That is good to hear given the number of entities who are using them for custody.  If they hadn't, I'd be worried.  I guess we'll find out soon enough which, if any, are approved.

I would think that if they are approved, yes it would.  In the short term afterwards, there could be a drop as the "sell the news" hits, but as people begin to invest using ETFs it should only increase demand.  Assuming of course they really do purchase and hold bitcoins.  These are big players though so one would think they'd be honest.  Of course, if you don't have the keys you are just a creditor so....

"‘Number go up’: bitcoin’s startling surge is inexplicable as ever"

The intelligence level of some of the people at FT is abysmally low.  They do tend to be on the authoritarian statist side of the aisle, so it isn't surprising that they push an anti-bitcoin agenda at every turn.  When you have to toe the line to support the people who want to have control over everyone and everything it is difficult to see the benefits of bitcoin.  However it must be tiring having to submit to the whims of the statists and not to have a unapproved or independent thought.

I agree.  If the US is not careful you can easily get hyper inflation.  With the interest costs on the debt potentially ballooning, it can get out of handy quickly.  The smart move over the last 14-15 years would've been to finance all the outstanding debt at the super low rates using 100 year bonds.  But you can't expect the people in DC to be intelligent.

Perhaps a constitutional republic.  Where the constitution is the code.  A pure democracy is fiat where a majority of the people are free to enslave a portion (e.g. the democrats in the old US south), or to take a percentage of everyone's money via inflation.

You should fear an unlimited democracy.

It seems that happens a lot, people front-run it, then it sells off briefly and then resumes its trek upwards.  It happened at one (or more?) of the halving where it went up in fiat terms beforehand and then when it didn't immediately pop higher, people said, "why not?" and sold.  Then within a few weeks/months it kept going up.  The best advice:  buy (or mine) some bitcoin and put it away and come back in a few years.  But people want get-rich-quick schemes.

Yeah, it is all guessing, no one knows for sure.  To me the ETF is icing on the cake since it just opens up another avenue for people to get into the ecosystem.  And as far as the halving, well, every other halving resulted in higher prices due to stable or increased demand and a cut in the new supply by half. 

By their nature forecasts, the fore implies it should be something in the future, not what they see out the window now.  As you say, there forecast isn't much use. 

With the various forks, e.g. bitcoin gold etc, many people may have "forgotten" holdings out there.  It is difficult to know unless you are aware of every fork that has happened, so don't forget to look and see there too.

For the larger providers a few millions dollars is a relative pittance.  I think the "no first mover advantage" is why the SEC is likely to approve a bunch at once if they approve any now - they don't want to be seen playing favorites.  This is good for everyone because competition will help keep costs low.

Anyone can make predictions and will do so when there is no accountability to getting it wrong.   The best prediction was made long ago:  bitcoin is either going to be worth a whole lot, or very little.  It certainly seems most likely to be on the "whole lot" side of things now vs when that was made in 2009-2011.

Yes, for now exchanges are required.  Eventually one hopes that you can just stay in bitcoin and transact in bitcoin to avoid these exchanges.   Then there won't be a central point of failure.

More anonymity would be nice too though to protect people from the prying eyes of the authoritarian control freaks in charge in many places around the world.

There are many crooks involved in the crypto industry like in other industries, it just seems as if people are looking for a quick buck in crypto and are too credulous to actually look at what is going on.  Look at BlockFi, Celsius, FTX etc.  I don't know how people didn't see they were scams from the start.  I talked to an attorney (I won't say where, but he is pretty well known in the crypto area) who deals in this and he was convinced that Celsius and BlockFi were great.  Ditto FTX. 

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. 

The bank CEOs didn't commit felonies.  You need to look deeper:  why were non-creditworthy borrowers given loans?  Ask people in the US like Barney Frank and his ilk who forced the banks to use something other than creditworthiness to judge people for loans.  Blaming the CEOs is like blaming the firemen for not putting out the fire that the government started with a gas can.

You don't need to be a doomsday prepper to be prepared.  The media has painted prepping as some "far right" activity again so that fewer people will be prepared and hence be dependent on the media's masters.  The left hates people who can take care of themselves and wants a dependent middle class who can be used and controlled.

No. Bitcoind didn't use BitcoinJS for randomness.

Short term forecasts are always a challenge and this is no exception.  Is 45k likely?  Yes.  By the end of the year?  Who knows.  It is really just a guess.  There are plenty of catalysts going forward, but with the exception of the halving, the timing is wide open.

Interesting concept.  Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see this on the bitcoin-dev list.  As the comments said, there are similar things, but having uses for bitcoin is nearly always a positive.

I doubt they are yet.  Look at Argentina, Cyprus, or Venezuela for example.  How many times have the people of Argentina voted in authoritarians?  It really only takes one time, e.g. Venezuela, but Argentina keeps doing it, and to make matters worse, international finance still keeps funding them! How many times will it take the people of Argentina to realize that the same socialist authoritarian polices will keep destroying their wealth and thus their country?  The degree to which socialism is implemented correlates with the degree of the destruction.

This is part of the reason why a republic or democracy alone is a bad system of government unless there are constitutional limits on the power, otherwise you can have a tyranny of the majority.  Just look at the democrat slave owners in the old US south.  Just because it was in theory a republic or democracy, it didn't mean that a group weren't slaves.  That party is on the same page today: it is my right force people to work in my fields then, it is my right to force people to pay for other choice now due to "need".

In short, this is the advice that has been given since 2009:  fiat price volatility is pretty irrelevant, don't look at the price daily, come back in a few years and you'd have been happy.  The long term trend has been an increase in fiat price as more people recognize the value proposition in bitcoin. 

There have been similar arguments since 2009, 2010 etc.  In July 2010 there were similar arguments on slashdot when bitcoin was mentioned there.  More than 13 years later, they still don't hold water.  People see the problems with fiat not backed by anything of value:  the value of fiat is at the whim of a majority of the political class who want money and power. 

A free people have the power to withdraw themselves from the caprice of the politicians and protect the products of their lives using PMs, bitcoin etc.  A lot of smart people are doing so and have done so.