Bitcoin ETFs: Bullish or Bearish?

1 Nov 2023 · 1:12:35

Bankless hosts Ryan and David ask Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, whether a spot Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) is a big deal for the market. Thorn walks through Galaxy's estimate: of about $48 trillion managed by broker-dealers, banks and registered investment advisers, only part gains access in year one, 10% choose to invest and they allocate about 1%, giving roughly $14.4 billion of new inflows. Using the gold ETF as a comparison, the model suggests about a 74% price rise in the first year, which he stresses is back-of-the-napkin math. He also covers the bear case, from risk-off markets to a slow rollout and regulation, and how the same access argument could apply to an Ethereum ETF.

Speakers

Topics

Transcript

bankless Nation we have a very simple question today is the Bitcoin ETF a big deal or not that is the topic that is the agenda in today's conversation we are entering this episode and the price of Bitcoin is over over 34k so I think it just kissed 35k earlier today David are you feeling bullish man I I am feeling bullish and after almost two years of just be chewing glass in this market right now I'm not prepared to be hurt anymore and so if the Bitcoin spot ETF gets approved and it's not bullish I need to know now to get that glass ready to put back in your mouth I think that's the

question and honestly we have the perfect guest to help answer that question we have Alex Thorne he's the head of research at Galaxy digital he's published a ton of fantastic research about this and we're counting on Alex today David to be objective about this okay he's not just going to tell us uh the bull case for the Bitcoin ETF of which we know there is one we definitely want to hear about that don't get me wrong Alex I know you're listening we want to hear about the bull case but we also want to hear the what if you're wrong case the bare case for the Bitcoin ETF as well we got to find out is this thing priced in is there a mountain of capital out there waiting to Chomp on bitcoin that's the question in today's episode certainly certainly we're gonna

get right to that question but before we do we need to hear from our friends and sponsors over at Doppel uh so if you're like me and Ryan and you have a bunch of Twitter followers and a bunch of doppelganger fake fishing accounts then you should be interested in this if you are a Founder with a defi app that takes in deposits you might also be interested in this if you have impersonators who are trying to get in front of your customer's money and you then you should get in touch with Doppel Doppel is an anti- doppelganger Service uh so Doppel bopper as a service I'm making words up as I go Doppel bopper yeah so Doppel automates the detection and takeown of impersonators malicious websites fishing attempts which are getting increasingly

sophisticated uh you know Bank list we have impersonators I know blockworks just had a big impersonator uh so if you plan on having a successful business you probably are going to have someone who's trying to Doppel that uh Doppel gang that so Doppel wants to help you out uh so they already serve Brands like meta coinbase salana and a to help out uh pursue any fishing attempts any malicious websites cyber threats Etc so there is a link in the show notes dopp.kit into this episode with with Alex is I know we're going to talk about

the Bitcoin ETF and that's uh Bitcoin has certainly been on a run recently but there's also like word of an ethereum ETF as well so if this is if the ETF is bullish for Bitcoin what about ethereum so I've not picked Alex's brain on this I want to talk about that as well any other questions from you going to this episode that we you want answered yeah I really just want to drill down on the is this this is not a is this going to get approved or not I think uh generally we're making the assumption that this will be approved by January of next year because that is when the earliest deadlines are up the question is what is the magnitude of capital that is waiting to purchase and why and really how does a spot Bitcoin ETF change the market

structure of crypto at large fundamentally uh and then what is how big is this before after a moment so these are kind of the high level questions that we're going to get into with Alex right after we talked to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible especially our preferred exchange for crypto in 2023 don't don't buy the if you're listening to bank list don't buy the spot Bitcoin ETF just buy Bitcoin organically through Kraken there's a link in the show notes to get started with Kraken today Kraken knows crypto kraken's been in the crypto game for over a decade and as one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry Kraken is on the journey with all of us to see what crypto can be human history is a story of progress it's part of us hardwired we're designed to seek change everywhere to improve to

strive and if anything can be improved why not Finance crypto is a financial system designed with the modern world in mind instant permissionless in 24/7 it's not perfect and nothing ever will be perfect but crypto is a world changing technology at a time when the world needs it the most that's the Kraken mission to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrency so that you and the rest of the world can Achieve Financial Freedom and inclusion head on over to kraken.com slbank list to see what crypto can be not investment advice Crypt trading involves risk of loss cryptocurrency services are provided to us and US Territory customers by pord Ventures e pvi doing business as Kraken cell is the mobile first evm compatible carbon negative blockchain built for the real world and now something big is happening introducing the cell layer 2 it's a game-changing proposal that's

going to bring cell's rapidly growing ecosystem home to ethereum vitalic has shared its excitement for the cello layer 2 on the cell Forum so has Ben Jones from optimism but why the cello layer 2 will bring huge advantages like a decentralized sequencer offchain data availability and one block finality what does all that mean Rock Sol security a trustless bridge to ethereum and more real world use cases for ethereum without compromise and Real World Adoption is happening active addresses on cell have grown over 500% in the last 6 months with the cell layer 2 gas fees will stay low and you can even pay for gas using erc20 tokens but cell is a community governed protocol this means that cell needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard join the conversation in the cell Forum follow sorg on Twitter

and visit c.org to shape the future of ethereum arbitrum is accelerating the web 3 landscape with a suite of secure ethereum scaling Solutions hundreds of projects have already deployed on arbitrum 1 with flourishing Defi and nft ecosystems arbitr from Nova is quickly becoming a web3 gaming Hub and social adapts like Reddit are also calling arbitrum home and now arbitrum orbit allows you to use arbitrum secure scaling technology to build your own layer three giving you access to interoperable customizable permissions with dedicated throughput whether you are a developer Enterprise or user arbitral orbit lets you take your project to new heights all of these Technologies leverage the security and decentralization of ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive

familiar and fully evm compatible faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas fees so visit arbitrum where you can join the community dive into the developer docs Bridge your assets and start building your first app with arbitrum experience web 3 development the way it was always meant to be secure fast cheap and friction free Bank NA now would would love to introduce you to Alex Thorne the head of research at Galaxy digital leading a team of researchers focus on unpacking the market development in crypto and producing information for both internal and external audiences and also before Galaxy Alex was the director of blockchain research at Fidelity so he's a veteran of straddling the Trad world and crypto Alex welcome to the show yeah David Ryan great to be here and uh great

to be with bankless nation thanks for having me so the big question on my Minds on Ryan's mind on probably all of our listeners Minds is what is the spot Bitcoin ETF going to do to the markets we saw the the false start the fake start with The Accidental slip of the coin Telegraph tongue not too long ago but then all of a sudden people have reconsidered as to what position what side of the field that they want to be on uh and people have considered themselves offsides and that's where we've seen a lot of the price action in Bitcoin as of recently but like I said Alex I'm not ready to be heard again and so if the if we don't get a bunch of buying pressure post uh spot Bitcoin ETF I'd like to know it as sooner rather than later so just the question to you

is how much interest is in the spot Bitcoin ETF and how do we even measure this I'll throw those over to you yeah it's a good question we Tred to answer it um I I will say we definitely don't know uh we hear about a lot of interest I think primarily the the the segment that we focus on are advisors in particular so the and those are an independent adviser you know Alex Thorne like adviser with a storefront but I don't have a back office so I use Fidelity persing or Schwab and others these platforms those are Independents or it's an adviser that's affiliated with the bank or broker dealer so the big Banks most of them help with wealth management division right those are that's a big segment when we add all of that up that's about 47 trillion in AUM

wait wait can I make sure I understand that Alex yeah 4 that's a big number so um you've got a chart here from your uh fantastic Twitter thread and I think it has some of the numbers that you're were just mentioning yeah yeah so that this chart in the in the Tweet is sort of The Next Step where we then discount that total AUM but we're using as the Topline number this 47 trillion which is the total AUM of these three channels broker dealers Banks and raas um is it this these are the Chan yeah 48 trilon 48 trillion okay okay can you can you break these channels down for us I want to make sure the the bangas audience actually understands so registered investment adviser David and I call that that's like the Edward Jones guy that you know was a on YouRock kind of person

right yes except Edward Jones is in the broker dealer segment because they are a broker dealer so that a bunch of those big names are in that BD or Bank segment whereas the the raas we call them raas here all of these advisers at these platforms are registered investment advisers but what we mean is more independent ones literally like Alex Thorne adviser right like by himself so can you break these down by by line items I'm I'm actually just going to describe the table because some people will be listening to this on the podcast they won't see the Glorious visual that you could see on on YouTube if you go subscribe to bankless YouTube channel everyone um but let me just describe this and then you can kind of break down uh these categories and who they actually are because it's very clear I don't understand uh who they are but

we've got a total of 48.3 trillion dollar US wealth management okay and the breakdown the the categories that compose that 48.3 trillion I said trillion with the t is number one broker dealer 27 trillion number two bank 11.9 trillion number three registered investment advisor ra 9.3 trillion together that equals 48 trillion assets under management this is all us wealth that's like actually first before we dive into those specific categories us wealth management is this all our money is this all of the American people's money so this doesn't

include um self-directed accounts so like if you have a a Fidelity account with an IRA and that you manage yourself that's not included here right if you have a brokerage account that you manage yourself that's not included this doesn't really include 401ks which are not included right like or retirement accounts this is really like when you pay someone to do investing on your behalf okay so this this this is the amount of wealth that is under the discretion of somebody who's in charge of managing other people's wealth who could potentially press the buy button on a spot born ETF yes and it doesn't ALS it also doesn't include funds that that you may buy like a mutual fund which is actually discretionary right like the fund portfolio manager invests that money for the fund but for you if

you just have it on like a in an IRA that you manage yourself then that would be non-discretionary so yes this is discretionary advising on behalf of other people well that's interesting because I do have a Fidelity account and uh I could purchase some spot Bitcoin ETF and that wouldn't be included here because that's self-directed no and that's a major I would say that's I don't know if it's the biggest we didn't look at that segment and and the reason is that we thought that the wealth management industry these three segments you've described Ryan are the the segment that will get the most net new accessibility to bitcoin Expos from the ETF right because you can already go buy Bitcoin on Kraken right you don't have to like buy it in the Fidelity account

with the ETF I mean you could I mean you may but it's you you've I can and I do Alex except that I have these um like Legacy 401K accounts and Legacy Ira accounts from like previous employers other things I've I've set up that are managed in Fidelity and I don't have a clean way to Port them over to Kraken right now so but that is one category overall you're right okay so I inter I interrupted you though could you describe these three categories broker dealer Bank registered investment adviser who are these yeah so so the broker dealers are right SEC and fin registered broker dealers that's a specific uh thing they can they can buy and sell Securities they can do a variety of things right offer Securities I believe BDS can do not an expert to be clear in the actual compliance

difference necessarily between these but those are the big firms you know about Morgan Stanley right all all of the big Banks most of the big banks are broker dealers and they fall in this category for us then you have maybe smaller Banks think of like a Regional Bank Maybe Can't offer their own Securities but they have wealth managers right they have a wealth management program so your local bank you can go in there and they've got you know some offices on one side of it that are people that will help you invest right um and then the like I said the registers and investment advisers there's even another category of those types of advisers that they're just not affiliated directly with the broker dealer or bank they tend to use these more um sort of white labish platforms I don't remember all of the list of firms that offer them but I know

Fidelity does because I worked there right it this is sort of a wh label version of fidelity.com but it's meant for advisor so they can do SUB accounts manage multiple portfolios at the same time right it's sort of just white labeling the the back office and and ux infrastructure for advisors um and I think persing Schwab others offer that service as well so that that's basically um what we're looking at right because if you're an Raa that has an entire back office like you're most likely a bank or a broker dealer anyway right so those are the categories that that we looked at and and again we we wanted to be conservative I absolutely think there will be retail demand for a Bitcoin ETF if it's if it's you and your IRA Ryan um like you may want to buy it there right

um we just we felt that you could already buy it elsewhere and so um it it trying to be conservative we just focused on this channel that really doesn't have access um at the moment I can explain why they don't have access if that's interesting also do do explain why so broker dealer the bank the registered investment advisor why can't they log and crack in and buy Spot Bitcoin why can they buy um micro strategy can they buy like um you know gbdc like the grayscale trust yeah they they may be able to buy some of the um like Bitcoin aligned equities whether it's the one you mentioned or maybe mining stocks right I think that is they probably can buy straight

equities but those are pretty inefficient vehicles in the scheme of things for right they're not directly Bitcoin vehicles um there's other factors that go in there um the OTC products or the even the cash settled Bitcoin Futures based ETFs that exist those are not on the the bank broker dealer platforms by and large those advisers that are that that that work for those Banks and broker dealers that do client portfolio management and Advising and Investment Management under the banner of those bigger firms they can only put their clients into investment options that are approved by the bank and the broker dealer and wait so they can't buy gbdc they can't buy the grayscale trust right now you're talking no not really um maybe uh with a

specific exception but they would have to go through typically an exception process in fact I'm not aware of any of those that actually allow their advisers to put end clients into the trust products or the cash settled ETF future based ETFs um again like I think you know if you brought like a a client if you were the adviser and you brought a client that was going to put a ton of money with you if you let them do that the bank or broker dealer might make an exception but they're not offered on the menu they're just deemed too risky too esoteric it could be a variety of things yeah I mean suitability in general could be a reason I think I know of several for example of those Banks broker dealers that don't allow cannabis ETFs or stocks right I don't know why do they

not like cannabis that's there could be any there could be a variety of reasons right so it could be that they're too costly they're not suitable they could be um you know bad I don't know they just don't make it through a process but those have a process it is possible I'm not sure that the registered independent investment advisers that I talked about being on like the Fidelity platform or persing or swab Schwab or these other ones they may have better access because those platforms that they're not actually um like affiliated with the platform right they're they're sort of buying it as a vendor and so the platforms I think care much less about specifically what they're able to buy um but as you notice and as you read that is the smallest of the three segments we looked at and we took that into account

also when you know the tweet that you showed before the first one um that's actually us then ramping up what we think the adoption will be per year and you'll see that we have higher adoption levels in that independent segment than in the others right so um and that's for that reason right like if you if you look in the First Column year one we're basically handicapping the total AUM of each the of each of these three segments by our estimate of how much total AUM will be able to access it just purely be able to access it right so we're saying only a quarter of the AUM at the broker dealers which is the biggest segment that we looked at only a quarter will even have it turned on in the first year right so

and there's reasons behind whereas we started with 50% for the raas right because we think it's it's less of a lift the platforms don't have to perform the same amount of diligence or care to perform typically the same amount because they're not they're not a fiduciary behind those Independence right Investments they have to do stuff too but we think they'll adopt it more quickly um before proceeding in this conversation I do kind of want to just like set the table about like what exactly the the parameters of what we're talking about here so we we talked about these three different categories the broker dealer the bank the registered investment advisors uh 272 and and 9 million trillion dollars uh respectively uh this is what we are doing is we're talking about the mountain of capital

that is out there that has never been able to buy Bitcoin ever before uh and with this bot Bitcoin ETF that pipe is now established between this $48 trillion dollar and Bitcoin through this bot Bitcoin ETF so like for all the podcast listeners out there just imagine a pile of money that's $48 trillion large and then look at the uh Bitcoin market cap which is under $1 trillion I think it's like $600 billion dollish give or take um uh right now and so like these are two different sizes uh obviously there's not going to be $48 trillion of by pressure uh that there's other very many other assets that that is dedicated for but that would be cool maybe one day um and so what you're doing in this next step Alex is you have then shaved that $48 trillion off into

25% for the broker dealers 25% for the bank and 50% for the RAS because you're saying well of that 48 trillion only a fraction will actually have access to that buy button so we're going to uh trim off by you know three quarters or a half or Ras uh just because that is at at day one how much access there's going to be so we're like reducing the pile of money that is actually able to potentially be interested in buying Bitcoin and I think we're about to take this a few steps further about like okay well still not 25% is going to buy like actually a much smaller fraction but that's kind of where we are in this conversation where do we go next yeah so before we go to the the next actual two steps which are how much of those funds

will choose to buy and then how how much will they buy those are the steps two and three but if we instead look at year one two and three going sort of to the right in the chart right looking forward and this is important because those two steps two and three we keep fixed through the entire time period of our analysis so I'll talk about that in a second but so what we're we're really doing is starting with the giant pile of money the 48 trillion and handicapping it based on segment and when we look at say the banks and the broker dealers this is pretty straight forward for each of them we're saying 25% of the a will be addressable in year one 50% of it will be addressable in year two 75% in year three it we're not just totally making it up there's plenty of back of

the napkin math here in general right this is more like a way to think about it we think it's conservative and and we're using it to triangulate what the total addressable Market is but we did look at the specific broker dealers and Banks and like for example there are some we know of that already offer private Bitcoin investment vehicles on those platforms right so we assume okay they'll probably turn on the ETF in year one right they're not then there there are others that we talked about that made that not only do they not offer an existing private Bitcoin vehicle but they don't even offer other stuff that people consider risky the way they do crypto and so you know maybe we put them in year two or three so we tried to do it thoughtfully to the ENT we know about the sentiment or public statements of

the executives or the people like whether they've said that they hate Bitcoin or whether they're open to it right that's how we come up with this ramping schedule right so the only thing in the analysis here that we actually change year-over-year is the big number the total amount per segment that we think will have access right it's just that this first number we've been talking about that's in our analysis that's actually all that we change to to ramp it up over time right we just we we say like the the level of access at each segment is going to grow as the as they turn it on over over well because the big story here is as David was saying right it's just like we're getting access to we've gone from like 56k modem to high bandwidth access to capital for our Bitcoin product yeah that's exactly

right and the reason Ryan you asked earlier why they couldn't Buy on Kraken right the advisers and it's I I I don't specifically know kraken's products but in general the crypto exchanges they haven't offered sub accounts in a way for say one adviser to log in and easily manage and control like all the various portfolios of their um of their CL and clients um and and there's questions about custody and and by the way also even if they could like some of these advisers May manage accounts for hundreds of people and they use really slick uxs to do that and have back offices that how to do integrated all with it's not integrated bonds and if you let's say you're a wealthy investor that uses one of these advisors like you could say like okay well you know why

don't you write down that I'm going to buy like you know 500k of Bitcoin or something and like include that in your analysis or whatever advisor I'm going to go do it separately and it's just like wealthy people don't want to do that they want it all in the same place right and even if it were in the same place even in spot like there's trick like if it was like um everyone just had access to spot Bitcoin through these existing platforms like then there's weird like custody things the Brilliance of the E and trans actional things and like how how do we use it right and who know and also then all them all these um platforms have to then build Spa functionality which is also you know hard right I mean it's not it's certainly not traditional um whereas if it's wrapped in the ETF like this thing

just slides right in like every other investment vehicle that is you know usable goes into all the same portfolio management tools it goes into all the goes through the back offices exactly the same like it just looks like any other ETF okay so I think the big lesson that I'm learning here is is that on the day that this bot Bitcoin ETF gets approved everyone who's interested in buying Bitcoin through the ETF doesn't necessarily have access to it there's like a roll out period there's like an initiation initial and and we just looked at year one right like I don't know that and I'm actually quite sure that most of the banks and broker dealers will not turn this on on day one you might see the the platforms that serve the independent raas turn it on faster right um but I think you know

that's why we say year one and we could talk in a second if you about like okay well then like like when right how fast I I and maybe like you know a lot of people are asking about um like what about day one what if the day that they're announced that they're approved or the day that they launch like what does it look like right is it a buy the rumor sell the news like kind of is it bullish that day and permanently bullish like I I don't know um but the the I just want to add the other the steps two and three to the analysis are pretty straightforward so like if you say year one right we talked about 25 2550 for those three uh those three segments that comes out to 14.4 trillion right which is we just said that's about 30% of the

total that's the total amount that would have access yes the total amount of existing Capital too the other thing we don't really estimate like if totally new capital Flows In we're just sizing it based on the size of the wealth management market today size the pipe exactly so then we say Okay obviously if 14.4 trillion could invest certainly they won't all invest right and here I mean this is a pretty back of the napkin thing we said you know what's reasonable as a conservative number to say choose to invest anything we said 10% okay so one in 10 I think 10 just choose to invest yeah of any amount it could be $1 it could be 100% of their portfolio but only 10% of the total addressable

Capital Market there does any investment right so now we're handicapping it again um and then then we rely on this like well how much do they invest and we say well and we just put out another paper about this a couple weeks ago others have as well but doing back testing analysis on adding Bitcoin to a portfolio at various levels drawing it from different parts of the existing portfolio like drawing it from bonds or drawing it from equities or from alts and whatever this whole thing um at a whole bunch of different levels and I mean you know obviously at a long enough time frame it looks it for for for you know Bitcoin for ether for a lot of these coins that have been around a long time if you go back further it just looks better and better but we tried to be reasonable we said 2018 to present um

which was two bar markets and one bull market so um and basically the biggest it was positive across all allocation levels so again 10% we we say here would choose to do something and then how much on average they choose to do we said 1% um and that's because it was good I mean was at higher levels again looking backwards no guarantee that it would be the same going forwards but at higher levels it did better even on a risk adjusted basis specifically on a risk adjusted basis but the biggest net positive impact was just going from from 0 to one like 0 to two was one to two was good but none of the steps had as big a change which you know you've heard this get off zero I mean that's the case for it so that's how we picked that one

number right 1% number so it's it's year one 25% of broker dealers 25% of banks 50% of raas that's 14.4 trillion that could have access we think 10% of that Capital chooses to invest something and on average they do 1% that's how we get the 14 .4 billion uh in year one as conservative that's what we're trying to do right I mean we didn't it's we we're not trying to do too much Moon maath here we really wanted to be like this is a reasonable way to look at it it's it's conservative it's defensible it you know who knows what could happen there's certainly um I mean it protects David from getting hurt again there's that's true we're not trying to increase

expectations too much I mean that that is a solid amount of inflow I would say objectively but yeah I mean I would you know some people really like this a lot of people said it was too conservative some people said it was too bullish I mean right I mean you when you put numbers out like this it can go either way right certainly and well there's one Dynamic that I want to definitely um parse out here which is that on year one you have modeled out potentially conservatively uh 14.4 billion dollars uh of inflows into Bitcoin per year so these are flows this is not just a one time buy moment this is now you are saying there is going to be 14 four4 billion dollar of Bitcoin buy pressure per year and actually that increases

next year because of the increased access so the next year that you have modeled out is 26 A5 billion dollars per year so this is persistent yearly buy pressure into spot Bitcoin correct that's the idea yep and and just so I understand this too to add to that it's it's net new inflows so these are inflows that we wouldn't have otherwise had because we're going to have inflows flowing to bitcoin we already do have them right people are already buying Bitcoin on Kraken to prepare for the for the next Bull Run and hopefully hopefully you are bankless listener doing some of this but we're talking about um absent in ETF we wouldn't have have have had these flows on the bottom of your spreadsheet now that we with an ETF we will have added another 14.4 billion in year one after the ETF is

approved of net new inflow of buying pressure to bitcoin yes yeah that that is our estimate specifically again because we're focusing just on this big wealth channel right because I would say where would the overlap be like what would reduce that for like what if we were right on 14.4 but it actually wasn't all net new that would mean that you were uh a client of an adviser let's say and you separately had exposure to one of the trust products in your own other brokerage account or you had a bunch of spot Bitcoin that you actually chose to sell and then tell your adviser to go buy the ETF and I I don't think that's a terribly credible scenario because um there there will be people but not in the segment I think really that we we're talking about here there might be people that own spot Bitcoin

and would prefer to own the ETF in their brokerage account right like and so they actually sell it um but that's not really the advisor Market that's I think more like a retail brokerage type Market one other thing I want to ask about this Alex is like so um yeah I just want to test my intuition here right so this is imagining this is kind of a spreadsheet view of the world which is very helpful for analysts and researchers to kind of make sense of this and and get to some actual tangible uh numbers but this assumes all of the broker dealers and Banks and and Ras and you know everybody advising this Market they're just dollar cost averaging in you know like I'm just going to put some money in and I do it every month and you know I'm doing my job I'm dollar cost averaging in that's

not how investors work we all know if the price is going up they get super bullish about that particular product and they smash they fomo in They smash the buy button uh don't tell me that broker dealers are any different than retail from that perspective and so what what we might find is rather than this kind of like 14.4 billion and then 26.5 uh billion it's like if the price is going up I would imagine some of this demand well the averages maybe true could look a little more choppy than in the uh in the spreadsheet would you say that's a correct intuition I I think that's fair I think um I I am G to say they are a little different than retail and and I'll tell you why right these advisors they first of all when you use

an advisor typically they don't like day trade for you right they're not nearly active as individuals might be that manage their own money and and really succumb to that fomo I mean I've used an adviser like I don't know but years ago during Market volatility and called up being like what do you think about this should we do that and usually the advisers they' they've got a longer term plan for you and they're they they'll counsil against sort of rash moves that's what they're there for to keep you R and to develop a long-term portfolio right and and I think when you when you think about sort of the long-term thesis for Bitcoin it really is a long-term goal even right the the the Bitcoin maximalist will tell you that also for the most part right so like I I think the the advisor world is

is um probably going to be less prone here to short-term Market movements in general so it's likelier to be stickier Capital than say you know people with a crypto exchange account or like um in their own own personal accounts but but I yeah I mean that's totally right I mean there's that's one of the the many things that can happen that change would change this analysis I mean I right d dramatic moves in price in either direction I think would would alter this this analis okay so while we're talking about price we've been talking about inflows net new inflows the the entire conversation so we have a year one of 14.4 billion in net new inflows and that increases over time 26.5 in year two and 38.6 in year three okay the the question though is what

impact does that have on the price of Bitcoin is there some sort of amplification effect I think there's like a a surface level anal Anis of somebody could hear this and say oh so you mean Bitcoin will go up 14.4 billion in year one I'm not that excited about that Alex it's already 600 billion and you're just saying it's going to add 14.4 more that's not quite how this works in the inflow world can you explain that to us what's kind of the amplifier effect here yeah this is this is actually very hard to calculate like fully scientifically because there's factors like liquidity and Market depth that first of all are hard to actually wrap your head around now um will be hard to understand and and conceptualize a a reasonable uh possible future under

this Market structure um and also you have to make assumptions about things like liquidity and depth and and and other things that are really tricky like there's a lot of variables to really model that out from a bottoms up so we we did a similar analysis to this so more of a top down uh thinking right and you can think about like Paul tutor Jones had talked about right gold is Gold's market cap is X like Bitcoins is y and like Bitcoin is only like 4% and like what if it went to like 10 or 20 right like that was how what he talked about in 2020 um we did something a little similar a little bit more intricate but basically we looked at we we liked gold as a comp and and people debate this all the time is this in your Tweet thread by the way Alex yeah yeah

exactly so so yeah so this is where we look at the um like the sort of the uh the regression on price change based on the the flows into the gold ETF some people were critical of our our squared here but I think from from looking at changes in price 0 27's pretty reasonable um for drawing a correlation um but yeah we we like the gold ETF for a couple reasons one obviously um gold is you know Bitcoin and gold are often compared I I've called gold uh Bitcoin gold with wings it's got similar scarcity properties but you know you can actually use it right like can't like you can't like walk around with gold bars in your in your back and you can't really like you certainly can't store large amounts in in Gold wealth really

unless you're like a sovereign or or a central bank right I mean it's like physically heavy right like but with crypto including obviously Bitcoin uh you can store huge amounts of wealth that in fact the amount of wealth is has no impact on the physical weight and all that stuff right so there's that overlap but also gold is a global um scarce asset commodity asset that didn't have big investment grade Vehicles really until relatively recently right and the that was an ETF and several ETFs that 2004 right yeah so it I actually don't recall but like yeah mid mid I think it was around that mid mid 2000s um so okay so there's a comp right there's an inflows we can see obviously different Market at that time than today's market

like globally and whatnot but you know it's it's close right so and again this is this is back of the napkin stuff and we're trying when you do this type of stuff right I also did Venture AT Fidelity at Avon Ventures and you know when you come up with these types of Tam analyses you're really just trying to triangulate on something that's reasonable a reasonable way to think about it you know you're always wel welcome welcoming to others to challenge these assumptions like you just have to make some if you're going to do the exercise right so we looked at um like what percentage of Bitcoin today um is in investment vehicles and what percentage of gold today is in investment vehicles and then um you know we think gold and then we looked at market cap comparison you know Gold's about 24 times larger in total market

cap but has 36% less Supply in investment vehicles right is what we what we were pointing out um so that gives us a dollar equivalent amount of fund inflows to bitcoin having an 8.8 times greater impact on Bitcoin markets compared to Gold markets right so this is like the this is the kind of you know we set it up a pretty clear methodology I don't know if it's it's certainly it almost certainly isn't the correct methodology there really isn't a correct one um and then we basically model forward using our inflows um and and looking at the the compar comparison and the um using that as a multiplier we look at the the historical relationship which is this regression chart between

inflows into the gold ETF and what it did to like xauusd gold spot right um and okay so this number this 8.8 number I really want to drill down on because if I my memory serves me correctly as soon as the gold ETF got approved and was made available gold had just an insane bull run over like the next decade I think it's like like this sustained very impressive Bull Run and you're saying this number that you're coming to is that the equivalent of dollar amount invested into Bitcoin is going to have an eight times eight greater effect on the Bitcoin price than what would have been into the gold price correct yeah that's our view um and it's again and just just to be clear that's extremely bullish right yeah I mean it's

just the it's like I said it's the back of the napkin math I mean I think there are some by the way there's some huge um like reasonable um disagreements on this for one when gold ran in the like mid 2000s to you know the you know through the great financial crisis um that was a massive macro economic event that impacted gold's price as well right it wasn't just accessibility and it did also take a while to for inflows to really start ramping into those Vehicles so it wasn't immediate and there's certainly almost certainly were other factors at play causing people to invest in gold and simply not having been able to but um yeah I mean that's the basic and then basically hold that constant uh we hold that inflow constant and then we

reduce the multiplier each um o over each month forward that we look at because as Bitcoin grows then it becomes its percentage in vehicles to its total market cap like grows right so the multiplier actually declines in our analysis but it start right and so it decays as Bitcoin grows um again can't stress up right but this is what we think is a defensible way to think about it it's not certainly no guarantee but that I think we came to about a 75% um if you again you agree with our other inflows analysis about a 75% price appreciation from launch to one year forward yeah and I think the disclaimer here is like we're stacking assumptions on assumptions and so at the end of the

day like the the Rope gets Fray but still directionally we can start to model out some sort of prediction about some ultimate actual price impa impact and Alex I want to actually see if I can get a number out of you uh as well as a few other questions as well just like ay where isit coin price going maybe as as to the nearest of our ability to predict it but also there's like a bunch of ancillary things as well like the market timing for when this is getting approved is interesting like we're closer to the a bare Market than when uh spot Bitcoin Futures got approved which was at the top of the bull market in 2017 um liquidity is low also there are some other like side effects like well now there's Bitcoin ETF marketing from some of these big issuers and so how does

that play into public sentiment uh so I'm going to ask you all these questions but first I want to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible metamask portfolio is your One-Stop shop to navigate the world of Defi and now bridging seamlessly across networks doesn't have to be so daunting anymore with competitive rates and convenient routes metamask portfolio's Bridge feature lets you easily move your tokens from chain to chain using popular layer 1 and layer 2 networks and all you have to do is select the network you want to bridge from and where you want your tokens to go from there metamask vets and curates the different bridging platforms to find the most decentralized accessible and reliable bridges for you to tap into the hottest opportunities in crypto you need to be able to plug into a variety of networks and nobody makes

that easier than metamask portfolio instead of searching endlessly through the world of bridge options click the bridge button on your metamask extension or head over to metam mask. i/ portfolio to get started you know Unis swap it's the world's largest decentralized exchange with over $1 1.4 trillion in trading volume you know this because we talk about it endlessly on Bist it's uniswap but Unis swap is becoming so much more Unis swap Labs just released the uniswap mod Mobile Wallet for iOS the newest easiest way to trade tokens on the go with Unis swap wallet you can easily create or import a new wallet buy crypto on any available exchange with your debit card with extremely low Fiat on-ramp fees and you can seamlessly swap on mainnet polygon arbitrum and optimism on the Unis swap Mobile Wallet you can

store and display your beautiful nfts and you can also explore web 3 with the inapp search features Market leaderboards and price jarts or use wallet connect to connect to any web 3 application so you can now go directly to defi with the unisat mobile Wallet safe simple custody from the most trusted team in def5 download the Unis swap wallet today on iOS there's a link in the show notes are you launching a token is it already live how are you managing the legal and tax for providing token awards for your team toku simplifies everything about managing token Grant compensation and you can get started with them for free you'll have access to topnotch Legal end tax support to handle the distribution and management of tokens for your team toku caters to every step in the process from userfriendly legal templates for

granting tokens to tracking vesting periods and calculating withholding taxes toku understands every Grant structure token purchase agreements restricted token Awards restricted token units token options and all the other ones toku is already simplifying this today for leading companies like protocol Labs dydx Foundation Mina foundation and many more you can learn more about how toku can help you streamline your token management and get started for free visit toku at to.com bankless or click the link in the description below bankless Nation we are back with Alex Thor we are zoning in on the question so we got all these new inflows suspected inflows coming in from the Bitcoin ETF launch what's that going to do to bitcoin price and I think we were getting there and you may have uh

mentioned it as a side point a number 74% I want to Zone in on that so what does this mean Alex and how much will these inflows actually impact bitcoin price according to our analysis so I've got a tweet thread up here um that ends with ETF first year Bitcoin price impact estimated 74.1% what do we mean what do we mean are we taking the price of Bitcoin as of now and we're multiplying that by 74% or like and then we're adding that to the price like what are we doing with the 74% number yeah so this is just from like launch day one is the idea ETF launch so I think we calculated it in the report as the bottom of this tweet says that at the the we just used end of

month uh September because we wrote this in mid October um you you would basically take this ramp and and and do it from whatever price Bitcoin is at at the start right so because this is really focused on inflows driving that uh appreciation um so bitcoin price let's say the ETF launches in January 2024 okay and that's like maybe an estimate from from most the analysts we talked to around that that time range and let's say the the price of Bitcoin is 50k at that time right then we apply this analysis on top of the 50k Bitcoin yes that yeah that's the idea um but you know I think it's it's pretty reasonable to think and I think David might have mentioned this at the beginning too like

how much of it is priced in already right I mean I think if we run that far like you'd you'd assume a fair amount of the price is priced in but again AR inlows analysis does not suggest that like there's a priced in amount so yes in this analysis you would add 75% on top of that to me the price inflows sounds pretty price insensitive as in they don't really care what the price of Bitcoin is they kind of just are the DCA ERS they're just the smash buyers I don't really care what the price is that's the idea right like we're we're just saying one in 10 of capital that could access it would choose to I think that's pretty low number right we're not saying one and five we're not um now could that be lower yeah it could be one

and 20 right that would be half a percent not 1% that cuts the whole thing in half right it's totally possible we we don't know but sorry it could be 5% not 10% they could choose to allocate less but excuse me the the portfolio benefits um for the 1% allocation um when we came up with that and we certainly not unique in suggesting that I've heard that from plenty of people over the years with different analyses um that encompassed bare markets and bull markets so that included when price was very high right it still was additive to the portfolio um over that fiveyear time frame so yes this analysis does not actually like calculate what would happen if the price ran up really high or really low um

that's because you guys can't calculate that or else you're a market Oracle and you know the future and you're you know you've you've uh time traveled like Marty McFly right ex okay so but but I just want to understand that so per my example if in January uh the Bitcoin ETF has launched and it's at 50k over the course over the the inflows over the next year we would expect um Bitcoin to in increase another 74% that's another 37k and we get to a price at the end of 2024 all it's being equal of you know 87K or something like that that that's what this simple analysis would predict that's what the math absolutely yes that's what it says and and I know we've said it a million times right just back of the napkin not a not a sure sure total prediction here

um but yeah that's exactly right okay and then can we is there any way to anticipate like the front running then piece of that let's just isolate that for for a second so you know Bank list is uh the number one podcast in crypto okay so this is getting out there everywhere right now and so a bunch of people are looking at these these numbers from Alex Thorne and they're saying huh okay you know your price could increase by 74% so I better buy now and that induces uh more demand I suppose and I don't know some there's some front running it borrows demand from the future yeah so are we can can the front running how how much will the front running dampen this demand is are you just setting that aside for this

analysis is there any way to tell there there isn't really I would say there's it it certainly there isn't really in this analysis right we but I will I mean I agree it's it's actually really hard to think about because I can see reasons why it could both induce more demand or dampen it so dampening is pretty straight forward um you look at it when you get access and you say gosh it's gotten pretty expensive like maybe we should wait for it to come down more you know we liked it at 30 but at you know 50 that seems expensive right so that's the obvious thing people might choose not to allocate if that were to happen or not allocate yet but again we're looking at a whole year here right like we didn't say like month one two because we know there's a lot of

variables um the the the other side of it is we've seen Bitcoin volatility come down over the years like on a realized basis um you can see that charts lower highs and well when it gets low it never really goes lower than the lowest it's been was actually like super low like last year was super low earlier this year at some points in like the low 20s which is very low for Bitcoin historically but with declining vol volatility and increasing market cap and liquidity you can actually allocate more right you can when that's why we're risk adjust that 1% analysis on allocation size is based on using sharp ratios and and risk adjusting it for volatility right so if if it got bigger and volatility is lower then you can

allocate more right because on a risk adjusted basis there's less risk in terms of volatility so in that sense you could see that there are people that there might even be others that we don't even really talk about or just really really big clients of of Bank broker dealer independent raia platforms that have so much money that 1% like is a ton of money right or they want to put some to it and they simply can't because of volatility and other things so you could see that if it's bigger let's get really big let's say Sovereign wealth funds or central banks themselves right it's just too small for them I mean even at a trillion it's probably too small trillion market cap right so it there are pools of capital that won't come in until volatility is much lower and liquidity is much higher so you could

you know so there is an induced demand Factor too but but again like this is you know we really just can't know I think um the people our analysis is based solely on the fact that we hear there's demand we know there's a giant pile of wealth that can't access it um and the accessibility is what will you know again one in 10 people owning some Bitcoin I think that's below even the White House's estimates for people that own crypto so I think it's conservative that the same numbers would carry forth into these new addressable markets I think understanding that if the Bitcoin price appreciated significantly up to the event of the spot Bitcoin ETF approval and made accessible to all this Capital like rationally it would make sense that there would be less demand for it because price went up like the

thing is higher therefore there's less demand for it yeah but also I've done a few cycles of crypto that's not how things work like when bitcoin price goes up people want more of it uh and I think there there's definitely an argument to be made that like the marketing the what is bit coin's marketing department it's price uh and so if the price does lead into the approval which leads into further continuation followed by Black Rock legitimately marketing Bitcoin to its customers because there's a big race there's like how many horses in this race trying to become the number one Bitcoin spot UTF uh right now yeah right so there's 11 or 12 like organizations big capitalized organizations all going

to be marketing to try and jostle their ETF into position to be number one so there's going to be a bassive marketing campaign right am I am I assuming too much here or like this is kind of like the more like I've seen a cycle or two of how this plays out this seems to make sense to me yeah I can't I I don't I don't know exactly what all the applicants are planning but if you look at past like ETF launches or when REITs became popular like you see a fair amount of marketing right and there's also educational materials created for all the potential buyers right so like like yeah so I that that's gonna happen there there's clearly a competition of foot so it's fascinating to me how much Larry Larry think is talking about this he's of course is the the CEO of Black

Rock the largest asset uh manager in the world right now by a long shot and he has become like almost Michael sailor like in his as soon as they have a product to sell they're bullish on bitcoin I was surprised how far he went you know you you're probably referring to Ryan the clip from maybe now two weeks ago or so when he said that like in in a in an upheaval world or macroeconomic uncertainty flight to safety yeah gold Bitcoin gold dollars and Bitcoin could be a flight part of a flight to Quality trade which by the way I mean I agree with in the scheme of things I I I I know that historically people trade Bitcoin and crypto more as a risk asset but I think it's fair to look at Bitcoin and say that it's fundamentally quite predictable

transparent it's Global right like there are things that should make it like a safe haven accet in terms of its fundamentals but yeah to hear Larry Frink say that I think was pretty surprising and I will say Monumental okay are you guys ready to burst some bubbles here now do that no sorry David we're doing it anyway David put your mic down for for for a minute here okay so the the bull the bull is going on mute so uh Alex give us the bear case for all of this because I know you've heard it we've laid out the bull case quite well and we've brought the the numbers and the analysis kind of backing the bull Cas and based on inflows to uh you know higher B pipe to a lot of capital and get all that what's the bare case for all of this I've heard some people say

that like this is overhyped it's already priced in it's already uh you know front run um look at the recent uh e Futures ETF it's kind of just like done nothing with respect to numbers everyone who wanted Bitcoin already had access to it uh basically the Bitcoin ETF is overhyped ain't nothing going to happen with respect to price just kind of like the the sound of a a balloon deflating uh so give give us the rationale behind that that be case there's a couple I'll start with the some of the ones you specifically mentioned Ryan I mean everyone can already access Bitcoin right it's something I hear a lot and and we've talked about this how you and I can go buy it on on exchanges on on

coinbase or Kraken or river cash app we can right but um I've talked a lot about already why like wealth channels can't right they don't have access to those platforms they don't have the cash settled Futures ETFs they don't have the OTC products typically the OTC trusts um that's why we only looked at this group right I mean I think that that that's the first thing I would sort of say is on accessibility um sure like I said if I have a wealth advisor and they have you know 99% of my my family's money or whatever my money then they then yeah I I'm free to take 1% of it and go open an account at Kraken like sure I am right but but most don't I would say that use um and certainly the advisers themselves

don't bring it there on your behalf so I I think the accessibility question this is why we focused on this channel specifically but it's absolutely possible I don't really think of there won't be as big inflows as people think as an actual case I think the real thing is what will what could cause there to not be big inflows and I think there are a couple things one the the biggest thing is a significant riskof movement markets right like we talked about how I think and how and how Larry think said that Bitcoin could be part of a flight to Quality trade well it it mostly hasn't been historically like and maybe it isn't and then there is a need to flight to Quality and people instead go to something El it's been more of a risk on type asset absolutely right and and we could have right you could have a a

recession come or something like that a big financial problem that's you know on the back of the rates and the and the inflation questions like that could all move risk in in ways that you know could dramatically affect people's appetite for something like Bitcoin period right like so a material change in that environment which is possible um that could be caused by geopolitical events it could be caused by a financial crisis who who knows what right let's say inflation ramps up again huge right just like in the 70s and 80s uh when Paul vulker was in charge of the FED they they tried to come down from their first hikes then they couldn't and they had to ramp hikes way back higher right that could dramatically affect R risk appetite just generally right which would certainly think affect a Bitcoin

ETF um so that that's a main one right I was like in terms of like the the the anticipation versus the inflows like I you know if I had to guess like there are plenty of people now trying to you've seen it in in bitcoin price over the last month right like there are people trying to price like reprice the asset given the likelihood or not likelihood in their minds of the ETF uh of of ETFs generally um so it absolutely could be like a buy the rumor sell the news event on the on the announcement or the launch right because these things also take even if you're bullish like they could take a a while to ramp up like I said even the most bullish platforms might not turn it on for it could be months right takes now now it's got to go

through the whatever like Risk approval process and committees they have so like our accessibility argument could take longer than we thought right even if we're right on the actual demand like the turn on the ramp up time could be slower than we thought um there's plenty of that is possible right we don't know how fast like like I said the broker dealer adviser segments would turn this on like that's why we you know we tried to be conservative and said only a quarter of them would even get it turned on in the first year right that's that's um so so that's a major thing that could affect it and and who knows right I mean there could be regulatory issues that also affect it I don't think Bitcoin within the crypto ecosystem is that like that much in Regulators focuses but of

course anything like there's certainly stuff in particular that um could happen like on mining for example one of the things you s you've seen all the applicants update their s1's with is additional risk disclosures around mining specifically around that the you know electricity usage of mining could cause political backlash which could result in regular so like that's something that could happen um I don't think that's very likely but that could happen but also there's other regulatory stuff that touches all of crypto right like we we're talking about like finsen related stuff that could impact all the exchanges or you know we saw Senator Warren was effectively saying that self- custody was you know the Chen tool technology of terrorists um self- custody is important to bitcoin also

right like that would be negative for Bitcoin just like it is for any other crypto in general um I think and some people say well the etf's not going to be self- custo so couldn't that even like be good for it I'm like no it's just bad for the overall case for crypto in general if something like if a ban on self- custody were to happen you know what bitcoiners talk about is order executive order 6102 the the seizure of gold by the US government right like that would be bad overall all so there's regulatory stuff like that that could impact demand for cryp for Bitcoin ETF um I still think like even if it's a buy the rumor sell the news on the event either the announcement of approvals or the launch or whatever you want to talk about whatever the event driven um cycle

is there like that we're talking in this report and also thinking about it as more of a long-term thing we know it's going to take a little while to happen we know the inflows don't happen overnight right um and I I also think you mentioned the E Futures ETF I mean very different Market but we also know these products aren't really like that great like certainly not for long term the longer you hold the more Decay and roll cost you incur and and if you look at it's not like terrible those vehicles are pretty good for short-term exposure in the scheme of things they they perform pretty close to N to like spot price in the shorter terms but advisers are more longer term investors right so that's another reason why they don't particularly like those products so I don't I don't no I do think Alex a lot

of the things you're pointing to are just general like you know bearish bearish crypto bearish bearish Bitcoin type takes right it's like I I'm still bullish I I think even the the biggest baddest bear would have to admit that um all else being equal they they could still think that that um you Bitcoin prices may be front running this that it's overhyped that it's all priced in but they'd have to admit that expanding the pipe of Bitcoin inflows to the the tens of trillions of dollars that are available that's like worst case that's neutral for Bitcoin it's not negative for Bitcoin it's not going to price go down it can't be bad right and think of the the history the trajectory of this asset we are 15 years about 15 years

from launch we just celebrated the birthday of the the Bitcoin uh white paper um yesterday and we are 15 years and we've gotten magic internet money worth nothing worth nothing zero okay to 600 uh billion being shied by the biggest asset manager in the world in 15 years that is quite the accomplishment I would say so hard in that context not to interpret this as as uh bullish either I I agree and and you have to realize too how how powerful just ETF the ETF rapper as a product is right I mean it has overhauled the asset management industry it makes trading you can have passive ETFs that track you know one commodity like you talked about gold you can have

them that track a basket passively like you know it's it's like a Trad erc20 right it's like a WRA it's a wrapped asset basically right it's it is like um and and and but then you can use them in all the infrastructure like there is Standalone Equity so you can do things like um like depending on who you are you can do margin lending on them right Securities lending you can you can um you can send and settle them like they're like intraday all day unlike a mutual fund they can have their shares created and redeemed all day whereas if you usually if you um invest in a mutual fund you have to send a check or you know a wire or whatever in um and it doesn't get ated till after the close and then you can't take it out until after the next right like they're great

products in general they're they're make they make investing highly accessible um and they and I would say I mean gold being one of the most iconic examples like there was really no investment grade gold access period like you could if you maybe if you were wealthy enough or whatever you could call up some of the big Banks or broker dealers have like a Metals desk and they would like buy spot gold for and keep it in a vault somewhere for you right but like you're not like moving it around you can't get in out of it quickly right so I I agree I I also the the marketing is a huge point right like it matters that and also if it were to be approved if they are to be approved um that's a pretty big stamp of approval right I mean especially if you're sort of not in the

day-to-day of this and you're saying wait the SEC has just approved Bitcoin spot ETFs like if that happens it it talks about the level of maturity of the industry the questions around things like custody and and transferring and and even like illicit Finance have been sufficiently answered right for the for for the approval to have happened so it I think it's there's a lot that legitimizes it by definition it institutionalizes it and um you know when the largest asset manager keep in mind I think Fidelity is the third largest asset manager in the world and they're also deeply involved in Bitcoin and have been for years so like it's starting to look like all the smartest people that you know asset managers think this is a really good product at this point and should be approved um you

know it's not little the maturity of the applicants is also a big part of the stories we've talked about with Larry Frink and others so this is a little bit of a side quest but uh I was reading this article about um conservative response towards legalized marijuana and as soon as marijuana was legalized uh conservative marijuana consumption just like approached Baseline uh where it used to be like marijuana and legalized like yeah they were just like eating consumables it's okay now yeah some people are saying yeah I guess some people's reason was just we don't want to do things that are illegal basically and if they're legal then we'll consider it yeah yeah and I mean obviously this is just like Bitcoin is not illegal but you know if this kind of Rhymes right just like as soon as

it's gotten the regulatory stamp of approval people like I'll buy it now we can consider it right I mean that's the other thing we talk about with the advis because even if you could access the trust or the cash settled futures there's like suitability reasons why you you wouldn't look at it right like if you'd say I mean these fees are too high you might say I know the trusts have pretty high fees like that that might just be a reason not even to bother learning about Bitcoin yet so the only vehicle I can buy is fees that are Way Beyond what I would ever allow my client to pay right you might say so you don't even consider it right same thing if if they're not on the platform at all the second it's on the platform like right you've got to you need an excuse not to

yeah the question starts being like well like let's say Bitcoin you don't invest and your adviser misses like a big run in Bitcoin and they could have done it and they really could have because custody is taken care of all the kyc stuff all the compliance it's all taken care of by the issuers right and these are real issuers um you you've kind of have you done your job at that point you really have to remember what we're talking about this Capital we're talking one in 10 choose to invest in Bitcoin at all and then that of that investment of those one in 10 only 1% that's what your analysis is it's really a tiny fraction right right okay so as we end this episode Alex I I want to up the question let's take off our Bitcoin hat for a minute actually no no I'm going to keep

my Bitcoin hat on my Bitcoin bull hat on and I'm going to put over top of that hat an ethereum bull hat okay so the arguments that we just made for Bitcoin do they also apply for the possibility of an ethereum ETF which According to some analysts uh James sephr and others if you get the Bitcoin spot ETF approved then we might be this is lower probability than Bitcoin ETF but we might be months away I know months could be 6 months could be 3 months could be 12 months from a an ethereum ETF and if that is the case don't all of the arguments that we made for Bitcoin then also apply for ethereum and maybe in an

amplified way because ethereum is lower market cap ethereum has uh even less legitimacy than uh Bitcoin in kind of like trafi right Gary gendler's constantly like well I'm not going to tell you if it's security or not you know um so what is your take on the potential of an ethereum ETF to affect ether price so I our analysis isn't I wouldn't say the price in particular isn't directly comparable because I'm not sure that we would compet to gold in the same way which is what we did for Bitcoin but I would say in terms of accessibility it all absolutely applies right I mean there there are not just like there are not um advisers are not able to access you know e Bitcoin uh they're not able

to access these Bitcoin products today the existing ones the cash out Futures the truss or whatever um or like Kraken spot like they're not able to access eth spot really or the eth trust or the so I think from an accessibility standpoint it absolutely will have a pretty large Market I think the narrative for the uh investment Community is further behind I also think it's thought of more as a risk asset or a technology investment than Bitcoin which people have you know the Bitcoin is digital gold Mantra I think is really taken hold in a lot of investors eyes uh and mind so I'm not sure what the I I think it's we have to think about it a little bit differently by the way we will think about it we will rerun an analysis like this on eth for the same sizing the eth ETF Market

well you know call at some point um but I yeah I think I think it I think the accessibility which as we described right in our analysis that's the main thing we're altering right I mean we we stay flat at 10% choose to invest 1% I don't know if we'll come to the same exact flat like unchanging variables but the ramp could look very similar in terms of the total addressable Market um and so and I look I agree with and I you know I I really respect Eric balunis and James saford at Bloomberg intelligence they've been really great on the the legal and Regulatory approval process timing and all that for the Bitcoin ETF right the reason they're saying this is because one of the core pretty much the core argument that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals made in that grayscale ruling

was that there's no material difference between the Futures ETFs and the spot ETFs um in fact I think they said there was mathematically no difference right they used the term mathematically well I mean then the argument obviously holds well like I mean if the if the SEC approved the Bitcoin Futures ETFs and now they're you know doing work on the spot ETFs and and if they do approve the spot ETFs well don't we also have eth Futures ETFs wouldn't the same argument apply I I think I mean we don't know but I I think yeah like I see the logic and why you know they could be forthcoming after um we haven't done the math on it I don't know exactly where we'd land I do think of ethereum generally as more of a Technology Innovation play than a pure digital commodity of course they're

both like gas tokens for their networks there are things that are very similar right they have similarly um you know not not that inflationary they're both quite scarce in the scheme of things so I I can do the ei5 59 conversation versus like Bitcoin predictable scarcity but like right there there are overlaps um but I think it's a little different but that could also even be extremely positive like I don't so yes I think broadly yes um I think it they they would be big I think they could definitely be big there are a lot of people that own ethereum and a lot of other people who might want to own it that can't currently well Bank list Nation you heard it here there still might be some opportunity to front run front run Bitcoin it depends on uh how you think this is all going to shake out

and certainly seems like there's some opportunity to front run etherum I will say one thing Alex is um we we recently had some of the folks over at Fidelity on for an ethereum episode and it was really interesting the the kind of the the more recent narrative around ether particularly being staked as kind of like an internet Bond type of narrative so this idea seems to be in the early stages of of taking hold in trafi which is um very exciting for Bank list because we've been talking about this for a long time which is if Bitcoin is gold then ethereum could be this form of Internet bond which could really be interesting particularly if you had a stake uh ether ETF at some point in time you have to assume that the ETFs if they

come out for ether will will stake a large portion I mean I it's almost I I think most of the custodians will too yeah so no I think that's it's an interesting differentiator absolutely from an asset standpoint right I mean it it it generates some kind of return even if it's even if it's dilution protection or a yield or or whatever you want to call it like the It staking adds an interesting component here Alex this has been incredibly helpful and you are you are doing this from a fantastic uh podcasting Booth podcast Studio I believe uh at the offices where you reside at Galaxy and that is also because you have your own podcast as I understand it what what do you guys uh do on the podcast what's what's coming

out next I appreciate that Ryan a lot our podcast is called Galaxy brains um it's typically we talk with our one of our head Traders Bim naab BBE about market conditions and Macro for the first 10 minutes and then we have a guest from somewhere in ecosystem occasionally somewhere from Galaxy um this week we have two of the top Senate AIDs that worked on the bipartisan proof act which has been introduced in Congress which bans the co-mingling of customer funds um at at crypto exchanges and custodians and also requires a cryptographic proof of Reserves at T Station on a monthly basis very interesting narrow Bell on this is something we like we like the proof act do right like Alex like this is a good this is pretty narrow and straightforward right if you hold my funds then you got to keep them out of

your account and you also have to cryptographically provide some attestation that and then an auditor will compare that to what they said you're supposed to have and then that has to be published we don't actually say the bill doesn't actually say how much that it has to be one to one we're saying you have to publish it so we'll be able to know if you know you claim that you have 100% but you don't actually that's the idea this give us some SPF protection going into the the the next Bull Run so so where can folks access that episode uh Alex yeah galaxy brains.io takes you right there but you can also see all of the stuff including our reports we talked about today at galaxy.com resesarch bankless Nation we will include some links in the show notes for those resources that Alex just mentioned Alex thank you so much for

coming on bangos WE very excited about the bull case for Bitcoin and um months months away January are close okay you don't know but I I agree with that January 10th or sooner is the most likely in my opinion all right January 10th or sooner it could be a fantastic New Year Alex thank you so much for for coming on backas today yeah Ryan David thanks for having me wrist and disclaimers bankless Nation got to let you know crypto is risky uh Bitcoin model RIS ETF yeah so our models so is analysis so is uh buying things and selling things as well uh you could lose what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier it's absolutely not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot

I