Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Trains.
Speaker 3: I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Belchiernis.
Speaker 2: There's been this wildly successful launch of Bitcoin ETFs this year.
Speaker 2: Eric and the industry just couldn't get enough. They're back
Speaker 2: for more, never enough with this. What's going on? What's
Speaker 2: going on?
Speaker 4: So they filed for Ethereum ETFs after filing for Bitcoin ETFs.
Speaker 4: Fast forward, after the Bitcoin ETFs launched, there was sort
Speaker 4: of a surprise approval from the SEC that the E
Speaker 4: three ETFs will be approved and they just launched about
Speaker 4: a week ago, and it's sort of, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: like the opening band following the headliner. So it was
Speaker 4: definitely interesting, but not quite the impact and import I
Speaker 4: think of Bitcoin, which is just way bigger across the board.
Speaker 4: But again, as an analyst who've been studying this stuff
Speaker 4: for twenty years, I really enjoy the horse race. It
Speaker 4: was another horse race where you had all of them
Speaker 4: lined up at once, you could like really get some
Speaker 4: interesting data compared to Bitcoin, compared to a regular launch,
Speaker 4: compared to each other. Also, Ether is different than Bitcoin,
Speaker 4: so there's definitely a lot to unpack. But you know,
Speaker 4: a little less intense than the Bitcoin launch.
Speaker 2: You know what I can't wait to talk about is
Speaker 2: you didn't think this was going to happen.
Speaker 4: I didn't. There's an ongoing debate on why it happened.
Speaker 4: Some people thought Gary Ginsler all along thought he would
Speaker 4: approve this, but didn't want to give any signals to
Speaker 4: the issuers because he didn't want to have a circus
Speaker 4: like the bitcoin, you know, approval process. On the flip side,
Speaker 4: some people thought that the politics had shifted, and Biden
Speaker 4: told Gensler, hey, let's lighten up on crypto a little.
Speaker 4: Let these out so we don't appeal appear to be
Speaker 4: that anti crypto. I don't know which is true. They
Speaker 4: both have decent evidence behind them, but we don't actually know.
Speaker 4: All we know is about a week before we had
Speaker 4: heard they're going to approve them, and they did.
Speaker 2: I'm also really excited to bring on Stacy Marie Ishmael,
Speaker 2: who's at an executive editor at Bloomberg News overseeing crypto,
Speaker 2: digital payments and cross assets. That also means she oldersees
Speaker 2: ETF coverage Peptinberg News. She's a longtime collaborator of mine
Speaker 2: in the newsroom. Looking forward to having her on her
Speaker 2: first episode of Trillions, this time on Trillions Ether ETFs
Speaker 2: Stace Marie Wecome on Trillians.
Speaker 1: Great to be here.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what is Ether?
Speaker 1: Just starting with the softball questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly what is Ether? How is it different than Bitcoin?
Speaker 1: I would say the distinguishing factor of Ether, which Ether
Speaker 1: fans may not like, is that it's significantly smaller than Bitcoin.
Speaker 2: I heard Eric called it small potatoes.
Speaker 1: I am not going to say that Ether are small potatoes.
Speaker 1: I am going to say that on the merits it
Speaker 1: is the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, and the gap
Speaker 1: between the largest and the second largest is very large.
Speaker 1: Right where the way that folks think about Ether is
Speaker 1: not necessarily that it's a Bitcoin replacement, but that it
Speaker 1: does very different things.
Speaker 2: And that's like, actually, how it's built and how it operates,
Speaker 2: everything about it is actually pretty distinct and different, pretty
Speaker 2: distinct then bitcoin? Can you can you explain some of that?
Speaker 1: I'd say, if you care about these distinctions, one of
Speaker 1: the very first ones that you'll point to is the
Speaker 1: way that bitcoin is created is something called proof of work.
Speaker 1: So a bunch of you know, energy intensive data centers
Speaker 1: switched on all day solving mathematical problems. You've heard the
Speaker 1: Shpiel Ether is maintained and kept in existence by a
Speaker 1: totally different methodology called proof of steak, which is still maths,
Speaker 1: still complex, but not something we necessarily need to go into.
Speaker 1: But the main thing that ether fans will point to
Speaker 1: is that the energy consumption of maintaining the Ether network
Speaker 1: is significantly less than that of bitcoin.
Speaker 2: If you want to go down a rabbit hole, you
Speaker 2: can go read a lot more about all of this.
Speaker 4: And let me jump in here too, because I'm a
Speaker 4: tourist of the planet crypto. I'm an ETF guy who basically, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've got an English to Crypto conversion dictionary that I've
Speaker 4: used a lot. It's worn out, basically, but I've read
Speaker 4: a couple of books, and one thing that struck me
Speaker 4: and I started to understand this whole thing a little more.
Speaker 4: Is bitcoins sort of a reaction to the dollar devaluing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It's like, hey, if you want to store value in
Speaker 4: something because the dollar loses valuation, and hey, government's print money.
Speaker 4: It's just it's very politically expedient to print money if
Speaker 4: you have a problem, and so hey, there's this thing
Speaker 4: that can help protect you from that. Ether is not
Speaker 4: about security or currency. It's like, let's do another Internet
Speaker 4: that is completely decentralized and like a couple tech companies
Speaker 4: can't control. So I do think some of the ethos
Speaker 4: is the same, that sort of populous like, hey, things
Speaker 4: are too centralized government, big tech. I do find that's
Speaker 4: one common thread between the two. They're very different, and
Speaker 4: the way they're pitched this different, and I think even
Speaker 4: the way they operate is very different.
Speaker 2: So why does the world need an ether ETF let
Speaker 2: alone mini ether ETF.
Speaker 4: Look, if you want to invest in all this action
Speaker 4: and creativity that's happening in this decentralized platform, ether is
Speaker 4: sort of the gasoline that runs it. So some people
Speaker 4: call digital oil. So again, if you want access that
Speaker 4: is frictiony to go do that yourself. ETFs kill all
Speaker 4: the friction. So that's why the world needs ETFs in general,
Speaker 4: is they're friction killers. That said, do you need ether?
Speaker 4: And that's the question people have to ask themselves personally.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of normal investors sixty forty they
Speaker 4: might buy the bitcoin ETF and be like, I'm good,
Speaker 4: sort of like you buy gold, you don't buy silver too.
Speaker 3: I think that's.
Speaker 4: Probably what's going to happen, and then there will be
Speaker 4: some people who are sold in the ether story, but
Speaker 4: I think that's going to be a minority of the
Speaker 4: sort of bigger crypto PI station. Y.
Speaker 2: What's the vibe inin like this year? Because it feels
Speaker 2: like this thing that was really the wild West has
Speaker 2: started to get tamed.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that no regulator would say that
Speaker 1: they think that crypto has been tamed and that everyone
Speaker 1: is now following all the rules that they would like
Speaker 1: them to follow. But certainly as it relates to the
Speaker 1: ETF portion of the crypto market, which is still relatively small. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the overall market capitalization, market value, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to use of the entire crypto market globally is about
Speaker 1: one point five trillion dollars, and we are not quite
Speaker 1: there in terms of the direct comparison with crypto based ETFs.
Speaker 1: But you do have this feeling that now, if you
Speaker 1: are a pension fund or some other highly regulated institutional investor,
Speaker 1: you can get access either to as Eric put it,
Speaker 1: like you know the bitcoin element of crypto, or you
Speaker 1: can say, well, I'm actually interested in this idea of
Speaker 1: a separate Internet, this computational underpilling, this programmable theory. I'll
Speaker 1: invest in ether or you just want to diversify away
Speaker 1: from bitcoin.
Speaker 4: When we think about investing through an ETF in this
Speaker 4: and you're now the Ether people, they're all in. That's
Speaker 4: why when I did refer to a small potatoes, I
Speaker 4: got attacked for like three weeks straight on Twitter. I
Speaker 4: still still remind me that was a little dismissive. I
Speaker 4: do think opening act a headliner is a little fair.
Speaker 4: But the idea of where do you put this in
Speaker 4: a portfolio outside of hardcore ether people who are all in,
Speaker 4: most people are going to like one percent and we're
Speaker 4: talking like and I think Bitcoin and Ether to me
Speaker 4: are part of a larger category formally known as hot sauce.
Speaker 4: So you know, thematic investing, single stock investing. This is
Speaker 4: stuff to just have a little fun with. Yeah, just
Speaker 4: in case stroll these people are right and this stuff
Speaker 4: goes to a million. I don't want to kick myself.
Speaker 4: I think that thought alone is going to power a
Speaker 4: lot of flows, even if they don't even totally understand it.
Speaker 4: People are looking to cure future fomo now and they
Speaker 4: have as portion of the portfolio that they set aside
Speaker 4: for that kind of stuff. But it's not I don't
Speaker 4: see like this taking over anybody's core.
Speaker 2: And you used to have to use a digital wallet
Speaker 2: and now you just use your insert whatever platform you want.
Speaker 4: But this is interesting because the hardcore people are like,
Speaker 4: you know, not your keys, not your coins, and they're like,
Speaker 4: do we really want Larry Fink to have all the bitcoin?
Speaker 4: And he doesn't really own it? But I see what
Speaker 4: they're saying because like, let's say the government wanted to
Speaker 4: confiscate all the bitcoin, Obviously Blackbrock's probably going to comply
Speaker 4: with that, and that does kind of kill the whole ethos.
Speaker 4: So the hardcore people have mixed feelings on this. Yes,
Speaker 4: number go up, but on the flip side, a lot
Speaker 4: more cryptos moving into the traditional finance hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think to that point about fomo, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're now having a conversation with your financial advisor,
Speaker 1: who maybe a year or two years ago might have
Speaker 1: just stared at you blankly if you said, how do
Speaker 1: I get exposure to crypto? There's more people who have
Speaker 1: a way in. Whether those folks ever end up owning
Speaker 1: a Coinbase wallet is a totally different question.
Speaker 4: And a lot of the crypto people they want the
Speaker 4: ETF to be like a gateway drug. And then they
Speaker 4: go set up a coinbase account. Then they go and
Speaker 4: get a hard wallet, cold cold wallet, and then they
Speaker 4: won restore in the backyard and like bury it. And
Speaker 4: these are the steps to becoming like the full the
Speaker 4: full crypto, ye person.
Speaker 2: But full crypto when you got it in the backyard.
Speaker 4: But one thing on advisors and people having conversation with advisors,
Speaker 4: I do think seeing Larry Fink right, he's the head
Speaker 4: of the largest asset manager, a lot of these advisors
Speaker 4: use other I shares products, Fidelity, They've been around since
Speaker 4: the eighties. I mean, these are massive trusted brands. I
Speaker 4: think that gives advisors some cover. Now it's almost like, well,
Speaker 4: it's now, it's mainstream, the SEC approved it, Larry Fink
Speaker 4: says it's okay. Before they didn't have any of that,
Speaker 4: let alone the friction of trying to get it, so
Speaker 4: that I think is underrated. Point is having that cover
Speaker 4: of like it's now in an I shares brand. You
Speaker 4: can't really get upset with me. I just put you
Speaker 4: in an I Shar's ETF. It's not like I went
Speaker 4: out and got this crazy thing. We found that advisors
Speaker 4: really gravitate towards big brand ETFs, I shares, Vanguard, State Street.
Speaker 4: They feel comfortable like you can't really fire them for that.
Speaker 4: It's like buying IBM in the eighties. So I just
Speaker 4: think a lot of cover has been given here for
Speaker 4: those wealth managers.
Speaker 2: Stays Marie. What was this horse race to get ETF
Speaker 2: approval like for Ether? I mean, we spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time talking about the Bitcoin one. There's all kinds
Speaker 2: of back and forth with the SEC. What was it
Speaker 2: like this time and who were the players that you
Speaker 2: all were watching?
Speaker 1: Well, I think to Eric's point, the main thing that
Speaker 1: we were keeping an eye on is if the roughly
Speaker 1: same universe of people who got into issuing these you know,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin ETFs would do so for Ether, and you know
Speaker 1: the filings landed and we're like, yep, pretty much the
Speaker 1: same people, right, because they already had the infrastructure, they
Speaker 1: had already gone through all of the hoops with the
Speaker 1: approval process the SEC. The first time they knew the
Speaker 1: forms they had to fill in, they knew that they
Speaker 1: would have to fill in those forms fifty more times
Speaker 1: and make revisions. Hey the lawyers again, pay the lawyers again,
Speaker 1: out to lawyers, always making money on every financial product.
Speaker 1: And I think that they also figured that they would
Speaker 1: probably have a customer base that had been primed by
Speaker 1: the existence of these Bitcoin ETFs to say, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in that, you might be also interested in
Speaker 1: this thing. To me, though, the only real surprise has
Speaker 1: been the absence of an immediate flurry of people trying
Speaker 1: to launch other types of token based ETFs, because you know,
Speaker 1: the infinite optimism of crypto is such that you see
Speaker 1: this other thing happen and you're like, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to do this. And really we've seen a couple of
Speaker 1: attempts at Solana, which is, you know, not even the
Speaker 1: third rank token but also but still a very popular one.
Speaker 1: But the prospects for that are much lower than they
Speaker 1: were for either Bitcoin or ether.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we wrote about the Solana ETF. We feel like
Speaker 4: it's just basically like a call option in case Trump
Speaker 4: wins White House, because let's say he pointed like a
Speaker 4: libertarian commissioner like hester Purse.
Speaker 3: Anything could happen if Harris wins or at that point
Speaker 3: we wrote it was bid him.
Speaker 4: But if the current administration kind of continues, and even
Speaker 4: if it's not Gensler and it's somebody Gensler two point zero,
Speaker 4: it's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: And a big thing that they've kind.
Speaker 4: Of like used legally is that there's no futures contracts
Speaker 4: currently and the only two coins they've approved have futures trading.
Speaker 4: It's a long story, but that was really behind the
Speaker 4: Greyscale lawsuit which sparked all this to begin with. So
Speaker 4: no future is no coin, but that's just the SEC's interpretation.
Speaker 4: Now you get a new SEC in there, anything's possible.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it'll prove it, but certainly now it's
Speaker 4: more of a I would say, the odds go up.
Speaker 2: Why did you originally think that this ether ETF moment
Speaker 2: wasn't going to happen?
Speaker 4: Because Genzler had come out and indirectly just thought it
Speaker 4: was a security And this is trying to get through
Speaker 4: a nineteen thirty three Act, which was for commodities. So
Speaker 4: if you approve this, you're sort of ipso facto saying
Speaker 4: it's a commodity. And I don't think I still don't
Speaker 4: think he thinks that he wasn't really clear that's one thing.
Speaker 4: The other was there was no grey scale lawsuit here.
Speaker 4: The gray scale lawsuit was only on bitcoin. Now you
Speaker 4: could say that the threat of a lawsuit would happen
Speaker 4: if they denied it, but there wasn't an actual lawsuit.
Speaker 4: So we just thought Gensler. And when the bitcointf got approved,
Speaker 4: Gensler's letter was pretty pretty much like I hate that
Speaker 4: I had to do this.
Speaker 3: Don't look for any other ones. He was pretty upset.
Speaker 4: You could tell he was feisty, and he felt he
Speaker 4: had to do it almost by like gunpoint, and I
Speaker 4: was like, all right, I just don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: So there was a variety of reasons that we were
Speaker 4: like pretty bearish on him.
Speaker 2: And what was the moment that you realized it was
Speaker 2: game on?
Speaker 4: Well, there was chatter ped the issuers and their lawyers
Speaker 4: starts saying, hey, we just got notified from the SEC.
Speaker 4: And this is like a week before in the bitcoin process,
Speaker 4: people were hearing back from the SEC on like hey,
Speaker 4: tweak this or answer this question.
Speaker 3: This is called comments. Ninety five days before approval.
Speaker 4: We were in day ten to like we were ten
Speaker 4: days left and I hadn't heard anything, So we're like,
Speaker 4: there's just no way anyway. With a week left, it
Speaker 4: was like what oh, So it was a shocker. And
Speaker 4: that's where the political side comes in because if you
Speaker 4: trace it, but a week before that, that's when Trump
Speaker 4: said I'm the crypto guy. If you want crypto, vote
Speaker 4: for me. And then there was a couple other little
Speaker 4: political things. Mark Cuban came out and said, hey, Democrats,
Speaker 4: you're you're gonna this issue is going to really hurt
Speaker 4: you more than you think. So even moderate Democrats were like, hey,
Speaker 4: please don't let them have this issue. And I can't
Speaker 4: say that those things contribute to I don't know, but
Speaker 4: certainly the circumstantial evidence does point to maybe a little
Speaker 4: bit of a political inspiration to change their tune on.
Speaker 3: This stays me.
Speaker 2: Where about a weekend at trading? What have we learned
Speaker 2: so far?
Speaker 1: People don't like fees is the main takeaway. If you
Speaker 1: look at what happened with the bitcoin ETFs, there was
Speaker 1: a higher priced premium offering in the markets, and then
Speaker 1: everybody else was like, what about zero percent? Do you
Speaker 1: like zero percent? And that very much has been the
Speaker 1: case with the ether ets and.
Speaker 2: The bitcoin ones. It's just like even before launched, they
Speaker 2: were in a price war. Yeah, all right, so what's
Speaker 2: that look like on the ether side?
Speaker 1: Very similar. We have, you know, folks saying it'll be
Speaker 1: zero percent for six months or until we get this
Speaker 1: amount of inflows. We have people saying, well, we're not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to cut our fees to zero, but we
Speaker 1: will launch a smaller version, a mini that has a
Speaker 1: more attractive fee structure. You know, you get kind of
Speaker 1: like this bargain basement feel to it, where people are like, well,
Speaker 1: how is this thing different from that thing? Mostly I
Speaker 1: trust these three big names. Mostly they're kind of around
Speaker 1: the same pricing. So I'm just gonna go with wherever
Speaker 1: I have an account as long as that's the cheapest
Speaker 1: option for me.
Speaker 4: This fee war is really intense. If you look around
Speaker 4: the world, an ether or bitcoinspot etf is one to
Speaker 4: two percent. So for these guys to come out and
Speaker 4: be like the base fee, forget the waiver, We'll go
Speaker 4: over that mint. The base fee is between fifteen and
Speaker 4: twenty five basis points, so we're talking five six times
Speaker 4: cheaper than the rest of the world or a hedge fund.
Speaker 4: This is why the US market sucks all the money
Speaker 4: and jol it's very powerful. Plus you add liquidity and
Speaker 4: this is irresistible stuff. And then the waivers, so all
Speaker 4: of them, but like two have a waiver. I'm waiting
Speaker 4: for free steak knives. Actually I'm holding out for a
Speaker 4: time X watch or something, and then I'm going to
Speaker 4: buy that one for a year, six months?
Speaker 2: Does it come like, do you get an ether steak
Speaker 2: knife and a bitcoin steak knife?
Speaker 3: Combine them? Yeah? Buy both?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and you get maybe or I don't know,
Speaker 4: a monthly subscription to a magazine.
Speaker 2: But walk through the way that these waivers work. We
Speaker 2: don't usually see this, but we did see them.
Speaker 4: With the bitcoin, you'd be like a waiver for six
Speaker 4: months or if the ETF hits two billion, whatever of
Speaker 4: those two things happen first. So they're just trying to
Speaker 4: get fish tho. Yeah, they're trying to get people.
Speaker 3: And here's why.
Speaker 4: When you're in a race against ten or nine other issuers,
Speaker 4: the first couple of weeks are crucial. We report on
Speaker 4: who's winning and losing. Everybody is and if you don't
Speaker 4: have any assets or volume to begin with, you start
Speaker 4: to have a stank on you, and advisors tend to
Speaker 4: gravitate towards around the ones that are liquid. It's like
Speaker 4: a party you want to go where people are not
Speaker 4: to the one no one's at right, so they know
Speaker 4: how important the first couple of weeks are to getting
Speaker 4: that like winning mojo going. And that's why I think
Speaker 4: they all did it because the.
Speaker 3: Coin based custodian fee.
Speaker 4: They all use coinbased except for like one or two
Speaker 4: is I heard between like nine and twelve basis points
Speaker 4: something like that, So they're only making like six to
Speaker 4: seven that is razor thin, and that's before any fee.
Speaker 4: This is starting gate stuff, so it is intense. I
Speaker 4: was a little shocked. I thought we'd be forty to
Speaker 4: sixty to start and then we'd you know, have fee
Speaker 4: wars over the next couple of years.
Speaker 3: But where I thought we'd be at after like two
Speaker 3: or three years and we're in one week?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well I guess that speaks to the power
Speaker 2: of what the ETF can do though, right, Like if
Speaker 2: you put this thing in a wrapper, it's going to
Speaker 2: drive down the price and everything's going to be you know,
Speaker 2: basically transparent.
Speaker 4: Well, the whole thing's very ironic because, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: especially black Rock and fidelity. They're both looking for Vanguard
Speaker 4: free zones in which to operate so they can make
Speaker 4: more money because they both have to continue to make money,
Speaker 4: especially Blackrock that it's a publicly traded stock, so they're
Speaker 4: like almost like an oil driller looking for new forms
Speaker 4: of oil. And they were like, Wow, this is something.
Speaker 3: We can do.
Speaker 4: But to go to those fees, it's almost as if
Speaker 4: Vanguard Vanguard's spirit was there even though they weren't. And
Speaker 4: so ironically there's not a ton of revenue here. But
Speaker 4: I think what they're thinking of is long term, let's
Speaker 4: get customers in. We'll bring them in here and then
Speaker 4: maybe something down the road we can charge more on.
Speaker 4: Let's just get the people, and this is something we
Speaker 4: can do that Vanguard clearly.
Speaker 3: Wants no part of a gale in other words, scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's walk through who the players are and maybe
Speaker 2: even what distinguishes their offerings. If it's clear yet Blackrock
Speaker 2: ran away with the bitcoin game, how are they looking
Speaker 2: so far?
Speaker 3: So they're leading.
Speaker 4: If we're doing a horse ray so flows after about
Speaker 4: a week Blackrock four hundred and forty million. It's about
Speaker 4: double number two, which is about a tie between bitwise
Speaker 4: and Fidelity bit wise punching above their weight. They're indie,
Speaker 4: but they're real into crypto. They're like hardcore crypto people.
Speaker 4: So for them to compete with Fidelity up right off
Speaker 4: the bat's pretty good. Gray scales minim as a one
Speaker 4: sixty four flows. That's a good sign for them. If
Speaker 4: they didn't get any money in that being the cheapest,
Speaker 4: that would tell us their brand is really tarnish. But
Speaker 4: I guess they're doing okay. And then Vanak, Franklin and
Speaker 4: Vesco are a little bringing up the rear a little bit.
Speaker 4: But even like taking Vesco fifteen million, that would be
Speaker 4: in like the top ten percent if you took all
Speaker 4: new launches over a course of a year. If you
Speaker 4: get fifteen million within the first week, that's like top.
Speaker 3: Five ten percent. Yeah, put it on the board.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's like one of the last ones on
Speaker 4: the list here. So these are really strong numbers. They
Speaker 4: just pale compared to Bitcoin. But if you remove Bitcoin
Speaker 4: volume wise, these were some of the best launches in
Speaker 4: the past year. In fact, the black Rock traded like
Speaker 4: two hundred and sixty million, that's double any of the
Speaker 4: launch of the past five fifteen.
Speaker 3: You got to move bitcoin.
Speaker 4: Though, put bitcoin back in. These all move down the list, right,
Speaker 4: But what distinguishes in them? Black Rock would say, you
Speaker 4: know brand, you trust us whatever?
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: Bitwise would be like, we're actually crypto people, We're not
Speaker 4: like opportunists like those Wall Street guys.
Speaker 1: Gray Scale would say that.
Speaker 3: Gray Scale would say that that's I think that's the two.
Speaker 2: Can It sounds so similar to the exact same thing
Speaker 2: we heard when the bitcoin launch has happened, right, It's
Speaker 2: like us are them? Right? What else jumps out to you?
Speaker 2: Taysom Marie about who's in this mix so far and
Speaker 2: how they're attempting to distinguish themselves.
Speaker 1: To Eric's point, it's really the do you want crypto
Speaker 1: native or do you want like trad fi full service?
Speaker 1: And that is very much, you know, to your point
Speaker 1: about how is the market changing? That's kind of where
Speaker 1: we're going much more broadly, right. It's the folks who
Speaker 1: are like, the path forward is how close to trad
Speaker 1: fight can we get? And then there are folks who
Speaker 1: are like how far away from them those people can
Speaker 1: we be? And I will be really interested to see
Speaker 1: whether the expectation that ETFs bring in people to crypto
Speaker 1: who weren't in crypto before. There's another version of that,
Speaker 1: which is ETFs bringing people to traditional financial products who
Speaker 1: weren't in those products before because they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: want everything to do with crypto. Previously I didn't care
Speaker 1: at all about ETFs, but you know, let me add
Speaker 1: this to my wallet buried in my backyard or in
Speaker 1: my air gapter room or whatever portfolio.
Speaker 4: Well, I was speaking to somebody at that event in France,
Speaker 4: all crypto people. I was again like, I feel like
Speaker 4: it turists, and one person was saying, and this is
Speaker 4: I won't say who it is, but they're actually really hardcore.
Speaker 4: But they're like in my four to one K and
Speaker 4: these other there's certain accounts I cannot hold a cold wallet.
Speaker 3: So even some of the hardcore.
Speaker 4: People, I have some ETF exposure because it fits in
Speaker 4: the plumbing exactly of everything, whereas a cold wallet is
Speaker 4: really totally outside the system.
Speaker 3: I think. One thing also is messaging.
Speaker 4: You know you talk about where the crypto people bit
Speaker 4: wise has this commercial ad series. It's like remember the
Speaker 4: Mac guyack in the day, Justin Long was paired against
Speaker 4: that dork and it was like Mac versus PC, which
Speaker 4: is really.
Speaker 2: John Hodgman was the dork. I think, yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 4: Was really Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates. Let's be like
Speaker 4: but anyway, they did that for the Ether rollout. So
Speaker 4: there's the Ether guy who's like this sort of regular
Speaker 4: cool looking dude or whatever. And then there's like mister
Speaker 4: wall Street and like he only trades like not, you know,
Speaker 4: nine point thirty to four every day, whereas Ether it's
Speaker 4: they have a couple of sketches, pretty good. Matt Hogan
Speaker 4: of Bitwise says this, if you own the cues and
Speaker 4: you don't own eth, you're missing part of the technology sector.
Speaker 4: So that's a pretty strong pitch Blackrock. They say Bitcoin's
Speaker 4: appeal is in it's scarcity. Ether's appeal is in its utility.
Speaker 4: You could think of Ether as a global platform for
Speaker 4: applications that run without decentralized intermediaries. And Blackrocks messaging and
Speaker 4: Jay Jacobs, who's just perfected that some people even think
Speaker 4: he's AI. He's that good. It's like they speak fluent
Speaker 4: boomer you know what I mean. So they've taken crypto
Speaker 4: and converted into boomeries perfectly. So if you want to
Speaker 4: just go dig around Black Rock's website, and you'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: this seems legit.
Speaker 1: Are you outsting yourself as a boomer?
Speaker 4: They call me a boomer's next technically, but compare to
Speaker 4: crypto people, I'm definitely a boomer.
Speaker 2: Okay, So looking ahead, how many more crypto ETFs are
Speaker 2: we going to see?
Speaker 1: I think on top of the existing products, you know
Speaker 1: people have already come out with ooh, let's add leverage.
Speaker 1: There's there's a bunch of prospectuses without let's go short,
Speaker 1: so let's go double long, let's combine some things. Just
Speaker 1: as a reminder, there's a lot of other different kinds
Speaker 1: of crypto ETFs. Theyre ETFs comprised of like publicly traded
Speaker 1: mining stocks, et cetera. But the biggest thing that will
Speaker 1: determine what's next is who's in the White House in November,
Speaker 1: because that the regulatory environment. To Eric's points, who is
Speaker 1: who is going to be the SEC chair, what is
Speaker 1: going to be the approach of the SEC see and
Speaker 1: the regulator's overall is the main thing that everyone in
Speaker 1: the market is waiting to see.
Speaker 4: Eric, assuming the White House that is the same, not much,
Speaker 4: I think to Stacy's point, it's gonna be a lot
Speaker 4: of spaghetti being thrown the wall around ether and bitcoin
Speaker 4: like you know, long ether short bitcoin, ether plus bitcoin,
Speaker 4: ether plus bitcoin equal.
Speaker 3: Weighted market cap weighted covered call.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's basically gonna be like all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 4: and I'm telling you one or two of these will
Speaker 4: be a huge hitule I've seen it. So they're gonna
Speaker 4: try everything and anything. Because the assets in the collective
Speaker 4: unit is already something like seventy two billion.
Speaker 3: That's a good chunk of change. Remember ESG they threw.
Speaker 4: All kinds of products out that was only one hundred billion,
Speaker 4: so we're already close to where that was, so I
Speaker 4: kind of get the product rush.
Speaker 3: This is what the ETF industry does. A lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff will just.
Speaker 4: Be roadkill eventually, but a couple of these will make
Speaker 4: it and serve a purpose, and you know, we'll see,
Speaker 4: but I don't think again the White House would have
Speaker 4: to change.
Speaker 3: Then we can talk about other.
Speaker 2: Co Who do you think wins the ether race? When
Speaker 2: will we note what the finish line looks like?
Speaker 4: We predicted black Rock and Fidelity is favorite simply because
Speaker 4: the bitcoin race. Ibit is the GLD of bitcoin. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's a done deal. It's not just the assets,
Speaker 4: it's it's the volume.
Speaker 3: And it took like what six weeks for that didn't
Speaker 3: take long.
Speaker 4: The volume is also underrated. Whoever gets the volume gets
Speaker 4: the institutions. Largely speaking, institutions love liquidity. It's the one
Speaker 4: thing that they get everything in the world for free
Speaker 4: because they have a lot of money. But what the
Speaker 4: one thing they can't get from an asset manager is
Speaker 4: is liquidity. And certain ETFs have that liquidity. That's why
Speaker 4: they like SPY and GLD, even if they're a little
Speaker 4: more expensive. So I bit is that I think eth which,
Speaker 4: by the way, this is the first ticker that makes
Speaker 4: you speak like A with a northern acct eth anyway,
Speaker 4: I've that's a first, but ETHA is probably going to
Speaker 4: be the GLD of ether. I would assume that said
Speaker 4: everybody can eat here. Some of these at the bottom
Speaker 4: are legit, decent hits for a regular ETF.
Speaker 2: And what are those tickers like?
Speaker 4: For example, c eth is twenty one shares q eth
Speaker 4: is in Vesco. On the bitcoin front, I think BTCW
Speaker 4: is the wisdom tree, So I think that one's the
Speaker 4: last one of the bitcoin and I think it's over
Speaker 4: one hundred million already, which again, if if any new
Speaker 4: ETF came out at one hundred million in seven months,
Speaker 4: you'd be like, that's a hit. So they're all gonna
Speaker 4: make it. I think now once we get to these
Speaker 4: crazy spaghetti at the Wall ones, some of those will not.
Speaker 4: But I think the core ones here are are all
Speaker 4: gonna survive long term. But I think you gotta go
Speaker 4: with black Rocks probably be in the the winner if
Speaker 4: there was one.
Speaker 2: Okay, Stace Marie, one final question, since it's your first
Speaker 2: time on the botto, what is your favorite ETF ticker.
Speaker 3: Spy?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Because when I was a kid, I was super into
Speaker 1: like Matilda and you know, anything just like espionage a jacent.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not a spy now, but I know that's
Speaker 1: something a spy I would say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I love that. I think that's the first
Speaker 2: time anybody's actually just said, like, elephant in the room,
Speaker 2: the biggest one is the one I'm gonna talk about.
Speaker 1: It's a clever ticker.
Speaker 4: I think the only the spy kids. I think one
Speaker 4: of them might have used it, but that was it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: spies usually maybe most people pick like some of the
Speaker 4: more crazy ones.
Speaker 3: But that's a good that's a good.
Speaker 2: One say to me. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 2: on trance. Thank you