Reddit Posts
Correlation of GBTC & ETHE to US stock market
In case anyone is wondering what happened to the price of gold after the GLD ETF hit the market. This happened.
Crypto asset manager, Grayscale, overtakes world's largest gold fund
JPMorgan Says Bitcoin’s Record Run Is Being Driven by Inflation
It took the previous record holder, the gold ETF GLD, three days to cross through the ten digits and $BITO has done it in only two.
New bitcoin futures ETF could trigger rally to $168,000, analyst assert.
$BITO ETF has traded $280m worth of shares in first 20min
GBTC trading at a discount, why?
⚡️ $PROXY - Institutional grade L2 Wrapped BTC for bringing Bitcoin to DeFi with no centralized exchange, no price slippage. Launched 24 hours ago!⚡️
3 Reasons Why a U.S. Bitcoin ETF Will Be Approved Soon And Be The Next Major Catalyst
Are there any ETFs that are essentially a pile of crypto?
On Markets, Interest Rate, and the Musk Effect
My thoughts on Peter Schiff's "The beginning or end of the bitcoin bear market?"
Bitcoins role during a financial crisis in a post internet world.. It is the only safe haven that has functional utility.
Grayscale’s GBTC At The Verge Of Surpassing World’s Leading Gold ETF
Mentions
This is like saying don’t buy GLD, buy physical gold bars.
Ondo, Algorand are my bets. I like gold and silver tokenized on Algorand by Meld. I am considering liquidating my TradFi GLD and PSLV positions and moving them to DeFi. XDC is an old school RWA play that might still be valid but it is not very accessible from a platform support standpoint.
I've spent a long time educating myself on money, markets, and personal finances. I don't trust most financial advisors, many are actively harmful. The best give you simple advise you could implement yourself. Regarding diversification, I generally think diversification is a good idea. It helps you emotionally weather the downs, it provides access to upsides in a variety of sectors, and there is good evidence to support that getting high on the risk/yield curve and selling one asset class that is currently high to buy another asset class that is currently low as part of a portfolio rebalance is a winning strategy. All that said, I'm not sure I've ever tried to talk anyone out of being long BTC. You may not want to YOLO 100% in, but that is more about the general principal of never doing that with any single asset ever than it is about the fundamentals of BTC. A lot of financial literature the FA is consuming is anti crypto. Amongst that crowd it is pitched as "too new," What isn't said is that the FA crowds REQUIRE your assets in a stock/bond portfolios to collect commissions. With IBIT this may slowly start to change... The best FA's are fiduciary flat fee advisors, this group is generally less anti-crypto overall. BTC is up 26% YTD, GLD is up 25% YTD, S&P is up 8% YTD, Real estate is up 2% YTD. Three years ago the percentages were the same but the order was reversed. No one can predict the future exactly, diversification makes it matter less, but it can also eat into your potential for total gains. Less downsides, less upsides.
The diminishing returns may be a lot later due to institutional investments. They tend to attract long term investments rather than day trading spikes. For example, when Gold got ETF it sparked a 7 year bull run. Here we are barely a year into BTC and ETH ETF: GLD Launch: Nov 18, 2004 Gold Price at Launch: ~$430/oz Peak After Run: Sept 2011, ~$1,920/oz Duration: ~7 years Overall Gain: ~+346%
Every time I consider it it's just waaaay too much of a hassle. Much like BTC if you buy into most of the theses on how it's going to go parabolic you kinda have to take delivery of actual gold. People regularly bitch about the premium exchanges charge, especially if you don't know what they're doing and don't use something like active trader. But the 1-2% spread and fee is peanuts compared to the fees you fork over to a gold dealer. You probably have to be buying something like mid 6 figures to get a price within 10% of spot. (I was going to say 5%, but jesus if I didn't do a quick search and I'm staring at 1000kg bars selling @ 14% above spot) At the end of the day I'm also more skeptical of the average gold bug's arguments than I am of Bitcoins story of adoption and growing network effects. The fiat/USD collapse thing isn't a necessity for bitcoin to work out in my opinion, while it's kinda fundamental to gold working. On the flip side I'm agnostic to buying some GLD or other derivative for a short term trade, 'cause you think gold will do well because the push and pull of macro stuff like interest rates and the long bond being under constant pressure this year is a great opportunity for gold to out perform. But I'm just not a trader of stuff like that. If I want to do that much work to get a 40% return, I'd rather do it learning about tech companies.
I moved everything I had in GLD into FBTC in my IRA, no ragrets
Hey congrats on your portfolio! By gold and silver I meant the ETFs (GLD and SLV), I guess that covers “the fear of loosing it” part. Anyway huge thanks for the detailed explanation! It means a lot! Mind if I DM you?
Wrong, it literally doesn’t matter just like with index fund ETFs. Also, People said the same thing about GLD. It’s a dumb argument because the ETFs are generating the price appreciation this cycle.
Got house in US with a USDA mortgage loan (basically a federal program that allows 0% down in designated rural areas) in 2017 and my early 20s to support my dad and siblings after my mom cheated and left abruptly. Sold it in late 2021 for about twice what the mortgage was for after fixing it up a bit and experiencing a covid market surge. Reason for the sell was specifically because I knew BTC is going up massively in the coming years. Decided to sleep in my car (honda Civic) while throwing the proceeds and work income into BTC and related stocks. It wasn’t too hard because I was used to it since I slept on the couch at my house and gave the bedrooms to my dad and siblings. Sold half the MSTR and about 20% of my BTC this year and Bought a new house outright with cash and threw all the extra cash into ULTY for weekly passive income which is at almost 4000 weekly. Current portfolio: BTC IBIT - Blackrock BTC ETF MSTR - MicroStrategy CRSP - Crispr Therapeutics MTPLF - MetaPlanet GLD - Gold ETF GME - GameStop ULTY - Yieldmax Weekly Income MSTY - Yieldmax Monthly Income I agree Yieldmax is too good to pass up right now
Got house in US with a USDA mortgage loan (basically a federal program that allows 0% down in designated rural areas) in 2017 and my early 20s to support my dad and siblings after my mom cheated and left abruptly. Sold it in late 2021 for about twice what the mortgage was for after fixing it up a bit and experiencing a covid market surge. Reason for the sell was specifically because I knew BTC is going up massively in the coming years. Decided to sleep in my car (Toyota Civic) while throwing the proceeds and work income into BTC and related stocks. It wasn’t too hard because I was used to it since I slept on the couch at my house and gave the bedrooms to my dad and siblings. Sold half the MSTR and about 20% of my BTC this year and Bought a new house outright with cash and threw all the extra cash into ULTY for weekly passive income which is at almost 4000 weekly. Current portfolio: BTC IBIT - Blackrock BTC ETF MSTR - MicroStrategy CRSP - Crispr Therapeutics MTPLF - MetaPlanet GLD - Gold ETF GME - GameStop ULTY - Yieldmax Weekly Income MSTY - Yieldmax Monthly Income You should check out the crazy yields on Yieldmax. It’s not a dividend, it’s a covered call fund so it’s taxed as income. I believe MSTR is going to be one of the next multi trillion marketcap stocks so imo it’s going to continue seeing absurd yields for the next coming decades.
i want several acres of land and guns and gold bars and a selection of 90s and 2000s automobiles. preferably in a mountainous region within half an hour from a walmart and mcdonalds. what i buy and sell to get there doesnt matter much. i dont really see the point of OWNING shares of Apple over investing in AAPL through a traditional brokerage platform. *(yes i realize that blackrock and fidelity and vanguard get all the voting power to control the corporations and thus control the planet. i never believed BTC was going to change that. i honestly believe BTC was made by the CIA to buy the USA another century of hegemony and give the secret banking families that control the planet more time to take over the world's supply of GOLD because there will be less upward pressure on the price of gold due to all the demand that will shift to BTC. banks have been and will continue to take over the world and governments will continue to do whatever it is banks want as has been the case for the past 500 years. i dont think this ends until jesus comes out of the sky to defeat his enemies. am i crazy. sure. i also bought BTC at $7k and i'd like to learn more about this cold storage thing. but its a bit confusing.)* the same thing goes for gold and bitcoin... though i could see a future where i might want to keep a portion or all of my gold holdings in physical coins buried in the woods... i cannot see a situation where i need to do the same with bitcoin in other words. i see a .0001% chance of a zombie/nuclear/weimar/electromagnetic disaster bringing us to a world where guns and bullets and gold coins reign supreme. it would be very convenient to be holding a box full of gold coins and not GLD shares that are entirely gone. poof. i see a 0% chance of my bitcoin or stocks being useful in that scenario. if the US stock market goes to ZERO... its because there are aliens blasting us with lasers and bioweapons and the only safe places to live are in caves... so BTC in a cold wallet is as useless as BTC on the coinbase platform or BTC in a fidelity ETF.
yeah, that’s what I think happens. we’ll see two markets form: one for paper BTC (ETFs, derivatives) and one for real, self-custodied BTC. paper BTC might lag during big runs, just like gold. those markets can be throttled, settled in cash, or manipulated through supply expansion. but real BTC is not printing more, and it’s fully auditable. if people start demanding actual delivery and can’t get it, the gap shows up fast. it feels inevitable. just look at gold, most people know they’ll never redeem their GLD shares for real bars. but Bitcoin’s culture is different. self-custody is part of the ethos. so if demand spikes and custodians can’t meet it, trust in paper BTC cracks. the crowd shifts toward real BTC, and that’s when the premium kicks in.
Honestly why not make a modern day asset allocation? 25% VTI/BND/GLD/BTC Or VOO/bitcoin 90/10 or some combo where Bitcoin is your reserve asset?
How much does it cost to make 1 BTC? Either in seashells GLD or USD.
Less volatile in both directions. Hard to believe but Bitcoin has barely outperformed gold since March of 2021. This is what happens when ETFs and governments start buying it: volatility drops. This also happened to gold after GLD came into existence and banks started buying it and futures contracts took over. So many ways to change the nature of it. Those thinking BTC will 10x in the next couple years are dreaming. Those kinds of runs are over.
Considered selling paper SLV and GLD and buying tokenized versions like Meld GOLD and SILVER as well. At least buy PSLV if you can.
Actually, it's worse. Under IRS section 408(m), physical gold is considered a "collectable" and thus gains are subject to a 28% (long term) - 37% (short term) tax rate. Shares of many paper gold ETFs (e.g. GLD) are also subjected to the same tax treatment. It depends on how the ETF is structured but if you're buying an interest in physical gold it's the same as buying the physical gold for the IRS. Bitcoin is taxed as property thus your long term gains are one of: 0%, 15% or 20% depending on your gross income. Short term gains are taxed as ordinary income with the top tax bracket being 37% for earners filing jointly with an income over $751k.
Transfer to Robinhood IRA and buy IBIT or GLD or both.
Bitcoin moves inversely to oil prices because of the energy requirements to mine BTC. BTC also moves up in response to perceived risk to fiat, much the way gold does. In the past 5 days: BTC -5% GLD +3.6% WTI: +13% That BTC didnt drop by ~13% demonstrates my point. It is a store of value, it's just more heavily pushed down by oil prices than pushed up by risk to fiat.
*"IBIT has surpassed the $70 billion mark five times faster than the gold-based GLD product"*
tldr; BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF has surpassed $70 billion in assets faster than any other ETF in history, achieving this milestone in just 341 days, compared to 1,691 days for the gold-based GLD ETF. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas highlights the fund's rapid growth and its legitimacy among major investors. BlackRock currently holds $76.19 billion in digital assets, and CEO Larry Fink warns that rising US debt and the growth of digital assets like Bitcoin could challenge the dollar's supremacy as the global reserve currency. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
You certainly can argue that its a better store of value than precious metals simply by comparing price action of BTC vs GLD since BTC first began.
Check out its 1 year 5 year compounded performance relative to SPY QQQ GLD and your favorite ETF in your portfolio.
ETFS, national reserves, BTC treasury companies on the stock exchange, tapping the market caps of GLD, bonds, housing, being used for large petro purchases by Russia and China in back door deals. Things are different the cycle has been broken “in a sense” there will always be dips, but not like we’ve seen previously. The rate will still cut in half every 4 years causing a more bullish market, but as for the downside the scarcity, and adoption are eliminating the possibility of such large drops. So yes still volatile, but in my own opinion, and I am an idiot, there will be no longer. Crypto winters .The intense supply shock that hasn’t even hit yet, since most people aren’t paying attention has changed everything. Stack SATS, and G-D bless!
Cold storage for long term savings Brokerage is 95% ibit, 2.5% meta planet, 2.5% MSTR Roth is 45% fbtc, 40% MSTR, 5% MAGS, 5% GLD, 5% metaplanet Non Roth retirement account is 50% iBit, 45% MSTR, 5% metaplanet Roth 401k at work is tied up until I leave You could use Swan's IRA but the fees are about the same vs the ETFs for retirement accounts but then you have to deal with swan. I'm debating taking the penalty on the non Roth and pull it all out for cold storage.
I started buying GLD this year, but only buy real BTC. Tried to explain to my wife that I'm investing in gold now and her response was, "Well, where is it all?" ... I think she was expecting a stash of bullion hidden in the house...
Point one: Gold is as good an inflation hedge as anything else. The twenty year returns on GLD are near the SP500 which is the benchmark for professional investors. Bitcoin has significantly out performed during it's 16 years and will likely continue to follow that trend with diminishing out performance (but still out performance compared to the high returns of SP500, Nasdaq, etc). Intrinsic value may or may not be what you are interested in on the second front of this question. I think you are thinking in 'fair value' terms? Gold's fair value (currently $3,288) can be loosely calculated as Fair Value of Gold = β₀ + β₁(Real Rate) + β₂(Trade-Weighted USD) + β₃(US CPI) + ε Bitcoin could be calculated using Fair Value of Bitcoin = β₀ + β₁(Real Rate) + β₂(Trade-Weighted USD) + β₃(US CPI) + β₄(Network Activity) + β₅(Supply Dynamics) + β₆(Adoption) + β₇(Regulatory Environment) + ε but those additional variables are up for debate so an actual number isn't going to be widely adopted or useful for years or even decades Intrinsic value is complicated and what a lot of people argue about in regard to bitcoin/Bitcoin (gold also faces critique from a lot of finance/investment folks that just prefer productive assets that are relatively easy to explain in financial terms). Point two: Lightning does have similarities in that most users will have a custodian manage the channels for them. One significant difference is that lightning doesn't block anyone from participation. If you ever live in another country you might see how multiple incompatible platforms are hard to deal with. Deciding on Venmo or Paypal is maybe trivial for Americans, but working internationally it is a big pain in the ass that banks often don't work together. Another difference is that the user has the option of running your own checking account digitally. With fiat you can only use cash to fully control your spending. Bitcoin's base layer gives you the ability to handle larger transactions and is pretty easy for most people to self-custody. Lightning is harder to self-host, but the self-self-sovereign option exists. Personally I don't distrust the financial system in terms of it not working over the rest of my life. Still bitcoin is useful to me in sending money internationally, storing value, and having some assets that no one can touch without my permission. Point three is extremely nuanced and I don't want to dive into that completely since this reply is already very long. My perspective is that the current system is broken in that value is being robbed of anyone that isn't a quasi-savvy investor. I grew up with a lot of working class people that don't trust big corporations anymore than the govt. Bitcoin gives people a dead-simple option to hold wealth without worrying about NVDA's earnings or the full faith and credit of the federal govt. I don't think bitcoin loses significant value if the current system lasts forever. But you might want to think in terms of decades and centuries. Fractional reserve banking and fiat currency at the current scale are fairly new experiments. Until around WW1 it was not normal to create a bunch of govt bonds and then buy them with a national bank or federal reserve. Point four: here you are misunderstanding the math. You can divide a penny infinitely too. Slicing bitcoin into smaller pieces doesn't change anything other than decimal places. There are 21 million bitcoin max. 2.1 quadrillion sats max. Keep renaming and increasing the number of units however you want. Nothing changes with the set of units. Dollars are intended to increase in supply regularly and in pretty large quantities. Fundamentally different models for issuance. The concern would be if we needed bigger units of division for bitcoin as the dollar out performs it. The usefulness (intrinsic value?) of the Bitcoin protocol ultimately determines the demand. As long as there are zero false transactions and the network continues to function there will be increased demand (maybe not a lot, maybe a ton). People have gotten used to credit card rewards and banks that baby-sit their money. But all that is fairly new. My grandparents buried money in the yard because the banks all failed when they were young. It is possible that people will (to some degree at least) decide that the banks and government are not 100% trust worthy for this essential aspect of life. I think banks and treasuries have shown themselves to be pretty bad actors in the first part of this century. Even if you think everyone in finance and financial policy is completely benevolent there is a pretty big incentive for bankers to expand lending and risk to the edges of what is legal and ethical. Politicians are perhaps even more short sighted. They typically just want to stay in office and/or make connections with the private sector for future personal enrichment.
Buying IBIT, using margin I am borrowing more IBIT and selling at the money calls on the borrowed shares it and collecting premium while holding the shares I’m not selling calls on. Buying GLD with the proceeds.
Most people don't actually buy gold but a gold ETF called GLD, which is essentially ownership of gold without having to store it and secure it yourself. However this year, the IBIT ETF which represents ownership of Bitcoin without having to store and secure it, has seen more money flow into it than the GLD etf has. AKA Wall Street is starting to invest more in BTC than in gold if you're measuring strictly by purchases of these two ETFs for January 2025 and forward.
tldr; BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has surpassed the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) in year-to-date (YTD) inflows, marking a shift in institutional preferences from gold to Bitcoin. Despite Bitcoin's modest 4.03% return compared to gold's 23.07% YTD gain, IBIT attracted $6.96 billion in inflows versus GLD's $6.51 billion. Analysts attribute this to growing institutional confidence in Bitcoin as a long-term asset. Regulatory changes, such as the rollback of SEC's SAB 121, have also bolstered Bitcoin's appeal among financial institutions. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
1 month: VTI: -1.25% GLD: 7.31% IBIT: 12.20%
Dude, forget Bitcoin. You could invest in any security starting now and you will thank yourself a million years from now. Diversify. VOOG, GLD, and BTC would be my top 3 picks for long term holds but I also wouldn’t DCA. Try to buy in at the right time. There’s no such thing as “timing the market” but there is such a thing as being educated on the subject and making educated predictions using TA and fundamentals. Most crypto goons will tell you otherwise. Take advice from people involved in the market as a whole not just Bitcoin. Best of luck!
Why the fuck would most millionaires give a flying fuck about an extremely volatile, extremely manipulated speculative asset that so far this cycle hasn't even doubled in value from its last ath 4 years ago, when there are plenty of safer options to do that? The whole premise is supposedly that BTC is some kind of safe haven of value against the dollar. That was definitely true, and dramatically so, in its formative first few runs up to 2020/2021; the beyond belief returns if you got in prior to 2020, just okay if you got in before 2024, but not any better than stocks or index funds by this point. I guess its holding up against the market downturn right now, but who knows how long that will last. The theory was that when this exact scenario unfolding right now happens, everyone would flock to digital gold (BTC) which it would seem is happening to some extent, but more so they are flocking to GLD which is hilariously ironic. BTC has never been through a recession or depression, though it was borne out of one. I guess we'll see what happens if we tip off the edge into -enter your preferred parlance-. All this to say, I hope it goes up lol.
Index, sector, stock. Become a better trader. Look at WTRG, AWR, O, SPRY, TGTX, BRK/B, GLD, LLY. Bull markets everywhere, try to find them, stop trading losing tech names.
It should noted that during every market crash(2022, 2020, 2018, 2008, 2001) in the last 20 years, the USD actually gained value relative to other currencies. This is the first time it is losing value as our allies are beginning to see the US as unreliable and are fleeing from the USD. This is actually what Trump wants as he's said many times before that he thinks the USD is overvalued. If he weakens the USD, he believes US exports will be more competitive in the market. He's not wrong, he will just achieve this goal by destroying our economy. Buy GLD and BTC. RIP USD holders.
It’s good to diversify. No matter how much conviction you have ultimately nobody can predict the future. I hold VT and FBTC at around 70/30. May add some GLD as well.
i now keep 50% of my portfolio... in GLD. i rebalance every 52 weeks. so this will never happen again.
QQQ DJI GLD and a little bitcoin. Uninspired choices. Especially for a guy with insider information. He's a loser in so many different ways.
Gold & bitcoin for me. With GLD, you don’t need to posses gold to own gold.
I will look this from a different perspective. Total value of US stock market is ~50 T. Even if they move .1% of that to BTC that is 50B. GBTC get converted to spot ETF that is 20B. GLD ETF is 50B. Even though it is pretty much a dead investment.
Every holding that has awesome returns has high negative and positive volatility. Pick defensive holdings to dampen the overall volatility of the portfolio (SHY, UUP, FXF, GLD for negative correlation). Or just be ok with the rise and fall of the high volatility holding (BTC). I love BTC because its a great concept, high return, non leveraged instrument (no volatility decay). Also secondary use deflationary currency gives it long term value.
In case anyone is wondering what the GLD ETF did to the price of gold… it did this: https://i.imgur.com/uYkW59V.png
Next time Bitcoin collapses 70% in a year the perspective will be different. Both have their place. If gold ever goes back to $1600 I would buy GLD ETF. PAXG is a nice gold-backed stable coin to park profits.
I know this is going to seem like blasphamy in this subreddit, but you can always go like 60% BTC and then mix in “safe haven” uncorrelated, low volatility equities in: 20% SHY, 10% GLD, 5% FXF, 5% UUP. These are all good because BTC is high volatility. High volatility is a double-edged sword. Higher volatility = higher returns generally speaking. Like if BTC goes up 1000% sometimes next year goes -74%. Just food for thought.
It's a great idea. I have maybe 2% physical silver, 5/6% physical GLD, and 1/2% titanium, copper, carbon fiber.
I forgot, GLD also is good. I have like 2% in USO as an additional commodity, but its volatile.
One possible parallel is how the GLD etf in the United States made it easier for big investors to invest in gold. From when GLD was introduced in 2004, it went up 4x over the next 8 years with the biggest pullback being just 34% (i.e., not too volatile).
No. Im saying that people buying GLD think they are investing in physical, but aren’t. Im also saying that if you took the $46B out of GLD and those people still wanted to own gold, the spot price would be much higher.
You're assuming that people who invested in GLD would also invest in physical gold. Is that a reasonable assumption?
GLD opened in 2004 at around $45. It’s at $178 now.
You think GLD has 46B in gold deposits?
It will destroy bitcoins the way GLD has fucked gold. You wait and see
Let's look at this interesting point: The first **gold ETF**, the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD), was listed on the NYSE on November 15, **2004** The gold price appreciation was not too shabby afterwards. Sure, the gold price was also influenced by the global financial crisis in 2007/2008, but still 😉 Gold 30y price chart: https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html My final thoughts: Spot Bitcoin ETFs are free marketing, the BTC network effect will grow and this will lead to more demand => more demand with a fixed supply = BTC price will increase
I don't think you're considering the big picture for them. They don't necessarily profit from Bitcoin going up - they profit from people buying their investment vehicles, which they take a cut of. Most of their vehicles (50+%) are equities. Also, they have ulterior motives, since they're such a big proponent of ESG, etc. Here's a simplified example of how the BTC ETF it helps them: A big investor has $10M to invest, and must put all on the money in one asset. They have 3 options: A) $10M in equity ETF B) $10M in self-custody Bitcoin c) $10M in Bitcoin ETF not backed by real bitcoin Option A is the status quo, which is what they want to protect. Option B is very bad for them, because it means that the hedge fund is investing in an asset which they cannot profit from and have not control over. Option C is good for them, because they have averted option B, in a way that they can profit off the demand. However, the profit that the could make is insignificant compared to the trillions under management that they would lose if everyone would choose option B. So, their real motive is not to profit off of option C, their real motive is to make Option B unpalatable to large and medium investors through price suppression (siphoning demand from B) and other shenanigans. It's just my theory, but I'm familiar with what the big banks already do with precious metals (SLV and GLD), and I think this is what they're trying to do here. Only time will tell.
My guess is some sort of price suppression. I'm not sure how they will do it exactly, because they're supposed to hold the actual Bitcoin for this ETF. I suspect they'll try some sort of shenanigans where they claim to own the BTC, but are actually only borrowing it or partially backing it. By doing this, they will capture demand from large institutions (which will only be able to invest in their ETF) without creating real demand that affects the price. They already do this with SLV and GLD. I've been posting this theory on here a lot, but it usually gets downvoted. I just have a hard time believing they would do something to actively increase demand for Bitcoin. Blackrock work closely with the government and the Fed, and as we know they both want to see Bitcoin fail.
Here’s more: When the first US based gold ETF, GLD was launched in 2004, gold rallied by over 370% in the following 4 years. https://imgur.com/a/7Xoq6wQ
It does not ruin what BTC was intended for. Did GLD ruin what gold was intended for? The ETF is just an investment tool. That's it.
A large financial entity like GLD or SLD could potentially have some impact on Bitcoin's price discovery process, it is unlikely that they could achieve full control over the market or entirely hold down the price.
Lol, no you're just naive. Take a look at GLD and SLV. They will turn it into that.
I hate to break it to you all, but this is bearish for BTC. This opens the door to serious price suppression in the form of paper shares not backed by real BTC. Blackrock is a giant firm and won’t be held to the same standards as a smaller firm like Grayscale. If you don’t believe me, take a look at how GLD and SLV are run. They’re only partially backed by the real asset. As a result, they syphon off demand and purchase little to no real BTC.
Sadly, that’s just not how it works in reality. Blackrock will claim to own the underlying asset, but it will be anyone’s best guess how much they actually own. It will be more like a fractional reserve system where they cover 5% with BTC. The regulators have been captured by the big firms and will slap on the wrist, but not shut anything down. If you don’t believe me, take a look at how GLD and SLV are run. These ETF’s are only backed by a small amount of gold and silver and syphon off demand from the real asset. As a result, they are price suppression mechanisms.
In theory, they have to own the underlying asset. In reality, that’s just not how it works with precious metal ETF’s like GLD and SLV. These ETF’s work like a fractional reserve bank, and only hold a small fraction of the underlying asset to cover a few redemptions. As a result, all they’re selling is phony paper shares and syphoning off demand from the real asset. This could happen with BTC too, because the regulators are corrupt and will allow it for giant investment firms. No one’s going to sign into Blackrock’s bitcoin wallet to check their holdings.
You arent wrong. But its a trust that don't act like traditional trusts. It acts like an outlier. An example of an outlier is GLD. It invests in Spot (unlike the current BTC trusts that only does rolling futures), and as a result has minimal tracking error. Lastly, you can redeem from this trust unlike GBTC (which is also a trust). Bloomberg's ETF expert goes a step further to just treat it like an ETF for all thoughts and purposes : https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1669495679004147714 But I like calling this a Trust (In name only) , with the parenthesis included.
What gives? GLD is also a trust, but behaves (in trading) like ETF.
What would prevent an open-ended bitcoin ETF from leasing out some or all of its coins? It's the same problem as with GLD and SLV. The commodities underlying the fund get leased out and sold on the open market, so buying shares of the fund does not actually take any supply of the underlying off of the market and so does not actually put any upward pressure on the price.
Well, in the gold world, possession of physical coins and bars is the crypto equivalent of not your keys not your coins if you will. Sure, they say that paxg (for crypto) or IAU/GLD etc (for ETF’s) are backed by real gold…but in a SHTF scenario and everyone is going bust, will that gold really be there? Many have their doubts. I think for most people who want exposure, some combination of physical, paper/ETF and maybe crypto based gold works with the former for longer term hold and the latter 2 for trading or investment accounts. Standard for physical are 1 ounce coins (Canadian maple leafs, American gold eagle, SA krugerrand etc). But this is a crypto thread and good to know about products like paxg
I might use a gold etf for a short term trade on gold. You cant really day trade with physical gold after all. So even the crappy ETFs like SLV or GLD have a *small* place. They're only *completely* useless for anything exceeding a very short turn around.
If you really don't trust that your local currency isn't going to collapse, well if I were in that situation, I might do something like put 10% in a major stock index like the S&P500, SPY is a cheap and useful ETF for doing this. 10% in Bitcoin/Ethereum. 10% in gold, maybe silver. GLD is a useful ETF for gold exposure. Maybe 30% in a corporate euro or dollar denominated corporate bond fund with the investment objective of capital growth. Then maybe 40% in a euro / dollar denominated money market fund or a US treasuries bond fund. This assumes I'm mostly just trying to preserve the value of my money - not trying to take risks aggressively growing it. This is just something I might personally do for myself if I were living in a country where I legitimately thought my money was not safe in my local currency.
If you got payed in bitcoin since may 11th 2020 (last halving), you are up 25% even after the last “crypto winter.” SPY sp500 etf is 13% and GLD etf is 11%… so bitcoin did TWICE AS BETTER than the “established normal investments” but it’s a new monetary system and not an “investment.” Even after adjusting for inflation in something like the cost of rent etc, bitcoin did 12% increase and SPY sp500 etf did 0% increase (FLAT) and gold was slightly NEGATIVE… Owners equivalent rent increased 13% from 2020 to 2023… so if your money isn’t increasing in value by 13% then you are LOSING. Either that or you got a 13% pay raise. Getting payed in bitcoin did TWO TIMES BETTER THAN INFLATION (using owners equivalent rent as an example), and this was after the crypto scams and FTX and the “crypto winter.” I started my 401k in 2018 (vanguard growth VWUAX) and I it only increased by 10% for the last 5 years!!!! Bitcoin at the same time did 70% in the same period… so bitcoin did better than my 401k EVEN AFTER FACTORING THE 50% match! Who’s really gambling here? The bitcoin maximalists who is getting payed in bitcoin or the fiat maximalist who value’s a piece of paper that’s backed by DEBT and LEVERAGED TO THE MAX with fractional reserve bankings? #Getonzero fiat is far less risky if you have a payed off house and have zero debt of any type… I only think of my roth 401k as a thing to borrow from in case of a large emergency… my bitcoin IS THE VERY VERY VERY LAST THING I WOULD SELL. When the world realizes the properties of bitcoin, it will be far more risky to hold fiat long term compared to to today.
> Value that's constantly reduced through inflation Agreed, except if you hold your money in an interest-bearing account when interest rates exceed inflation (then, your deposit gains value due to interest payments). > If the modern USD had to compete with a gold backed USD, would most people pick money that loses value? Pick for what purpose? People already have access to is GLD, which is pegged to and fully backed by gold and can be easily traded in just about any investmwnt account. Converting to and from USD is usually free. Most people and companies choose to denominate contracts (e.g. rents, salaries, mortgages, annuities, insurance, etc.) using USD instead of GLD because its value is more predictable. > So we have debt payments, tax payments Agreed. > enforced monopoly on money What do you mean by this? Where are people not allowed to use other assets as a unit of account, medium of exchange, or store of value? > military industrial complex that enforces payments in petrodollars world wide Many countries trade oil in non-USD currencies. For example, EUR is often used, and the US military does not prevent this. Petrodollar recycling was about countries like Saudi Arabia investing their oil profits in US Treasuries (and other US investments/assets), i.e. selling us oil and then loaning us back ("recycling") the proceeds. IMO the goal here is to ensure an oil supply for us and our allies from friendly countries, e.g. to avoid what happened with the oil embargo under Carter. Countries have been doing stuff like this since at least the age of colonialism, probably earlier.
All of you guys in here are so wrong. A spot ETF is great for Bitcoin, and no it is not “paper Bitcoin” in the sense that no actual Bitcoin has to be bought by the ETF if GBTC were to convert successfully. Of course, it is “paper Bitcoin” in the sense that you would not be holding the BTC yourself if you bought the GBTC ETF, only a paper claim on that, and you would be allowing a qualified custodian to hold it for you within the ETF wrapper. But, here is what most of you are missing so badly. The GBTC spot ETF would force massive actual buying of Bitcoin off of spot exchanges which then have to be held within the ETF wrapper at a qualified custodian (Coinbase), all of which can be tracked and is audited both by regulators and by anyone who can follow the BTC blockchain well. This is huge for BTC adoption and great for price- which is why the gov’t doesn’t want it to happen- at least too soon. The current Bitcoin ETF in the US, BITO, is futures based and IS just “paper Bitcoin” in the sense that no actual underlying Bitcoin is purchased by the ETF, instead only futures contracts are held. So, this ETF (BITO) can trade and theoretically could attract massive amounts of investment dollars without driving up bitcoin’s spot price in the way a spot ETF for GBTC would. This is because futures prices always must trade off of “no arbitrage” relative to the spot price of the asset, and this is why many investment banks etc fought the introduction of a spot gold ETF (GLD) in the early 2000s (a futures based ETF won’t move the price of an asset up nearly as much as a spot ETF, if at all, because of no arbitrage pricing dynamics and because no supply impact on the physical asset exists in a cash settled futures based product or one settling in physical which is rolled over each month, or constantly on a rolling basis, as nearly all futures based ETFs including BITO are). After the spot ETF GLD was approved by the SEC and launched in the early 2000s gold went from like $300/oz to over $1,500/oz very quickly (by gold standards) and this is at a MUCH bigger starting market cap than Bitcoin (gold was at around $1.5T market cap in early 2000’s money vs. $450B market cap for Bitcoin in 2023 money). A spot Bitcoin ETF in the USA is the best thing in the world for your Bitcoin position. Literally, the best thing in the world for NGU technology to continue NGU, a lot. I appreciate you all as fellow bitcoiners, but with all due respect most of you have no idea what the hell you’re taking about at all when it comes to finance and products like ETFs, how derivatives work, etc.
That's the point though. Every major financial security is also papered, and people can both buy and sell more than existing quantities. It's not only on the sell side, so it shouldn't just be sell pressure. Not to mention, market makers arb physical and paper gold all the time. I used to market make gold options in another life and would routinely hedge callable gold with GLD. Nobody thinks that because you can trade paper oil, the physical should actually be trading at like $1200/barrel and its just paper manipulation keeping it down. But you hear this about gold and silver all the time. Whats the difference?
Depends. If you bought GLD 5 years ago compared to Bitcoin you’d be up about 35% compared to a negative return for Bitcoin.
Golds (GLD) done better than Bitcoin over the last 5 years. Just sayin.
If you want a gold IOU, you'd be better off just buying some USDs. They are no more connected to the value of gold than a GLD ETF or other. You're putting a LOT of trust that someone is going to give you another currency in exchange for your GLD or actual gold. Which is why I raise the question, IF you just buy straight up real gold, for years, as a diversification strategy, then who amongst us actually knows how to trade gold, an amount of any real value, like what you'd need to buy a house or car or pay for a surgery. Anything more than a few hundred dollars. Who you gonna trade with. And don't think pawn shop, because that guy isn't going to give you but about 50% the valuation, and only about $200 bucks, once, maybe twice.
My only point is I can have a self custody wallet with my coins. At the same time I can have a IRA I trade individual stocks and funds. If I wanted to capture a 500% gain btc has but not sell my coins I could. I can then take that profit and put it into something else and buy more when btc tanks again. People have done with with gold for decades. Have a stack of gold in the safe and buy and sell GLD or AIU in a brokerage when gold is up or down or just for a little extra liquidity. Idk why this idea is so taboo.
Yes I think they are a big thing in India. US has GLD but its backed. These sgbs arent. UAE also has their own version of these. These two countries I think are the biggest retail buyers of gold.
Well since crypto always outperforms the stock market, some tickers like the SPY, QQQ, VWA, EAF, and GLD are good for comparison, even if you’re not invested in them.
No... I would invest 500k, in equal portions, 250k each into the SLV and GLD SPDR's. Silver and Gold is STILL a store of value, versus Crypto and its recent fallout from FTX and their likes!😬
GBTC is the stock symbol for Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, an example of what is called a "closed-end fund". They claim to hold some number X of bitcoin, when you buy shares on the stock market you are buying a slice of their bitcoins. There are similar trusts for many physical commodities, for example GLD holds physical gold.
Honestly the market is down so much in Bitcoin it's hard for me to justify buying anything else right now. My approach is to DCA a chunk of paycheck into whatever is down in the marketplace, of a basket consisting of VTI/betterment, gold either GLD or safe deposit bars, and Bitcoin. Right now Bitcoin is tasty and nothing else is. When Bitcoin does its next bull run, there will be plenty of time to wish I'd bought more while plowing DCA funds into a dying stock market.
True - the SEC doesn't want to ve responsible for moon, but even if they did, it's not clear that it would be fully-backed - see GLD. Proof-of-Reserves might help.
A global depression is infact a vehicle for growth of assets like Bitcoin and Gold. Its just a matter of time until people realize US Government cannot keep servicing its debt infinitely and with stocks tanking there are really no ways to go. My advice invest in both BTC and GLD heavily like there is no tomorrow.
Contrarian view. I think it’s a reasonable choice to hold GBTC vs BTC. Same reasons one might own SLV or GLD vs physical. Not a good option for SHTF, but reasonable if you want to speculate on spot in the short/mid term. Also…although not looking great at the moment, if GBTC does eventually get approval to become and ETF, you should see a quick 35% jump in price to close the discount.
How so? BTC is down 65% over 1 year. GLD a (common gold etf) is down 7.7% over 1 year.
> I'm not buying it and leaving it on some exchange to be manipulated like it has for the past few decades How has GLD been manipulated? > Everyone should be doing the exact same thing with their bitcoin Why? For the vast majoirty of individual investors, their decision would have a negligible impact on the Bitcoin price. Shouldn't individual investors choose whatever method minimizes their risk and storage/insurance costs?
> do people honestly buy paper gold What do you mean by "paper gold"? People trade a variety of financial assets related to gold. > like a note from a bank saying you own "X" amount of gold? These are no longer widely used. Instead, people use brokerages and futures exchanges to trade digital representations of financial assets. > That to me is the stupidest shit I've ever heard of. Gold-backed digital assets like GLD (an ETF) are cheaper to trade, easier to access, and often less risky to store. For example, you can spend value from GLD while traveling; with physical gold, you'd have to carry the coins/bars with you and find a local gold dealer.
> this encourages Right, but that is different from force. > Legal tender laws also prevent free choice You can choose to denominate your contracts using alternative units of accounts. If you sign a USD-denominated contracts, then the legal system will force you to accept USD legal tender. > look what happened to three liberty dollar That didn't involve legal tender laws. > luckily we have some options they can't stop You can't pay taxes in Bitcoin though. There are plenty of alternative currencies and stores of value that "they" don't stop, including precious metals, foreign currencies, stocks, etc. You are even free to short USD against these. For example, some companies enter Gold-denominated contracts. It's about as easy to trade and store value in GLD (a digital asset fully backed by physical Gold) as it is to move USD into a savings account. > the currency should be defined and owned by society USD is defined and controlled by the US government, which is how society in the US currently governs itself. > through voluntary exchange in a free market We have this today except for taxes and money transmitter regulations (for which a main motivation is preventing tax evasion). Well, there are also regulations, licencing requirements, etc., but those don't have much to do with Fiat. > hopefully Bitcoin solves this Solves what -- that you have to denominate your taxes in USD? I'd much prefer to denominate my taxes in something predictable relative to my budget that won't moon on me. If taxes were in a unit of account that could moon, everyone would be forced to immediately hedge any taxed economic activity to avoid bankruptcy risk.
Ok, but I’m all seriousness, BTC tanks as much or more than tangible assets. Look at BTC yesterday during the bloodbath that happened after CPI. Even GLD dumped, but only 1.3% compared to BTC’s 9%+. This guy might be asking for bag holders.
> Fiat money is not "backed by" anything at all. It is. Fiat money represents liabilities, and these liabilities are backed by assets. It is because of these assets that the Fed is able to raise interest rates and burn money as needed to keep inflation on target. > Within the context of "money" the term "backed by" has a specific meaning, and in "gold backed" or "silver backed". I think you are referring to a peg here. USD used to be pegged to Gold, but there was much more USD than Gold -- the Gold wasn't sufficient to *back* all the USD. Instead, even on the Gold standard, most USD was backed by debts. Of course, a problem with this is that if Gold moons, the USD debtors go bankrupt and the backing debts disappear. By pegging USD to the CPI instead, debtors can have a better idea of what they will need to repay, businesses can better predict their future income in USD, consumers can better predict their future expenses in USD, etc. If you want a currency backed by Gold, you are more than welcome to store your wealth in GLD, which is cheap and easy to trade and fully backed by Gold.
> The central bankers and their buddies cannot "print" actual wealth Correct. > They can and do "print" fiat currency from thin air, backed by nothing, then use the newly created currency to purchase actual wealth Correct, except the actual wealth they purchase is what backs the money that was printed. The institution that "prints" the money ends up with a liability (the printed money) and an asset (the real wealth the purchased with the money). These institutions are required to have more assets than liabilities. You can do the same thing by going on modern brokerage (e.g. IBKR) and taking out a margin loan to buy assets like stocks. The stocks you end up buying are yours, but you need to keep them in the brokerage account to back your margin loan. This is also how GLD works: it's issuers create new GLD shares out of thin air and use them to buy physical Gold (which backs the new GLD shares). Is this theft from GLD holders? > In other words, the bankers get to steal from the rest of us. Only people who choose to hold USD, right? You are welcome to short USD against a wide variety of assets or stay neutral USD. > Now, if you or I "printed" currency and tried to spend it like the bankers, we'd get arrested and locked in cages for a long, long time People do this all the time with margin loans, HELOCs, etc. Do you understand that banks also must pay interest on the money they create, and that they are responsible for maintaining sufficient assets and liquidity to back the created money? > Because "printing" money is counterfeiting Are Bitcoin miners counterfeiting when they print Bitcoins? > it is still a form of theft Theft from whom? Are you are that there are an equal number of short USD positions and long USD positions? The Fed's job is to ensure USD behaves as advertised for both the shorts and longs (and everyone else who has entered USD-denominated contracts). > those criminal gangs/cartels cannot "print" any Bitcoin from thin air They also can't "print" a wide variety of other assets that you are free to save. USD is designed to be a unit of account suitable for denominating predictable debts. You aren't supposed to use it to store value: that is what *virtually all other financial assets* are for.
And you can bet on all money, USD, GBP, EUR, JPY, BTC, GLD... so your statement is silly. Yes you don't actually own any btc via gbtc but that's beside the point, as i said.
> You dont appear to understand how the USD rentseeks from most other nations via bank funding and debt issuance. How is bank funding and debt issuance "rent seeking"? Other nations choose to hold USD reserves, usually to stabilize their currencies in USD. This is because their businesses often borrow USD and enter other USD-denominated contracts. > largely via the issuance of debt out of thin air Debt is issued out of people's legally enforced promises to pay, their ability to pay, and their collateral (capital). > undermining the free market allocation of private savings-capital People can allocate their private savings wherever they want. For example, if you want to allocate savings to a company, you can easily buy that company's stocks and bonds. Companies issue both stocks and bonds: if you don't want to express an opinion about USD, you'd probably want to match the company's ratio of issued stocks to issued bonds. If you want to allocate savings to consumer debt, you can use platforms like LendingClub. If you want to allocate to real estate, you can use platforms like FundRise or REITs. If you want to allocate to Gold, you can buy physical gold or GLD, which is fully backed by physical gold and easy to trade. If people choose to use a savings account, they are choosing to allocate their savings to a commercial bank. The commercial bank then mainly allocates to base money, mortgages, and business debt, assuming some of the risk and keeping some of the expected return. You don't need to allocate to a savings account to use USD. For example, you can buy goods and services on a credit card which you pay off every month using another asset. If you need to hold USD in a checking account (or money transmitter account) to make ACH/Zelle/Venmo payments, you can offset this position by borrowing against just about any other asset (e.g. margin loans).
> Most vault held gold is imaginary. Citation needed. GLD is regularly audited. Where did you get the 700:1 number? Paper Gold typically refers to Gold futures and positions on Gold commodities exchanges. These are understood by all participants to not be backed by current physical Gold. > You cannot send an anonymous payment to another person in GLD So? I see we're going back the "evading tax and AML laws" use case. > a big worthless nothing It closely tracks the price of Gold and can be easily and cheaply traded. You can use it to help establish whatever Gold position you want. > Comparing that to an independent gold networks like egold and liberty reserve shows clear differences. Yeah, one was designed to circumvent AML regulations. > Its obvious why the latter were destroyed by the government Yeah, it was becoming a hotbed for fraud, scams, and money laundering. > having negative value How can USD have negative value? That means you'd be better off *throwing away* a dollar than keeping it. Do you really believe that? > If everyone was shorting USD by only spending it and never accepting it, then that would be an ideal end game for the USD: 0 value. Well, yeah, but interest rates would rise before that would happen. > you have to rely on people being idiots and continuing to value your currency They value *interest-bearing USD assets*, not USD itself (as an investment / store of value). The performance of interest-bearing USD assets depends on interest rates. Real interest rates are ultimately set by the market. You might think they are too low to justify holding USD assets, but the market doesn't. > You have to trick, lie What's the trick? What's the lie? > They can continue to accept it in trade, and spend it to purchase Exactly. > but once they no longer keep it in savings then it will start to lose value rapidly. No, interest rates will start to rise until the market again reaches equilibrium between savers/lenders and borrowers.
> Sure, but it's fully backed by Gold and can be freely and cheaply traded without ever going long USD. Its "fully backed" when paper/electrion gold is 700:1 vs actual gold. Most vault held gold is imaginary. But thats not the bad part; the gold, in addition to not being real, is only accessible on some highly regulated servers you cannot access. In general only big brokerages houses can even own the shares of the fake-gold ETF, and you only "own" it to the extent they allow, can only trade at the times they allow, at the prices they allow, etc. You cannot send an anonyous payment to another person in GLD, you cannot setup a lemonaid stand that only accepts GLD, its basically a big worthless nothing and cannot function as a competing currency in any way. Comparing that to an independent gold networks like egold and liberty reserve shows clear differences. You could send anonymous payments direct to individuals. You could accept grains of gold for lemonaid. You could trades 24/7 without being limited to stock market hours. No brokerage existed between you and the ETF provider, and no KYC was needed to make an account. Its obvious why the latter were destroyed by the government: The government does not tolerate competing currencies, and those were quite easy to kill. > Doesn't it make sense to compare BTC to all the other assets that you can store value in though which aren't USD though? If they have the properties I outlined above, those lacked by GLD. > What do you mean by "not valuing the dollar"? By correctly seeing it as having negative value. > Would you say that people who are short USD are "not valuing the dollar"? Depends on what kind of shorting. If you had the ability to create money by wiring numbers on a scrap of paper, you would be very keen to ensure your "formal-explorer-2718" bills retain value, despite the fact that you constantly and exclusively short them, and you would never long them by trading away real wealth for them. What is really valued in that case is "The ability to create money that other people will trade their wealth for", while you the issuer know that your bills have no other value to you. Many people who short the USD create just such a debt bubble. while they are shorting USD, they still depend on it having value to other idiots, so they can extract real wealth from them in exchange for newly minted USD. If everyone was shorting USD by only spending it and never accepting it, then that would be an ideal end game for the USD: 0 value. The main weakness of the USD, and any fiat, is that you have to rely on people being idiots and continuing to value your currency. Its not something you can force them to do; in fact attempting to force it only causes it to lose value faster. You have to trick, lie, and market the dollar to them. You have to prevent it from losing value too quickly or too obviously. Once people gain enough intelligence, they will see what its true nature is, like a tick or mosquito stealing their life's blood, and they will stop offering themselves up for it. And to do so, all they have to do is stop saving it. They can continue to accept it in trade, and spend it to purchase; but once they no longer keep it in savings then it will start to lose value rapidly. Bitcoin can win through perfectly voluntary means; the revolution can be quiet and peaceful and of huge benefit to all mankind. IMO, bitcoin is the key technology that will bring on the space age.
> It wasn't an excuse: they really weren't complying with money laundering laws. Money laundering laws are not possible to comply with, and they are always an excuse. With no evidence, no trial, and no other crime committed, and amount of money you have can be frozen or stolen from you extrajudicially. And you can be imprisoned and jails - now freshly broke so being also unable to afford a lawyer and now thus being assigned a government lawyer - meaning they control your entire trial from all side, guaranteeing a ulbright-like sentence. > GLD is an ETF, traded over legacy fiat infrastructure. its not an indepdent network. > means of production. you arent actually devloving into obsolete commie jargon are you? > What monopoly? Yes, copyright monopolies and government spending. > Yet no one is forced to save or store dollars for any meaningful length of time today! Yes! that is the key behind our hopes for bitcoin. Ultimately you cannot force people to value something. If the dollar is finally seen as something inferior and of low value (which it has always been) and there is a viable competitor (that hasnt been until recently) we can finally end the tyranny. Simply by not valuing the dollar, people can reclaim their sovereignty.