Spot Bitcoin ETF Marketing Kicks Off With Bitwise Ad

As a deadline to approve a spot bitcoin ETF nears, the marketing war has begun as issuers seek to win a share of a market some experts say will be worth billions of dollars.

On Monday, Bitwise Asset Management kicked off the race to market to potential investors by showing its first video advertisement on X (formerly Twitter) featuring Jonathan Goldsmith, who tells the audience, “You know what’s interesting these days, Bitcoin.”

The dialogue is a reference to Goldsmith’s notable role as the “Most Interesting Man in the World” in commercials for Dos Equis beer.

About a dozen firms have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot bitcoin fund, which would be the first ETF to offer investors exposure to physically backed bitcoin, as opposed to bitcoin futures contracts.

Issuers suspect that the SEC will approve multiple firms at once to avoid giving one firm a first- mover advantage. That means the ETF market for the first time will see nearly identical exchange-traded funds for a novel asset class hitting the market at the same time.

The SEC regulates based on merit and/or disclosure. If it approves a spot bitcoin ETF to be traded on the NYSE it will have failed on both accounts. There is no merit to allowing a non-asset (it is only a number which is backed by nothing) to be sold to investors. We might as well start selling shades of colors on exchange next. As to disclosure, how can you list and trade something without first disclosing who created it and why? Who maintains it? If this turns out to be a manipulated security, as one could reasonably expect, the sponsors should be liable for all losses because of knowingly faulty disclosure. They are not disclosing the true nature and provenance of the product. This is all about the managers ability to sell crap to a wider array of investors for a fee. This is no investment. Nobody in this case is lending money through equity or debt to help a company build a business. This is a pyramid Ponzi scheme and they haven't even disclosed its true founding story.

As with any asset, you need to understand what it does, what it doesn’t do, and who controls it. For instance, who controls gold? Iron?

And ETF will give some semblance of “control.”

Currently very few people own bitcoin. I cannot imagine millions deciding the morning after an SEC approval that they absolutely MUST get in on it. Honestly, I expect a bump up in the price, followed by another short crash as the short term holders bail out.

Bitcoin has returned pretty decent annualized growth over the past ten years. It might just be “a number”, but that number seems to just keep growing. My bank account thanks you for that.

As I write this, Bitcoin is having an excellent day.

Up 4.6%.

$44,100.

Every trade is jumping a couple hundred dollars, up or down.

I do not really understand it, myself.

It should make a good inflation or foreign currency hedge because of its finite quantity - just 22 million Bitcoins, as I recall.

The intensive computer calculations necessary to mine Bitcoins make no sense to me, and the Public Ledger makes no sense at all.

If you have a public trading market, you already have a Public Ledger, with millisecond calculations. If someone wants to buy or sell Bitcoins privately, so what?

Finally, if each Bitcoin had a permanent unique serial number, they would be impossible to steal, and impossible to lose.

Frankly, as it stands today, Bitcoin has significant value only to tax criminals, to money launderers, and to speculators.

The world would be better off from money laundering, and black market crap if they recalled and replaced $100 bills. A very, very, very small part of these activities involve bitcoin. The reason you hear about them is that it fills a narrative the government and the banks want you to believe.

Jamie Dimon was bitching about bitcoin a few weeks ago. Yet, no one seems to recall his firm was fined $14 billion for manipulating the silver market. The banks do not want bitcoin because they do not own a piece of it—and its use means the loss of billions in transaction fees that will not go them.

Yet...Blackrock, Fidelity, and a whole cast of major firms want in on their ETF possibilities.

The public ledger is the technology behind this that makes it unique. It allows every transaction to be tracked, in public. Forever.

Imagine a government running on a block chain. Public auditing would happen in an instant. Want to know where the pentagon is spending money? It’s there for everyone to see. Its use in money laundering or tax evasion is humorous. I was under an adult from the IRS for almost four years because of bitcoin transactions from 2013 to 2017. Trust me...they can identify every single transaction and where it went.

In a lot of places in the world, banking is reserved for the top 10% of the population. Being able to transact on a cell phone without having to deal with the fees of the banking system will open up new markets to literally billions of unbanked folk.

And no, its not going to go away because Jamie Dimon or Warren Buffet don’t like it.

ETFs will cut down on the volatility because the derivative markets will play with it—just as they do gold and silver.

The part I DO agree with you on is the speculative nature of bitcoin. I started buying it (not investing, buying) in 2013. The whipsaw nature of the adoption cycle has been brutal. I bought my first 5 @$110 each. The Compound Annual Growth Rate is somewhere in the 70% range. But the ups and downs per 4 year cycle are easily 50% either way. That will slow down with ETF adoption.

In fact, I believe the ETF adoption is a “sell the news” opportunity. The is almost universally believed that ETF adoption will cause the price to skyrocket. Which...in my experience means it will drop 10-15% in a few days.

But, I’ve held onto it for ten years and made good returns. I take the gravy, pay the tax, and wait for the next cycle.

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