your underlying is not there anymore. Suscribe an etf of an etf of an etf and sell the bitcoin a hundred times. That might hurt those that HOLD a real bitcoin.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/has-ishares-gold-etf-iau-been-covertly-depleted-90-its-physical-holdings-banks-jpm-and-goldm


What happens if they say in the contract that they only "need" to have a 10% of the underlying at a specific time? hint ! hint !

Good bye to Bitcoin scarcity

The thing is, you can lie about how much gold is in your vault, but it is modally impossible to lie about how much BTC is in your address.

Anyone can look there! Just go on blockexplorer!

If there's anything to worry about here, it's naked shorts.

So... like paper precious metals that see record lows while the real thing is in astronomical demand? I think we will be fine.

The Twins are extremely capable and with 1% of the Bitcoins, I think they will be likely to succeed and give Bitcoin a huge boost.

Hope you guys are right but JPMorgan and the likes are powerful and abyect vampires with eyes inyected on blood and infinite thirst on money.
They also have billions of lifes because they are too big to fail.
They WILL try to corrupt bitcoin on their own benefit.
And derivatives and naked shorts might very well be the path.

I support them rather than Jpmorgans and those banking giants

I don't know how "capable" the twins are. Just because you have money doesn't mean you are capable of being a figure head for an entire emerging industry. If you've ever seen the twins interview or their presentation at the previous bitcoin conference you wouldn't be so keen on them representing the bitcoin community. I don't however believe that they have some sort of malicious intent against the currency. I think they truly want it become widely adopted and more accessible to the american public. Nevertheless, the introduction of this ETF will probably be one of the worse things to happen to the currency. If it doesnt get approved, the price of bitcoin will go down. If it does get approved the price of bitcoin will go down as major wallstreat investors will maninpulate the price of the ETF and short it, ultimately devaluing all bitcoin in the long run. Although the number of bitcoin in the fund will only constitute a little more than one percent of all bitcoin, it will still represent public sentiment for the currency since it will seem to the vast majority of americans as the most legitamate marker for bitcoins price.

The ETF will most likely not get approved. But if it does it will probably bring about bitcoins end and open the door for another crypto currency to emerge as the most popular.

For the moment and until we can hire Shakira is either them or Mr Karpeles giving interviews to the press sit on a purple relax balloon.

....

Trust me, assuming you are a bull, you should be hoping for tons of naked shorts. The more the better. They borrow bitcoins / ETF bitcoins (in a best-case-scenrio, from you), and start dumping them. You let the market depth eat up his asks and let the price go down. Now you wait until the short is about to expire, re-buy at the lower price, the more the better, causing increase in price. Sooner or later the first of those shorters take profit, buying back more bitcoins than they borrowed to pay you back with interest, but these first dudes walk away with a fair profit. You time your own buy just before the first shorts are about to expire, now the price is going up and the shorters owe you coins, and you just bought bitcoins at a discounted price, and due to margin calls & interest, the whole deal is actually liable to INCREASE the bitcoin price.

There's a reason why naked shorting is a bad practice, its because its incredibly risky, and if too many people do it, then it essentially forms an inverse bubble except worse, since there is the potential to lose MORE than you originally invested. And when the bears take a big risk, and that risk fails, they lose money, and when the bears lose money, the bulls win.

Too much naked shorting can cause all sorts of problems for a commodity, but a declining price (at least in the long term) is not one of them.

And if the main idea is just to mantain bitcoin undervalued all the time, like JPMorgan does with silver and they have access to infinite resources (printing press) and no legal risk whatsoever (too big to fail).

What would happen with BTC? Wait for long years until JPMorgan just stops playing with your money like is happening to silver investors on their rigged market?

Ok now explain to me how JPMorgan is going to keep bitcoin price down realistically.

The major difference between Bitcoin and Silver is that (1) its very hard for a 'normal' person to own silver as efficiently as JPMorgan can and (2) Silver isn't 'spent.'

With Silver people sort of have to buy JPMorgan's products because JPMorgan can own Silver for less than its fees. This effectively makes the institution a defacto issuer of a Silver-Based currency. Clearly this won't work with Bitcoin because anybody can own Bitcoin for free. Silver requires resources to maintain, Bitcoin doesn't.

Also bitcoins are spent, and the ETF can't be 'spent.'

What does all this mean? The ETF is worth less than the actual Bitcoins. So people will be naturally encouraged to slowly redeem their ETF for Bitcoins, not the other way around. This means that the ETF serves more as a newfangled vehicle of exchange, that charges a fee for the convenience of exchange (just like, say bitinstant) rather than a defacto JPMorgan-issued pseudo-currency.

Thanks for the great explanation
Really hope you are right. I read and watch a lot from M. Keiser, Celente, Ron Paul, Schiff and some more and i am really worried that what they do to metals or other rigged markets could happen to bitcoin in the future. It is probably my own lack of knowledge about advanced financial instruments but sometimes those advanced financial instruments seem to allow for very unfair practices for the normal saver and for all normal citizens in general. Playing  with death insurances, paying employees with credit cards, rigging markets for ever with low risk, and a thousand more.

I know bitcoin provides a pseudocode that would allow to begin working at some extent with more advance financial assets and I wonder if us, bitcoin early adopters should really try to develop that pseudocode instead of using normal financial methods that satoshi, all the world  already know are hugely rotten. In no one we should trust only on numbers. There is an X amount of Tons of Gold  and yet they rig it to some extent. We have 21 million bitcoins, and they will probably try to rig it aswell. The problem is not the scarcity of the underlying, the problem might be that the method to control the finances is absolutely corrupted. Using their methods might probably be a problem for bitcoin because they will lie, rob and do whatever it takes to take what is yours. I say, lets use derivatives, but derivatives based on the blockchain not on "their methods".

jpmorgs and those banking giants run the SEC?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/CelL1337/david-caruso-horatio-cain.jpg

The people saying that they don't see the point in an ETF because you can manually purchase your own bitcoins are living in a bubble world.

Not everyone is a Bitcoin nerd.

If you make anything easier to access, you expand the market. The ETF isn't for people on this forum. It's mainly for everyone else.

Some people are still stick in 2010 thinking the entire world of BTC is just a few thousand computer geeks. The world has moved on. The ETF is a great idea.

/thread

And for many institutional investors / pension fund managers, they may not be allowed to invest in physical commodity directly. They can only invest in instruments on a public exchange like NASDAQ and the Bitcoin ETF will be their best and only choice; and these are where the real big money comes from.

And if you are trading bitcoin purely for speculation, Bitcoin ETF on NASDAQ will be a better choice. You don't need to worry about the incompetency of MtGOX. You don't need to worry about wire-transfer halt. You don't need to worry about DDOS as that also means DDOS of everything on NASDAQ.

That's only if you believe in the delusion that you've laid out.  "possible 100 billion or trillion..."  This will never happen with Bitcoin and while I don't presume the twins are the sharpest tools in the shed (i.e. getting jacked for Facebook) they are certainly far from stupid.  Bitcoin peaked in media attention over the last couple of months and mass adoption is virtually nill.  No amazon, ebay, Paypal or any other major company accepted Bitcoin.  Not because they don't know about it but purely because they are not interested in dealing with Bitcoin.

Now, nobody knows for sure what the twins are up to but they certainly can't just dump their holdings on the open market and this seems the mostly like way to accomplish that, while reaping a massive profit.  My gut says this is an exit strategy because the "traction" you speak of, does not exist.  Time will tell.  

Yeah, okay, you can profit from other peoples' naked shorts. But the idea that it will increase the value of the asset assumes that the person shorting naked will actually cover their position someday.

Lemme explain.

You have your BTC ETF. There's one million shares of it. I naked-short-sell 5,000 shares. Three days later I cover my position by buying 5,000 shares, and immediately naked-short another 5,000. Less exchange fees, my position hasn't changed - it was -5000 (naked) shares yesterday, and I bought 5000 and sold 5000, leaving -5000 (naked) shares today.

The result is that, as long as I keep this up, at any given time there are 1,005,000 shares of the ETF on the market - 1,000,000 "real" shares, and 5,000 created by my perpetually renewed naked short position. Which means that to the extent that market considers these ETF shares to be equivalent to holding BTC, I've effectively inflated the supply of BTC.

That's the attack I'm proposing, and why I think that even though the Winklevosses can't really cheat, this bitcoin paper can still exist at over-unity to the actual specie.

Ok so the issue with this is that eventually that 5000 shares are going to have to be paid back, and since brokerages aren't a big fan of letting you essentially form a ponzi scheme with them as the lender, they're going to trigger margin calls. Think about it this way, you know John Law's land scheme? Its essentially that, except in reverse. So it might work for a while, but it will eventually fail, and at that time Bitcoin will have to revert to higher than it was thanks to interest & margin calls.

Sure, if I'm going through a broker. But if I'm a bank with a seat on the exchange, and I'm careful to always cover my shorts before the T-3 delivery deadline, then who has the authority to issue a margin call against them?

The SEC?

FUD? Did anything I wrote caused Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt in you? Well, you are really faint hearted then.

Winkle-evil's Bitcoin ETF is just a laughable attempt at market making. ETFs are a "normal" tool for speculative manipulation, especially ETFs related to physical commodities. JP Morgan has been using its tricks to heavily manipulate the silver market for years. Everybody in silver is bitching about them, but now if the Winkle-evil's do the same thing in BTC everyone cheers them because that will very possibly increase the BTC price in the short term, which is the only thing most of people in here cares about.

The Winkle-evil's shares are just worthless pieces of paper. Nobody sane would believe he is holding any Bitcoins by owning their shares. There's no way to redeem those shares for blockchain BTC, right?

BTW, Kazu says ETFs are a "bundle"... What are the Winkle-evil's bundling together? Nothing. He says that "they are legally obligated" not to scam. Yeah, like everybody else, still these are tools used for fools to be parted with their money on a recurrent basis.

As I said earlier, I won't be touching their toilet paper with a bargepole, but still I believe their eventual success would be bullish for the BTC/USD exchange rate. It would add liquidity for sure, but on the other side also a powerful manipulation tool.

It's pretty pathetic and destructive and it's not only here, it's the majority of bitcointalk and r/bitcoin who are happy to scam the unsuspecting public out of the option to withdraw Bitcoins and store them as long as it makes the current Bitcoin holders money. This is nowhere like with gold where it's simply unfeasible. Unfortunately this has become the world we live in.

Regardless, it probably won't be approved by the SEC anyway.

Every single satoshi in ETF should be backed by real bitcoin. If they publish their cold storage addresses to prove they are not short-selling paper bitcoin, I can't see why this is not good

and when they redeem for bitcoins the price drops as has been the case with the transfer from GLD to physical of late.

there has been talk recently that ALL markets are manipulated so a BTC ETF will be the same, just hope it's manipulated upwards.

This. And I really hope they do that once the ETF is sold on an exchange and the majority of the shareholders care about checking this from time to time.

Even if it's a way for these guys to sell their bitcoins, it's a way for other people to buy some without having to fear lost passwords, having relied on the wrong encryption schemes or other technical stuff.

Okay first off, I hope you realize that this sort of thing has never not looked ridiculous.

JP Morgan isn't the issuer of paper silver - they're just a third party who has a lot of money to short it with. Like, I'm not saying people aren't going to do that with this ETF, but you're comparing apples to oranges if you say the issuers here are doing the same thing as JP Morgan is doing.

And as an aside, I don't care about whether this pushes the price up or down. That's not the point. The point is so that BTC - or paper that performs roughly like BTC - can integrate with the traditional infrastructure for regular people (e.g. in IRAs).

There is if you've got enough of them - that's right in the prospectus. Admittedly, that's not so useful for a small investor, but "needs to be redeems in a big batch" is a long way from "totally irredeemable".

isn't anyone starting thinking that the Winklevoss brothers have a natural talent for getting the business "almost" right and yet never really make it? :D

NB: no trolling intended, just a joke. I am holding a big bag of coins like many here (and nope I am not selling).

Without massive amounts of investment there wont be enough market capitalization to create any jobs.

When a Bitcoin is worth a few thousand each then there will be more jobs but when they are worth only $100 it's only a billion dollar economy so there are no jobs. Basically you gotta have investors before you can start businesses which is where the jobs come from.

yea I wouldn't trust it without evidence no matter legal requirements - banks have settled with cash as they didn't have the gold they were supposed to.

As much as I love the idea of Bitcoin ... but the Wankervoss Twins are the #1 reason why I wish Bitcoin to fail.

If the paper Bitcoins trade at higher than actual Bitcoins one can instantly collect a risk free profit.

Example:  1 share = 0.2 BTC.  The average bid for depth of 50,000 shares is currently 0.21 BTC (obviously it will be in USD but 0.21 BTC equivalent).

Sell short 50,0000 shares @ 0.21 BTC
Deposit 10,000 BTC with trustee
Trustee issues 50,000 new shares
Use new shares to cover short.

Net-net bought @ 0.20 BTC, sold @0.21 BTC.  Gain 0.01 BTC per shares * 50,000 shares = 500 BTC.

The ability for the fund to have subsequent share issue and redemption is a mechanism to "balance" the ETF and ensure it will trade very close to NAV.

Nice thing about Bitcoin is it would be possible to provide cryptographic proof of ownership.  Move coins to holding addresses (with encrypted private keys in vault).  Since redemption and issuance is always in basket of 50,000 shares (1,000 BTC) it would make sense to use 1 address = 1 basket.

Provide public addresses and digitally sign a message stating ownership with private key.

The digital signature provides irrefutable proof the trust has ownership of the private key.
The blockchain provides continual audit that the coins haven't been spent/moved.
If shares are redeemed or new shares are issued that is also provable.

Essentially at all times the number of BTC in digitally signed holding addresses should always reflect NAV (initially 0.2 BTC) * shares outstanding.

Yes, indeed.  They can block the GLD funny-business if they choose to.

If the Winklevoss twins don't do this for their ETF, somebody will surely launch one (or try to launch one) that does.

What would be weirdest, though, would be if the SEC approves an ETF that doesn't sign proof of ownership (the Winklevoss' or another) and somehow never gets around to approving the application of an ETF that does sign proof of ownership, or keeps coming up with lame excuses for rejecting it.

At least, if I were Ben Bernanke, that's what I'd orchestrate.

The other disconcerting possibility is double-counting coins held by an exchange (such as Gox).  Since none of the exchanges publish proof-of-ownership for their deposit base the proof of ownership for those coins is available for "lending" out to ETFs.

For being so rich and famous, this is soooo stupid.

Um, somebody has to be there to lend you the ETF in order for you to be able to short it. Whoever lends you that ETF. What are you going to cause the issuance of more ETF only to short it? I suppose you could be a bank and accept 'deposits' in BTC, which would allow you to do so, only thats contingent upon somebody actually depositing btc.

In order to short BTC, you have to be able to borrow BTC/ETF. Who is going to be loaning you that BTC/ETF? With Gold, its easy: You issue shares of the GLD, buy some gold miner, issue gold futures on that gold miner, 'loan' those futures to yourself to back your ETF, then sell your ETF.

With Bitcoin, even assuming there is such a thing as Bitcoin futures, its clearly a lot harder, or at least a lot easier for people to tell you are trolling big time. There is basically a fixed amount of BTC created every period of time, so if the futures exceed that expected supply, then they essentially go into backwardation for that amount. Thus, assuming people aren't idiots, the worst thing that they could possibly do is, until the next halving, up the perceived supply of bitcoins by the amount of Bitcoins that would be mined until the next futures expiration date. And then, once the next halving day happens, they can't loan themselves enough futures to make up for their debts, and then they actually have to pay back their uncovered shorts (well, half of them) which will either cause (A) the bitcoin price to exceed that at the time the shorting began in the first place by the interest over that period PLUS the backwardation over that period of time PLUS any amount the price got bid up just before the halving day OR (B) they forclose, and screw over their future contracts, causing a whole bunch of people that thought they'd have BTC to no longer have it, and now need it, causing major contraction in Bitcoin supply, causing the same end result.

With Gold, there is actually times where they can literally short the futures and randomly make money from it (due to contango). Why? Because there are a TON of futures that will only constantly be rolled into new futures and nobody will ever know. Silver is even worse.

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html

OUCH

Wrong! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling)

This is just a different spin on the same practice. In order to benefit from it going down you are either going to need to (A) borrow the share right now, sell it, re-buy it and pay back the loaner, or (B) write calls or (C) buy puts. You could also (D) troll the settlement time, but thats a different deal. Sure, technically you aren't going to have to 'borrow' from the buyer of your call, but you still need someone else as the buyer of the option, who effectively serves as your lender. By borrowing from someone I mean have someone on the other side of the trade that knows I am shorting and can obviously view the market depth of those options.

But at least they seem to have an idea what will succeed or not?  They had some insight to think that Facebook would work.

So I guess I am pulling for them on this one for sure! 

PS anyone with large holdings of coins should be doing this at a smaller scale. Forming a business whose assets are 100% bitcoins then piecing out shares to investors and imposing a frictional cost to buying and selling.

My first instincts on hearing about this ETF are that its a bad idea.

 because the idea behind bitcoins is that you don't need derivatives to represent bitcoins, you just own the 'real' bitcoins. Why let someone else ever hold your bitcoins when you can do it your self. This is also why I don't like Ripple gateways and bitcoin transactions in the ripple network and why you don't need a bank.

If we want to attract more people into bitcoins we need easier ways to get actual bitcoins, not paper certificates.

People supporting the ETF seem to be mainly saying it will be great for bitcoins because it'll attract big money. Maybe bitcoins shouldn't be in too much hurry to attract big money. No need for impatience. I distrust ETFs because of things I've heard about GLD and SLV. In the small print of those ETFs it says something along the lines of 'we don't have to redeem any metal and can pay you in fiat'. I've heard people with shares in GLD own 100 times more paper than there is real metal. Net effect of these ETFs is that the money supposedly going to investing in gold is actually being diluted 100 times into paper.

If the WinkleBros can proove they have the bitcoins backing the ETF then it makes it better I guess, but I'm still a bit uneasy about the idea myself.

No they didn't. It was never their idea, they never touched it nor did anything with it. They waiting until it was a multi billon $ company then qq'ed.

Interesting article, unusual risks of investing in the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF

http://qz.com/99632/winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-risk-factors/

Not everything has to be done because it will be "better". This is a free country, bitcoins were designed in part to allow more freedom in money, if these people want to use bitcoins in this manner it will not hurt you so why not let them try to make a little money this way? Or are you just jealous you didn't think of it and/or have the resources to pull it off first?

All your worries are debunked in about a 2 minute study of the Blockchain.

This could be a great service for people who are technically illiterate but want to hold Bitcoin.

In case anyone missed this post:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251133.msg2673918#msg2673918 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=251133.msg2673918#msg2673918)

Dumb dumb dumb, dumb dumb dumb...dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb

bitcoin ETF is about as dumb as it gets. Figures Garzik would be into it. I can't wait to meet him in person. I want to find out if he's a shill, or just an idiot.

No, if anything, the people who think an ETF is a good idea are hilarious. Or, they would be if they weren't so stupid. Why do you need a couple of carnival-head-sized spoiled Winklebrats to buy bitcoins for you? why do you trust them more with your money than you trust yourself? Because they're in the news?  ??? Why would you completely nullify the entire reason of having bitcoins by buying them through an ETF?

Strictly put: You're 'tarded.

I'm not buying the ETF but calling others retarded while being completely wrong yourself is kinda embarrising.

It would be if I was, but I'm not. Not knowing how to spell embarrassing when the forum has a spell check is pretty shameful though - nitwit.

If you have $250,000 in your IRA / 401(k) and you can't access it as cash, the ETF is great news because you can invest your wealth into bitcoins.

If you have $250,000 that you can't access as cash, you need to address that problem first, before trusting an unknown entity with it.

Fools will soon be parted from their money, just like the morons who put their money into that fiasco (I called that one too).

*edit

Peter, no I'm not jealous of thinking of an idea I would have been against in the first place, its a bit ridiculous of you to suggest that.  The freedom of bitcoins comes because the quantity can't be controlled by any person or organisation, leaving bitcoins free to find fair market value. Unless the Winklebros ETF can demonstrate it backs every share of its ETF with real bitcoins then I won't trust it because it will be a way to tamper with the number of bitcoins and hence tamper with the value of bitcoins. If real bitcoins I hold in my own wallet are devalued because the quantity of apparent bitcoins has been 'inflated' then it does hurt me, it devalues my bitcoins.

it can't be accessed as cash because its , ah a 401(k) ?

So in this sense it makes sense , and to tell you the truth , moving forward its probably a safer bet (that being your possible full loss of that 401(k) if left sit in Equities or Bonds)- although with an EFT the devil is actually in the detail.

I could totally see why , if it appeared legit - lots of IRA 401(k) would diversify to a BTC EFT , at very least the "Self managed" at the start .

this all goes back to the "Peer driven market" - aspect

i'm going to bet that the Winki dink bros are betting that most people have no idea or even care about the physical backing of the assets just as with Gold or Silver -{i'm talking about a lot of those 401(k) holders}

the interesting part becomes the Technology factor , it of course all works with Gold or Silver , but will it work in a strongly Peer driven market such a Bitcoin.

or will their hand be forced to move in a direction that leads them to develop systems that prove/disprove this.

i'd say the success/failure will be a result of this aspect primarily .

I understand that, dickhead, I HAD a 401K - in my early 20s, when I was still financially illiterate. That's why I know they're just as stupid as having a Bitcoin ETF.

Cryptoanarchist needs to change the username to Cryptosocialist.

Sure, there are people who will invest in a bitcoin ETF, and we can argue all day about their level of intelligence.

The main beef with ETFs is they allow for "counterfeit" i.e. naked shorts like in the PM market. Well, as was mentioned, a 2-minute study of the blockchain shows this would be much more challenging, virtually impossible, with Bitcoins.

Some people just feel more comfortable with traditional financial instruments. A true anarchist would recognize that they should just get what they want, and if it ends up failing, the market will do it no problem. Peanut gallery on internet forum doesn't have control of market, the market can handle itself. Who cares if RandomUser289178 thinks those people are stupid? I sure don't. I can just sit back and watch if Product X succeeds or fails, and if it fails, OK, if it succeeds, cool.

Stop whining. A financial instrument is a financial instrument. It will either succeed or fail. You calling its buyers stupid doesn't change a thing. It's just childish.

"in my early 20s, when I was still financially illiterate."


- Changed much? , sounds like it went well for you.. , you don't have any pent up angst or anything : D

"Cryptoanarchist"



**
a Bitcoin EFT is probably a masonic conspiracy.   just throwing it out there. . .

It seems like it would be trivial for them to demonstrate they hold the bitcoins, just sign a simple statement using the various addresses which hold the bitcoins.

Nobody is forcing you to invest in this or use it in any way, bitcoin is very open and many people can use it in many different ways and we can all get along happily.

You can bitch and whine about bitcoins being devalued by inflation like this, but that is just the natural progression of the monetary system. Make your plans to deal with it and move on with your life.

How did you get "pent up angst" out of my post? It's more like shock at how stupid you all are. You deserve the 'goyim' moniker because you truly are a lower life form.

Its the way the financial system works that I have beef with. Bitcoins is supposed to be the alternative to that den of fraud and lies that is the fiat money and financial system. That is the attraction of bitcoins for me. If bitcoins just become another financial asset to be swapped, bundled up, represented by certificates etc then no I don't have to like it.

It might be trivial for the Winkles to demonstrate the backing of their bitcoins but is it in their interest to? Might they prefer to obfuscate the truth? I'm happy for an honest ETF system to come along, lets hope they are honest in their intentions

Nobody is forcing you to use their ETF, you can go on using bitcoins as you wish. Bitcoins have a set base money supply, so there is not as much funny financing that can be done as with other currencies, but you will never be able to stop all of it.

Its really not that hard to safely secure coins, and giving them to the Winkle-freaks is hardly safe. Does it upset me that people think that handing off their coins to these guys is a smart thing? not at all. Does it bother me that I have to share the earth with total morons? - a little.

Mangling somebodies name is not a good way to make an argument once you get past first grade.

Nobody is asking anybody to hand bitcoins into this, they are asking for dollar investments. Totally different.