i would have assumed grayscale trading at below asset value was a sign main stream investors expected it to fall, is there anything backing up this thought?

Look at when the run up was after other halvings. Based on those cycle periods we're still about 6 months away

People seem to be getting confused about Grayscale.

Institutional investors and some retail used to buy GBTC shares as this was their only option to have exposure to bitcoin, hence there was a premium. There are now more cost effective ways for these users so they no longer purchase GBTC shares - no premium.

An arbitrage had existed where hedge funds would seek to pick up the premium, this worked for a couple of years so the amount of money piling in became very large. Because the premium has now evaporated current positions in this trade are trapped and losing money. The hedge funds run this trade delta neutral (they short an equivalent number of bitcoins) so their exiting the trade has no effect on the price of bitcoin - just the GBTC premium.

Real flows into and out of GBTC have been dwarfed by the arbitrage trade, so reading the flows gives very little information about the price of bitcoin.

But there were hundreds of thousands of BTC that were purchased and deposited into grayscale to take advantage of the premium. There was a premium because there was a lot of demand from people wanting to go long BTC. Now the premium is gone. So there will no longer be hundreds of thousands of BTC purchased and locked up this year.

So where are these big purchases that have been taking place for GBTC going to take place now? Or is that demand gone?

Big difference when less then half the supply is bought compared to over 100% of the supply.

Zoom out for a second. People have wild expectations.

Bitcoin is trading over 40k, and has held up remarkably well in the first equity sell off of the year.

It's up roughly 60% YTD (~400% 12mo), crushing most other investments out there.

You don't get to break all time highs every single day, the amount of negativity I see on twitter and here is delusional.

It seems if bitcoin doesn't break an all time high every week then it's over. Weird.

Maybe not delusional, what happened the last 5 times the pump logline broke?

> Why did this happen every past time
> Can the price hold stable while every coin is sitting on a 4x profit
> How much volume/usd would it take for the basis to move to 40k without a price increase

$1.9 trillion pump enabled

People instinctively understand that bitcoin is trash and basically a big chain letter apart from its illegal uses, so when it reaches a trillion dollars and then dumps 15% and 20% in hours, twice, the part of them that's not insane sees that as strongly confirmatory of their core instincts. It also disqualifies bitcoin as anything except a fringe speculation instrument; no one mainstream is storing value in something so that's such trash for storing value.

It dumps like that because of the ridiculous leverage ppl take on both sides. If bitcoin were subject to proper margin regs, these drop offs would stop. It's not big bagholders dumping on ppl, it's shorts with internal knowledge from exchanges slamming 100x leverage when they know leveraged longs have to fold.. of course that causes a waterfall

Average retail outside US is doing 20x leverage like its the only way to trade

Imagine if you could short ES like that, it would have 20% declines too

You keep repeating this thesis but it seems to be constantly weakening. What if I said it was monetary Marxism? A pool of money/participants voting to rebuild the entire mainstream financial system on top of bitcoin as they see it as corrupt, or because they want to beat insane real terms inflation as it looks to be falling apart? That seems far more accurate to me (or just a hedge against calamity for the more balanced participants perhaps). Currently the uses are mainly grey area/speculative but that also changes everyday also as bigger institutions buyin and more projects adopt/utilize.

Some price predictions would be more useful - tech stocks/equities in general are also looking shaky and bond yields rising which can certainly tank bitcoin short term too. Where/when do you see it all (and bitcoin especially) bottoming out currently?

Reminders about the Grayscale GBTC/ETHE situations:

-a lot of the historical flow is delta neutral, so the net effect of premium turning negative is that smart money no longer fleeces retail
-given management fees and illiquidity discount, the equilibrium price of GBTC should likely be s.t. premium is slightly negative
-a lot of the people who buy/sell Grayscale products are completely unaware of the premium or discount. This is evident if you look at their trusts that have been around for < 1 year. Right now their LTC product (LTCN) trades at a ~1400% premium, which means buyers are paying ~$2700/LTC (spot price ~$180). Clearly no sharp investor is buying those shares on market now. Keep that in mind that a lot of these same people are probably emotionally trading their GBTC shares.

I know this is the BTC thread, but why do you think they are buying so much LTC lately?

LTC has always been popular with retail, a lot like silver. Even though that narrative makes 0 sense for crypto, they cling to it. A large % of LTC supply is dead on coinbase (from accounts that don't even log in). If you look at the data from PayPal buys, LTC is an extremely overweight buy based on market cap compared to the other options (BTC/ETH/BCH). I remember checking before and it was ~1% of the marketcap of the PayPal 4, but 7% of the buy volume (haven't rechecked in a bit, but I reckon it's still very overweight).

In general they aren't buying *that much* LTC, the volumes for LTCN are not huge so it's easier to reach a 1400% premium there (and no one doing the arb has been able to sell yet because it hasn't been 1 year).

You noted in a previous post discount was -10% Thursday. Friday BTC price change was +1.88% (49,151/48,244), GBTC price change was 5.8% (43.8/41.4). You post above that Friday's discount was -15%. Can you explain how the discount goes up (in minus terms) if GBTC price change was 4% higher than BTC?

Lol.

TS think that the difference between trillions and millions isn’t significant.
1 million is only 1 million time smaller than 1 trillions , how can he be wrong to claim bitcoin is a bubble /Ponzi scheme .

To me there is nothing in this world I could give odds of 1 millions to 1 ,imagine 1 trillions , shrug .
Im humble enough to accepted i can be wrong one day in my life .

Ps: let’s say I claim something to be wrong , everyday of my life (100 years ) something that would equal to 1 trillion .
I would have to be right , everyday , for around 25 thousands life time to reach 1 trillion .
Being so sure of bitcoin being worthless , even reaching such a big number without creating any doubts , is astonishing....
Even god couldn’t have created better apostle than TS with such statistics confidence ....

But he knows cause his the greatest and smartest investor of all time .
Anyway, TS is great for the market of bitcoin , with that mindset he would short it confidently even if it would reach 50 trillions market cap .

I think one has to be a fool or perhaps have a huge ego to predict anything with 100% certainty in this game- or one could just be angry and bitter in the case of a bearish prediction. If one's negative forecasts are subsequently shown to have failed abysmally, yet they STILL continue to preach absolute authority on the subject, then my guess would be the latter. It baffles me how their mind works- how they can't comprehend that such a history disqualifies them for being taken seriously by anyone.

just because number go up doesnt mean bitcoin isnt still a speculative asset.


there is some number above 50k where there will be enough liquidity in bitcoin for it to become the primary global inflation hedge instrument. In which if that point is ever reached, i think bitcoin will actually become unvolatile and just trade like gold and move aorund +/- 40% for 10+ years.

The trick unfortunately for bears is that bitcoin is clearly trending towards being the inflation hedge tool/asset/instrument. This trend even if bitcoin goes into a massive bear market (>45% from top) will likely continue as there will be a huge amount of redistribution of coins to new holders that identify this trend.

i have a ts voice that i now read these in, makes them much more enjoyable

btw guys, you should stop complaining about him, being able to defend your thesis against his should be fundamental considering how much of the thread's net worth is likely tied up in crypto

Money added =/= 1:1 on market cap. There's about a 20x multiplier of effect on crypto markets as has been somewhat scientifically determined. This would amount to roughly 7b/week of added market cap which empirically makes sense if you think about the overall trends.

There are also a number of institutions that won't invest because 1 trillion market cap for an asset class is too low. Once it reaches ~10 trillion they'll be more interested.

I guess that's one or two more levels up the ponzi wave.

I hear you, but I think I hear something else.

Hong Kong software firm adds $40 MM BTC/ETH to its treasury (representing 10% of cash reserves) and seemingly the first company to incorporate ETH into its treasury policy. The CEO accumulated 10,000 BTC personally throughout 2018.

MAR 7, 2021: Software Firm Meitu Buys $22M of Ether, $17.9M Bitcoin for Its Treasury

MAY 4, 2018: Angel Investor Amassed 10,000 Bitcoins Amid 2018 Price Slump

CEO's and CFO's falling for ponzi waves left and right. Office PR here.