you gotta consider that this isn't like a light switch being flicked on. it's not like institutions will flood the market overnight. this is a new asset class with a significantly higher risk profile than anything wall street deals with (from a conventional standpoint).


this. institutions have been in the game for years. their presence has been obvious since 2014-2015, when algorithmic trading really took over the bitcoin markets. they spin off interests into new companies, too, so it's not always obvious. they are a lot of former wall street traders who have been trading this market for years as well (though not for their former companies---not officially, anyway).

gotta remember though, the market was in a very, very different place at that time. look at what happened to altcoins when the ETF was rejected: they had a bubble. they rose astronomically against BTC for the next few months. then in august, BTC had its bubble. that shows that the market was in a state of hype and very strong demand throughout 2017, regardless of the ETF rejection.

but now? the bubbles ended and we're seeing the fallout. altcoins are fucking bearish. there's no way to assume any rise from here is anything more than a bounce in a bear market.

what i'm saying is this: bad news in a bull market means nothing. bad news in a bear market can be a great excuse for a sustained selloff, though.

there's really no indication that any of the applicants can overcome the SEC's objections to the winklevoss application. their objections were really expansive and had much to do with the structure and liquidity of the underlying commodity market. planning on solidx getting rubber stamped is a bad bet.


this. maybe the ultimate lows are in (i kinda doubt it), but this sentiment really reminds me of the post-bubble desperation of 2014.

exactly. "cherry-pick" is the perfect description for this. i certainly wouldn't trust text-mining algorithms. i'm very skeptical that this kind of study can properly isolate the variables---they are probably reading too much into their deep learning model and not enough into a modicum of unstudied variables. like this:


yeah, i don't think so!

i still sense a lot of ranging in our future. both bulls and bears gonna get cucked! $6500-$17000.


ah, dem self-styled experts! tone vays' TA is terrible---although he is not too bad at reading sentiment and landing on the right side of it.

but when it comes to altcoins, do yourself a favor and do the opposite of what he says. every altcoin he says is a scam ends up making massive gains. once a coin hits his scam radar, it's a buy!

often times, though, altcoins lag the BTC trend: BTCUSD will pump, altcoins will dump at first. but sometimes after the BTCUSD uptrend gets established, alt/BTC charts follow in toe.

i certainly wouldn't long alts right now. it's possible we're near a major low (ETHBTC is in an especially interesting spot, hovering above the long term trend). but it could get ugly if the bottom falls out here.


i'd say the next few weeks are crucial to establish whether we are in a range market, or a bear market. a continued bear market for BTC is very bad news for alts.......

that suggests massive new supply and massive decline in demand. the long term uptrend would clearly have broken, throwing into question whether the expected exponential adoption trend was a pipe dream all along.

imagine how many BTC you would buy right now at $100. seems like an incredible opportunity, right? believe me---you will not feel like that at all if BTC drops 99% in value from here. the chart would look like a conventional bubble crash in logarithmic scale. assets rarely recover from those conditions.

it's impossible to predict. there's too many variables---it's entirely dependent on how many shitcoins are launched and what their circulating supplies are. BTC dominance isn't useful outside of reading for extremely general trends (are altcoins more profitable or less profitable than BTC right now?)


what do you mean by "bitcoin dominance" here? is 90% just a made-up number? in theory, bitcoin's market share can rise in spite of altcoins, if demand is strong enough.

it's nice to see some dissent from the official SEC position. but can anyone explain to me the logic that institutional participation (via ETFs?) would ameliorate their concerns about things like market manipulation in the spot markets? does she think the spot markets are gonna start following some US-regulated security market? seems unlikely.

i'd say the chances of new lows have gone down moderately, but we're not out of the woods. it'll take time to prove that.

we've got a wyckoff spring from the bottom and it looks like we should have a new medium term trend (up). i suspect it won't pan out as a new bull market to ATHs. but something like 2012 makes a lot of sense to me. (correction is not over, and another leg down may be coming, but the bottom might already be in)

as i understand, he privately raised funds to back the project and hasn't done a public offering. in fact, i didn't think there was a public offering planned at all, but if you look at the FAQ:


i don't think that has materialized yet, as we're into Q3 and i see nothing on his twitter or chia's site. i'd keep an eye on bram's twitter if you're interested.

my thoughts exactly.

i'm extremely bearish on ETF applications and their harsh words in this decision seals the deal. how are the vaneck, solidx, etc applications any better regarding things like "market manipulation?" they're not.

it sure sounds like the SEC doesn't want to approve securities tied to unregulated markets dominated by unknown/overseas actors. who would have thought?!?!

it's always so difficult trying to decipher his words. i'm beginning to think he does it on purpose!

sounds to me like he expects a ranging market, on a multi-month timeframe? and the probability of new lows (sub-$5700s) is growing smaller, but still possible?

that's pretty much my outlook as well. boring (but not dismally bearish) for the next year or so.

too late to get my guess in?

$14k


it's going up too fast. $8500 is a major selloff area from may, so there should be some resistance here. i'm mentally preparing myself for a selloff attempt soon, and i'm considering opening a hedge short when this momentum dies out a bit.

for all i know, this is the start of another huge bull run. however, every bull run starts with a bottom and testing supports. price curves into a parabola, it doesn't go parabolic off the bottom.

buying ETF shares means betting on the future price of bitcoin too.....

and i really hope the apparent irony of an ETF for a P2P currency is not lost on people here.

bitcoin futures with real delivery would be more important to the market because it would provide capital flow to the spot market. that's an actual avenue for BTC liquidity, which an ETF is not. you buy ETF shares for cash, and you sell them for cash, period. there is an assumption of arbitrage and therefore tracking the underlying, but as pointed out above that isn't necessarily the case at all.


the supply is already locked up. you think solidx and winklevoss are waiting for SEC approval to buy the coins backing their trusts?

that wasn't to say ETFs are debt notes per se (ETNs are), but that they are paper substitutes for real BTC.

in both cases, you're trading a security/contract that is "backed" and you're trusting counterparties to be honest (i.e. your contracts are backed by actual value and you will be paid when you try to withdraw).

an ETF is different in that there is technically no "credit risk" beyond the issuer playing games with its assets (WEX and the chinese exchanges come to mind). but then you've got custody/insurance risk and closure risk (and in case of disaster, you will not be paid the underlying but liquidated to cash and probably tied up for many months if not years). beyond that, similar risk can also manifest as disparity from the underlying index. here's one example:


ETFs can face disastrous liquidity problems during high volatility and especially during downturns. and during these times, "backing" means fuck all, especially when your account is being liquidated.

but the larger point is about delivery. ETFs only ever liquidate to cash, it doesn't matter what's underlying. if anything bad happens, ever, you will get USD cash (at best), and not necessarily in the amount that is equivalent to the underlying value. (and while you're waiting to be paid over years perhaps, maybe another BTC bubble occurs)

when the true BTC liquidity crisis occurs and price is skyrocketing in the millions of USD, you don't want to be exposed to an ETF. you won't necessarily be able to sell anywhere near spot prices and you may get caught in market halts and liquidations while the rest of the BTC market chugs along.

that's just not true. there is already a live bitcoin ETN that has more volume than most ETFs in existence. anyone with an interactive broker account can invest---institutions, retail, whatever! it's how mark cuban invested in BTC, and it's how any large investor who doesn't want to tailor a custody arrangement would probably invest. ledgerX swaps/options have also steadily risen in volume over the year (though still paltry).

the primary reason ETFs exist is for speculative trading---intraday, short selling/margin. mutual funds traditionally got priced once per day, and comex commodity exchange hours are only 10:30am-3pm. this is why ETFs exist. they're not primarily for "traditional long term investors"---they're for speculative trading, especially short term.


ETF shares are literally paper bitcoins.......

so weird how bitcoiners get all paranoid about "paper gold" and then go around acting like ETF shares are actual bitcoins.

in the USA, accredited investor = net worth of at least $1M (excluding value of primary residence) or annual income of $200k+. so i guess it is. as i recall, the grayscale application came with the same caveats.


that's the vibe i get it. pump it!

haven't heard a convincing reason why it matters. i've never bought the idea that accredited/institutional investors need to wait for an ETF to invest. there are reputable custody solutions and a robust OTC market already today. when blackrock says that institutions aren't expressing interest for these products, i don't think they're lying. remember, these people are dinosaurs. they're gonna be chasing after the market. why are people waiting for them to pump the market?


you can do that with GBTC, ledgerX, XBT Provider (swedish ETN)---all available through standard online brokers. and also regulated futures too.

hype, hype and more hype....

i'm guessing it's just a bounce/bull trap, but maybe i'm just scarred from the 2014-15 bear market.

this kind of crash leaves levels upon levels of resistance that the market needs to test now. more than likely, we'll fail at one level or another, and then it's back to shorting the market if you want to maintain USD value.

maybe we'll see new ATH this year but, probably best to temper those expectations. especially considering all the money poured into altcoins/tokens last year and earlier this year..... i still feel like this market needs to come back down to reality a bit.

were they limited to the top 10 by market cap or something? does cardano even have a live network? last i checked a few months back, it was literal vaporware.


somehow i'm not surprised that a bank doesn't like privacy coins.


then again, bitpay supports bcash, and nobody uses bcash. bitpay is just becoming irrelevant.