Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I Heart podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm Bodanna Hirick in today for Stacy Marie Ishmael.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday in November six m h. In October, it
Speaker 1: became possible for US investors to via bitcoin linked exchange
Speaker 1: traded fund, also known as an e t F for
Speaker 1: the very first time. Folks in other countries, including Canada,
Speaker 1: had been able to access this kind of product for
Speaker 1: a while, and the US was finally catching up. How
Speaker 1: that turned out. My colleagues Voldanna Harrick and Katie Greifeld,
Speaker 1: who recorded this episode before FDx filed for bankruptcy, explain
Speaker 1: why so many people thought this launch would mark the
Speaker 1: beginning of a bull market in bitcoin, and now over
Speaker 1: to my colleagues. Around this time last year, the very
Speaker 1: first bitcoin linked exchange traded fund debut, the pro Shares
Speaker 1: Bitcoin e t F, which trades under the ticker b
Speaker 1: I t O. The launch marked a milestone for the
Speaker 1: digital assets industry. It opened up the opportunity for more
Speaker 1: mainstream investors to dip their toes into cryptocurrencies. The et
Speaker 1: F had a stellar start. It was the second most
Speaker 1: heavily traded fund on record, and it gathered more than
Speaker 1: one billion dollars in ousets in record time. And back
Speaker 1: then bitcoin was trading it around sixty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a coin, and retail investing in crypto was booming. But
Speaker 1: in hindsight, the timing was a little bit unfortunate. Just
Speaker 1: two months after its debut, Bitcoin started to crash, and
Speaker 1: soon after that a collapse of crypto hedge funds and
Speaker 1: stable coins helped bring its value down to twenty tho
Speaker 1: dollars a coin. Joining me now is Bloomberg reporter Katie
Speaker 1: gar felt. Biddo was the top Biddo. Whether it caused
Speaker 1: the top is a different story, but it pretty much
Speaker 1: marked the top back by popular demand is Katie Greifeld,
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg reporter and one of my teammates. Katie, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. It is a joy to be here.
Speaker 1: I know that the popular demand was just you, but
Speaker 1: I appreciate it nonetheless. No, actually, you and I got
Speaker 1: some tweets. We got one tweet how dynamic we are together?
Speaker 1: That it was one tweet and it was you, But
Speaker 1: it was not How sad would that beat? Okay? So
Speaker 1: I want I don't want to give us too much
Speaker 1: like patting on the back too much kudos go on,
Speaker 1: but I have to go on. You and I actually
Speaker 1: were the reporters who broke the story about the biddo
Speaker 1: launch last year. It was in October, So I want
Speaker 1: you to think back to that time, set the scene
Speaker 1: for us. What was the excitement like around crypto in general,
Speaker 1: and then also about this idea that we were going
Speaker 1: to have this Bitcoin futures e t F as asset manager.
Speaker 1: Pro Shares is poised to launch the first Bitcoin futures
Speaker 1: e t F battle trade under the stambole b i
Speaker 1: t O. It will invest primarily in bitcoin futures contracts,
Speaker 1: not it directly in bitcoin. Because halcyon days of October,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of excitement around even though it
Speaker 1: was not what the industry, both the crypto industry and
Speaker 1: the e t F industry really wanted. The Holy grill.
Speaker 1: There is a spot bitcoin e t F, but this
Speaker 1: was the debut of the futures backed bitcoin e t F.
Speaker 1: Pro Shares was first of the punch there. They launched
Speaker 1: about a year ago and there was just a lot
Speaker 1: of excitement. Sort of the bull narrative was that this
Speaker 1: is going to introduce so many new investors to the
Speaker 1: space because you haven't seen a strung ture like this
Speaker 1: in the US before the launch of the first bitcoin
Speaker 1: et f is the latest sign of crypto becoming even
Speaker 1: more mainstream than it already is. So does that mean
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time before everyone has some
Speaker 1: digital assets in their wallet? You do have spot bitcoin
Speaker 1: ETFs in Canada, in Europe. You don't have anything like
Speaker 1: that in the US. And again, it wasn't the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, but there was a lot of optimism nonetheless,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it panned out. At least day
Speaker 1: of week, of month of I think this was one
Speaker 1: of the best e t F debuts on record in
Speaker 1: terms of first day volume, how quickly it got to
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in a u M. But that feels
Speaker 1: like a long time ago, and then the excitement around
Speaker 1: that also just before we get it does feel like
Speaker 1: a long time ago, because we want to talk about
Speaker 1: what's going on in the present as well. But the
Speaker 1: excitement around the launch also helped propel bitcoin to all
Speaker 1: time highs and a bunch of other tokens all time highs. Right,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, big time. I mean, I think Bitcoin's all
Speaker 1: time hunt was a breath below six and one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars happened at the same time as you saw this launch,
Speaker 1: So it was just a time of real optimism in
Speaker 1: the stock market too. It felt like risk assets of
Speaker 1: every stripe were rallying all at once and Bitcoin was
Speaker 1: leading the charge. There would then lead the charge to
Speaker 1: the downside as well. But again, what a fun time
Speaker 1: we had. It was God, So can you set the
Speaker 1: scene for us what's with in terms of what's going
Speaker 1: on today and how the mood music has shifted, and
Speaker 1: especially the crypto crash that we saw earlier in the year,
Speaker 1: and then we had a big downturn over the summer.
Speaker 1: Then we had sort of range bound trading for bitcoin
Speaker 1: and other tokens, and then this new crash around worries
Speaker 1: with different um crypto ex changes. So Biddo was the
Speaker 1: top Biddo. Whether it caused the top is a different story,
Speaker 1: but it pretty much marked the top and it's been
Speaker 1: really rocky sledding since then. To to your point, Uh,
Speaker 1: we actually wrote another great story that yeah, the FED tightening,
Speaker 1: it was going to basically prove whether or not it
Speaker 1: was all a bubble because as a mainstream asset class,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about when the FED was tightening,
Speaker 1: when it's tightening cycle stopped back in, bitcoin was a
Speaker 1: much less mature asset class in terms of the scale,
Speaker 1: the different players involved, its reach. So it's been really
Speaker 1: rocky since then. Mostly I think the macro backdrop most
Speaker 1: people would agree, but there's been a lot of pain
Speaker 1: at at sort of the corporate level in the crypto world.
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about what happened with Tarot, you
Speaker 1: think about what happened with algorithmic stable coins. So just
Speaker 1: in one year from the launch of the futures Bitcoin
Speaker 1: et F, the setup is dramatically different. Now up next
Speaker 1: more with Bloomberg reporter Katie Greifeld on the future of
Speaker 1: bitcoin ETFs. We'll be right back. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I love to talk about is how excited crypto
Speaker 1: investors get about announcements like this one, or any other
Speaker 1: announcement or anything new within the space that sort of
Speaker 1: helps propel prices upward. And what's happened with this fund
Speaker 1: and and a few other futures funds is that those
Speaker 1: investors have stayed excited and they've been adding money to
Speaker 1: these e t f s, right, So these ETFs have
Speaker 1: actually these funds have seen inflows even as prices have
Speaker 1: been crashing. That's the thing. I mean, you haven't seen
Speaker 1: a mass exodus necessarily from the likes of Biddoh, even
Speaker 1: though it's one of the worst performing non leveraged e
Speaker 1: t F s around. Would be hard to find a
Speaker 1: fund that's doing worse than it. But the stickiness of
Speaker 1: the inflows that have come in, and we ran some
Speaker 1: sophisticated analysis on the blue numinal well cumulative inflows into
Speaker 1: this product even one point eight billion dollars, and we're
Speaker 1: still talking about outflows, but none to the extent that
Speaker 1: we've seen in terms of money coming in. So people
Speaker 1: are hanging on. And it's also the case with some
Speaker 1: of the other bitcoin futures et f that have launched
Speaker 1: in the US, but they're much much smaller because in
Speaker 1: the e t F space, I mean, you live and
Speaker 1: die by that first mover advantage. You read my mind.
Speaker 1: This was my next question, wavelengths bouncing the stud Can
Speaker 1: the people feel it? Can the people at home feel it?
Speaker 1: So tell us about first move advantage? What is it
Speaker 1: in the e t F world? How important is it
Speaker 1: and how did it help differentiate Biddle from some of
Speaker 1: its competitors. So I said that pro Shares was first
Speaker 1: to the punch here, and they were. You saw this
Speaker 1: real arms race of e t F fishuers trying to
Speaker 1: get their applications at the door of the SEC. Pro
Speaker 1: Shares was able to launch their product first, by far
Speaker 1: the biggest. I still believe that they have over six
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars in assets. The number may change, but uh,
Speaker 1: that's because they were first out the door. If you
Speaker 1: think about the likes of the Valkyrie bitcoin strategy e
Speaker 1: t F, it's the same thing virtually. It's also tracking
Speaker 1: bitcoin futures. It was just a day or two later.
Speaker 1: I believe twenty million dollars in match different or somewhere
Speaker 1: around there. Yeah, so the first mover advantage. And it's
Speaker 1: not just crypto, I mean, this is a feature of
Speaker 1: the e t F market. The biggest oldest et F
Speaker 1: out there is State Street Spy, which is just the
Speaker 1: SMP five hundred. Uh dude too, and it's really become
Speaker 1: a fixture of financial markets, even though it's relatively expensive.
Speaker 1: It costs nine basis points oh my gosh, which again
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like that much. But then you compare it
Speaker 1: to similar front funds from black Rock, from Vanguard that
Speaker 1: costs three basis points and still Spy is the biggest
Speaker 1: just because it's the oldest. Yeah, I love this. I
Speaker 1: love these topics. I love the E t F world
Speaker 1: and crypto. Okay, one big, big, this is the biggest
Speaker 1: question out there. I'm really nervous. I know you should be. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: drum maybe we can get a drum roll from the producers.
Speaker 1: But I didn't post. You mentioned that we don't have
Speaker 1: a bitcoin spotty TF. We don't. When are we getting one?
Speaker 1: You know, it just feels like it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: a SEC under the purview of Gary Gensler, that it's
Speaker 1: at the top of the priority list or anywhere near
Speaker 1: the top. Even though the Bitcoin Futures e t F,
Speaker 1: even though it's down a lot since launched, it's performed
Speaker 1: perfectly fine, and the structure exactly we talked about the
Speaker 1: role costs. I haven't been anywhere close to what's feared.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen really any market structure issues come of
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin Futures at e t F. But it just
Speaker 1: feels there's nothing, nothing that Gary Gensler has said that
Speaker 1: would suggest that the SEC stands is going to budge
Speaker 1: on spot bitcoin e TF. We had a big moment
Speaker 1: for again both industries, both e t F n crypto
Speaker 1: with gray scales E t F conversion application, the gray
Speaker 1: Scale Bitcoin trust, which isn't just not a exactly they
Speaker 1: would like it to be in e t F. They
Speaker 1: applied with the SEC to convert it into an e
Speaker 1: t F. The SEC denied that application in July. Gray
Speaker 1: Scale is now currently suing the SEC. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of the thing to watch in this timeline of when
Speaker 1: we might get spot bitcoin et F approval. But again
Speaker 1: there's just been nothing to suggest that Gary Gensler has
Speaker 1: budget on this. It's kind of amazing. FED speak is
Speaker 1: a thing. Watching the FED is a thing watching Jerome
Speaker 1: pal every listening to the speakers right exactly. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it feels like the et F and the crypto industry
Speaker 1: do that as well for Gary Gensler and doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like the message at the top has changed at all.
Speaker 1: He did have a somewhat snippy Halloween oh sweet about bitcoin, right,
Speaker 1: congratulating bitcoin and turning four team, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: He called it the Crypto white Paper, though not the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin white paper, and that got a lot of them's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he knows what he's doing. Yeah, don't quote me on that. No,
Speaker 1: I won't. But you and I are giving the people
Speaker 1: what they want, and maybe gay Againstler will one day
Speaker 1: give the crypto people what they want. I would imagine
Speaker 1: he's listening. Hello, Gary, Well, anyway, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us today. I'm so happy you came back.
Speaker 1: This was thrilling for me too. You can find more
Speaker 1: of our reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal and on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com, and for more, be sure to check out
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Speaker 1: producers are Ty Butler. And Moses on them. Desta wonder
Speaker 1: At is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidron. I'm
Speaker 1: Stacy Marie schmal We'll be back tomorrow.