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- 🥜 BlackRock Wants Your Bitcoin
🥜 BlackRock Wants Your Bitcoin
PLUS: ETFs going bananas
GM to all you crypto nuts. Crypto Nutshell #465 cookin’ it up… 🍳🥜
We're the crypto newsletter that's more thrilling than the Incredibles suiting up to battle a new villain... 🦸♀️⚡
What we’ve cooked up for you today…
🍌 ETFs going bananas
🪨 BlackRock wants your Bitcoin
📈 Layer 2’s levelling up
💰 And more…
MARKET WATCH ⚖️
Prices as at 2:05am ET
Only the top 20 coins measured by market cap feature in this section
ETFs GOING BANANAS 🍌
BREAKING: Bitcoin ETFs records over $800 million inflows in 2 days
So far this week has been HUGE for the Bitcoin ETFs.
They’ve been going on a rampage:
Monday net inflows: $555.9 million
Tuesday net inflows: $371.0 million
Wednesday net inflows: $458.5 million
Which brings the weekly inflow total to $1.39 billion.
(It’s also worth pointing out that Grayscale hasn’t seen any outflows this week. In fact it saw $37.8 million in inflows on Monday)
And we’re only 3 days in!
The crazy part is that BlackRock alone accounts for over 50% of the inflows, with $761.7 million so far this week.
Those numbers are absurd.
President of the ETF Store, Nate Geraci, pointed out something very interesting with these inflows:
Only 8 out of 560+ ETFs launched in 2024 have taken in more than $1 billion…
For the ENTIRE year…
Whereas the Bitcoin ETFs did over $1 billion in the past 3 days…
And in other ETF news, Grayscale filed to convert their Large Cap Fund (GDLC) into an ETF.
Here’s why this is important:
Grayscales GDLC fund currently holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Avalanche.
This would also be the first combo crypto ETF if it gets approved.
And it paves the way for an eventual Solana, XRP or Avalanche ETF down the line.
ETF analyst Eric Balchunas also thinks it may have a chance:
“Grayscale is looking to put out the first ETF that will hold spot bitcoin, ether, solana and XRP by converting GDLC. Is this poss? Maybe. Bc btc and ether make up over 90% of holdings (see below) and there's wiggle room for ETF to have small portion of illiquid assets it may well be approved. If so, it would leapfrog everyone in the race to put out a combo crypto ETF. Discount shrank a bit so some ppl clearly think this could work.”
But that’s not all!
We’ve got even more crypto ETF news for you today.
New ETF issuer Canary just filed for a Litecoin ETF.
And whilst this is super interesting to see.
The demand for it is a little questionable…
Considering the drop off in inflows we’ve seen with the Bitcoin ETFs compared to the Ethereum ETFs.
With that being said, institutional adoption continues to grow every single day.
VaultCraft launches V2, TVL skyrockets above $100M
VaultCraft launches V2, partners with Safe, and secures $100M+ in Bitcoin
Matrixport, Asia’s leading crypto providers, commits $100M+ in Bitcoin
OKX Web3 to launch Safe Smart Vaults with $250K+ in rewards
BLACKROCK WANTS YOUR BITCOIN 🪨
Earlier this week, BlackRock had their Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call.
During the call, BlackRock's CEO, Larry Fink, stated that Bitcoin reminded him of the early U.S. housing market.
The U.S housing market is currently worth ~$50 trillion.
If Bitcoin got to $50 trillion, each Bitcoin would be worth just under $2.4 million. 🤯
For those of you who don’t know Larry Fink, he’s the CEO and co-founder of BlackRock.
BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world with $11.5 trillion in assets under management.
They also have the largest Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), which currently holds over 369,000 Bitcoin. (over 1.76% of the total supply!)
Fink himself is arguably the most influential man on Wall Street, so when he talks about Bitcoin, it’s a big deal…
When asked about Bitcoin on their earnings call, here’s what Fink had to say:
“We believe Bitcoin is an asset class in itself… It is an alternative to other commodities, like gold.”
Fink then said Bitcoin reminded him of the early U.S housing market:
“I think it’s [Bitcoin] is a function of liquidity… no different to years ago when we started the mortgage market… I truly believe we will see a broadening of the market of these digital assets.”
Now Fink is being misquoted across the internet for saying directly “Bitcoin will become as big as the US housing market.”
For example, by mathematician Fred Krueger:
However, Larry Fink didn’t directly say this.
Although he did hint that Bitcoin would become as big as the U.S housing market.
Which, if it did happen, would put 1 Bitcoin at $2.38 million per coin. 🤯
On the call, Fink also mentioned Ethereum:
“The role of Ethereum as a blockchain can grow dramatically.”
All this coming from arguably the powerful man on Wall Street… ?
Unbelievably bullish. 🚀 🐂
LAYER 2’S LEVELLING UP 📈
2024 has seen the Ethereum ecosystem undergo rapid growth.
This has largely come through the development of Layer 2 networks.
Put simply, layer 2 networks are more efficient systems built on top of Ethereum.
These Layer 2’s allow for increased transaction speeds and lower transaction costs.
And therefore have led to increased activity and innovation on the Ethereum network.
The chart below shows how daily active addresses in the Ethereum ecosystem has risen sharply this year.
A big proponent of this has been the launch of Base (developed by Coinbase) which is the blue area in the chart below.
The number of daily transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem has also seen impressive growth.
In fact it’s increased by over 5x since the start of 2023.
Once again Base is leading in this metric...
Even though network activity has been spiking, total fees paid have actually decreased.
The biggest reason for this was Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade.
This upgrade drastically reduced transaction fees for Layer 2 networks.
Summing all of that up, we’ve got:
Rising daily active addresses 📈
Rising daily transactions 📈
Decreasing user fees 📉
Layer 2’s are clearly bringing more users, more activity and more innovation to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Which directly addresses Ethereum’s two main criticisms from last cycle.
With those criticisms being:
It was too slow
And it was too expensive (gas fees spiked especially during the NFT craze)
That’s bullish. 🐂
CRACKING CRYPTO 🥜
Tether CEO slams Italy plan to increase capital gain tax on Bitcoin to 42%. Crypto enthusiasts threaten to leave Italy over proposed Bitcoin tax hike to 42%.
Trump-backed platform’s crypto token sale flatlines at $10M amid site jitters. A token sale for the Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial has faltered, so far reaching only 3.4% of its goal to sell $300 million worth of tokens.
History Suggests Crypto’s Bullish Momentum Should Continue Into the U.S. Election and Afterwards. Bitcoin could move 10% in either direction on the outcome of the U.S. election, according to one analysis.
Radiant Capital appears to suffer $51 million exploit on its BNB Chain and Arbitrum instances. It appears the attack began on Radiant’s Radiant’s Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum instance and then moved onto BNB Chain, Arkham data shows.
WHAT WE’RE READING 📚
Want to get even smarter? Check these out.
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The Hustle (link) - Get Smarter on Business and Tech
Your Next Breakthrough (link) - Personal growth with Mark Manson
The Neuron (link) - AI trends and tools to keep you ahead
CAN YOU CRACK THIS NUT? ✍️
Select your answer below and you’ll be redirected to the results page. (answer explanation can be found after “Meme Corner”)
Which of the following USD Stablecoins is currently the largest, measured by market cap? |
MEME CORNER 😂
Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?
Trivia Answer: A) USDT 🥳
USDT is the largest stablecoin by far with a market cap of ~$119.6 billion.
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