The Wolf Of All Streets - Ethereum Spot ETF is LIVE! | Crypto Town Hall w/ @Bluemoon_io

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, hopefully you can hear me. I was stuck in the glitch, clicking on the microphone button and nothing was happening as is tradition. But that is neither here nor there. Happy Ethereum Spot ETF trading live day to those who celebrate. Today, a monumental day for the industry. Absolutely astounding that we've actually seen these trading if you consider the odds of the approval back in May when it happened. And they're obviously being celebrated with fanfare

Starting point is 00:00:33 and wide publicity. And actually, it seems like kind of nobody's talking about it. I find it very strange. I don't understand how this isn't the biggest event of the summer for crypto that everyone's not excited after seeing what happened with the Bitcoin spot ETFs. And we're going to unpack maybe why that's part of the cycle or lower expectations or the way that they were approved. But I'm very excited that these are trading. And I think it's huge. I think obviously, we also have the Bitcoin conference in Nashville. Starting on Thursday, Trump speaking there and politics have been dominating the cycle. Jonathan, go ahead. It's the Apollo 11 syndrome. After man landed on the moon, huge freaking deal. There were other

Starting point is 00:01:19 moon landings, but nobody cared after that. We had bitcoin etf ethereum etf even though it's a really huge deal it's uh whatever i think that's fair i would also argue it's just you know uh the timing of these things of where they hit in the cycle and with price action usually has more impact than anything else we had such a crazy ramp up to the bitcoin spot etfs and all the hype and now we're just in the suburb doulterums where no amount of news moves price. I mean, I think we were talking about that this year yesterday. I don't know if it was here on YouTube. But the fact that Bitcoin price is not trading higher since Trump pivoted entirely on crypto is pretty wild. That when he made those announcements, price was probably higher than it

Starting point is 00:01:59 is today. Every fundamentally positive story we've seen for this industry has not really moved the price. I think it just shows how powerful the post-having summer shock period is. But I think that's all pent up demand for things to go flying. But Ryan, we got you here. Ryan's the head of research at Bitwise. For those who don't know, I think we have a contractual obligation, that's a joke, to have someone from Bitwise or at least like three of you on at all times. I mean, you guys are everywhere all the time on every show and we love it. What's happening over there today as these launch? Hey, Scott. Yeah. Exciting day, as you mentioned, kind of a historic day for the crypto community, for the Ethereum community. We're really excited about the launch of these Ethereum ETFs.

Starting point is 00:02:50 It's been one of those years where so much has happened in the past six months. And looking back to January, December, before that, the thought of a spot Ethereum ETF was far off in people's minds. But things move fast and we're super excited about the launch today. And I think it's cooler or cooled off a bit compared to spot Bitcoin ETFs, but that's something that we would expect given its size relative to Bitcoin and given Bitcoin really is kind of like the big brother in the room, but really exciting day and super excited about the launch of the ETFs that just started trading a little uh you know 30 45 minutes ago yeah pretty incredible and we're seeing I mean I haven't we have no idea I guess about inflows now flows and such but we sort of had a very small ethereum move today I

Starting point is 00:03:36 mean the lows were 34 30 today it went trade as high as 35 40 now back to 34 78 but not seeing much right yeah yeah so we won't know about flows until really towards the end of the day or tomorrow, just given the delay in traditional market settlement and reporting. We have volume numbers so far. It's certainly pre-market volumes and market volumes so far into today are much, much lower than what we saw for Bitcoin ETFs at this point. So that's the best proxy we have right now to see how these will perform or what kind of orders of magnitudes less or more these will do than Bitcoin. And right now, it's much, much lighter from a volumes perspective.

Starting point is 00:04:20 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So listen to what I was saying before. Do you think this is the Apollo question, as you said, the Apollo 13, Apollo 11, whatever it was? My American history is changing at the moment. Do you think that there's just less excitement because we've seen this movie before? Do you think it's the cycle? I mean, how do you view it? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think that the main reason why there's just less demand right now for the Ethereum ETFs than Bitcoin ETFs, I think there's probably two or three main reasons. The first thing, it's just a smaller asset. So on a relative basis, it's going to have less inflows and less trading volume, just given it's a smaller asset but i think the main reason is that everyone has heard of bitcoin you can't really go into uh any any kind of financial office or financial institutions office talk to financial advisors or even really you know i had this conversation last night with with my dad and he had never heard of ethereum which is crazy to me because i've said it to him

Starting point is 00:05:29 i've mentioned to him probably 100 times over the past couple years but uh you know that just i think shows that everyone's heard of bitcoin and only you know a small portion of the population knows what ethereum is and that's why we have this you know lack of demand for ethereum compared to bitcoin is because people don't know what it is yet. And I think that's longer down their educational journey when it comes to crypto. First, you hear about Bitcoin, then you dismiss it, then you learn about Bitcoin, then you buy into Bitcoin, then you start learning about Ethereum. And I just think we're still in that, then you buy into Bitcoin phase of that cycle. So I think it'll have its day. But, you know, my thought was that we would have been probably better off from an Ethereum perspective if these ETFs had launched a year or two from now,

Starting point is 00:06:12 so that people had time to kind of get settled in around Bitcoin and get their conviction around Bitcoin and get it in their portfolio and then start looking for the next asset. But it came quickly behind the spot Bitcoin ETF launches. And so this is the world we live in now. Yeah, it makes sense. Anyone else have an opinion as to what we're likely to see here from the Ethereum spot ETFs? I think we can at least all agree that we're excited that it's happening. Alex, what are you thinking? Yeah. So I have absolutely no idea what Ryan said, because of course, Twitter just I can hear you, Scott. I can't hear him. So thank you, Twitter.

Starting point is 00:06:50 Ryan said you were handsome and his favorite speaker on the panel. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. That's so sweet. Yeah, it's all fucking. I think it's a combination of, I guess apollo 11 as you put it everything being priced in um and just you know the summer doldrums all together i mean there's just you know also the other thing is bitcoin just way bigger among the general public than ethereum is at the end of the

Starting point is 00:07:18 day and like you know can have a lot of debates about whether this will increase the exposure overall personally i'm a little more skeptical on that just because i think the whole argument behind ethereum is the usefulness of it so yeah now now you cut out but i don't know if that was intentional or not nope um it wasn't cool okay well yes anyways combination of priced in and apollo 11 in my mind okay i think that's fair press and how are you viewing sorry i'm just currently nose deep in a contract give me give me five minutes how is it are you charging us from the side yeah no i'm good i mean the etf we're talking about the etfs i assume yes we are preston thanks for joining us yeah sorry i've just been been here in the background uh we're just chomping on his

Starting point is 00:08:11 end and marking up some contracts i just discovered zinn on sunday at a fish show it's the most wonderful thing ever invented um so yeah i mean it's it's great i think uh it's great signals an important reversal by the sec which is politically. I think all of that started when Trump recorded crypto, and this is just downstream of that. Fair enough. Simon, how are you framing it? Hey, Scott. Sorry if I missed or repeat anything that you guys all said later. No. anything that you guys all said later um no i think it's a real anti-climax to be honest i don't think there's much excitement i think it is you know a lot of the excitement around the shift in policy has already been priced in i'm not sure if the the demand for an eth etf we all know

Starting point is 00:08:57 it's an inferior product the real you know the real fun in ethereum is using it um is uh is you know receiving yield um participating in staking um so i'm just not sure if the excitement's there i think the real narrative that wall street would have got is that if bitcoin is your growth play uh and ethereum is like your income your yield play then i think they would have got that but because the regulators haven't allowed for that i don't know it feels just like a real anti-climax i'm not sure exactly what the demand is going to be uh and it just feels like all the all the timing is just around so much focus on bitcoin with the bitcoin conference so much focus around politics um i don't know maybe

Starting point is 00:09:47 maybe it's just a function of where my head's at at the moment but maybe everyone else is a bit more excited about it yeah i would say a scale of one to ten today we're about like a two for technology uh with with glitches i lost simon Did you guys lose Simon? Thumbs up for anyone. Yeah, I guess I would just throw out there around what Simon said is the way I'm thinking about how Bitcoin and Ethereum fit into a portfolio is slightly different. I do think at some point, the yield on StakeEth will be more important to investors than it is today. But I don't believe that's the reason people wouldn't be investing in these Ethereum ETF. But I don't believe that's the reason people wouldn't be investing in these Ethereum ETFs. I don't think they would want to invest in Ethereum,

Starting point is 00:10:30 but hold off until they had ETFs or go through the process of staking themselves. In many instances, there's a lot of people that want to invest in retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, financial advisors, wealth managers who will prefer the ease of the ETF over the additional yield you can get through the process of staking. I kind of think about it in the sense of Bitcoin being this global monetary asset, somewhat of a digital gold in your portfolio, and then Ethereum being the way to get exposure to the other elements of the crypto ecosystem, the technology platform elements like DeFi, NFTs, crypto gaming, social fi, all these different really interesting technological sides of crypto with this with

Starting point is 00:11:14 this platform and kind of this crypto ecosystem through Ethereum and then the digital gold monetary asset narrative through Bitcoin. If you think about investors who invest in crypto through Coinbase and other trade exchanges like that, they have their optionality, whether they want to buy just Bitcoin, just Ethereum, or both. And I know personally, and in many, many instances, people are just buying both. They're not picking one or the other. They're buying both and kind of building a crypto sleeve for their portfolio. And I see the same thing happening with these ETFs. As more and more ETFs come to market, I think people will add to their sleeve and kind of building a crypto sleeve for their portfolio. And I see the same thing happening with these ETFs as more and more ETFs come to market. I think people will add to their sleeve

Starting point is 00:11:48 and kind of index the market rather than pick one particular asset over the other for kind of that single shot mentality. Hey, one thing I'm curious about, anyone that was involved in drafting or has actually read some of these prospectuses for the ECTF was there like very specific disclosure

Starting point is 00:12:09 around the pre-mine and like who owns what because obviously there would be disclosure of addresses but I'm just I'd be very curious around what needed to be disclosed around Ethereum foundation pre-mine all those types of stuff did anyone read that or was involved in drafting it?

Starting point is 00:12:30 Our legal and compliance team would have been heavily involved in drafting those for our team. But my general consensus is that the market, more broadly in a deep crypto enthusiast, or Bitcoin enthusiast rather, I would say, cares so much more about that pre-mine element in the state of about their ability to surveil the market today with the regulated futures market and all of those elements of the DTS rather than kind of this pre-mine element back from 2015. So long way of saying that it's of small to little to no concern for the SEC to look back into that element of Ethereum's life cycle. Yeah, I mean, very interesting because obviously, when you go further down the chain, the whole economics of who owns what, who's got locked-in tokens,

Starting point is 00:13:39 and then that type of stuff will become more and more significant. But with Ethereum, I think it's still an important disclosure around, you know, the fully diluted market cap and which tokens haven't moved and which tokens are still part of the early founders. I would have thought that would be a real important disclosure, but maybe not. I seem to be getting kicked off let back on, by the way, if anyone's wondering what's going on here technologically, I apologize, but we're super, super glitchy. Ryan, go ahead. Oh yeah. I was going to say, I think it's of the same level of concern as, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:18 the Satoshi allocation, right? Satoshi owns a single digit percentage of Bitcoin, right? And I'm not at all comparing how Bitcoin's kind of token generation event in subsequent distribution when compared to Ethereum. But I think if you zoom out, you can kind of make parallels between, you know, the SEC, if they're concerned about a certain entity at the origination of a token or near the origination of a token having a large portion of the supply, then they got comfortable with that with Bitcoin and Satoshi's ownership. And so they probably were just as comfortable with Ethereum and the distribution of the ETH token around that same kind of concern. They apply these parallels to these assets very frequently,

Starting point is 00:15:04 which is why you kind of see this similar stage of assets existing for many years, having a regulated CME futures market or just futures market they can surveil, then having a spot ETF. And we saw Ethereum kind of graduate through those stages in the same way we saw Bitcoin graduate through those stages. And I think those different benchmarks are probably the most important thing that the sec is looking for rather than some of these these other nuances yes they're important i agree they're important but it's just not something they're heavily focused on yeah got it i guess when we go down to the next layer then solana i think it actually becomes really important to understand you know what terms v VCs invested in and that type of stuff. So I think maybe Bitcoin and ETH are the last two like that. And as we go down the next chain, I reckon disclosures are just going to get more and more aggressive.

Starting point is 00:15:56 Yeah, they're certainly in a class of their own. And I agree with you, particularly in the SEC or the current SEC regime and applying the Howey test in this this element of, you know, is a little bit more uh obvious of a distinction i would say so certainly bitcoin ethereum in a class their own probably you know a handful of other top 10 crypto market cap uh assets and and others are have have cleared that, but certainly you get down to the hundreds, 200s, 300 market cap level from the top list of assets by market cap list. And that's when you start to see assets that have a much more or a much different token allocation profile rather than Bitcoin, Ethereum and some of the other top assets. Yeah, that makes sense david you uh saw

Starting point is 00:17:06 you requested and joined what are your thoughts david haslam hey scott how you going man um good look i'm just of the very basic opinion at the moment that the the bitcoin is simply far stronger than the ethereum narrative people have looked into, you know, these key investors have looked into Ethereum and Bitcoin side by side. And, you know, we've seen huge inflows into Bitcoin because it's sound money. Bitcoin is Bitcoin. It's far superior to Ethereum. And I just don't think you're going to get the same level of investment

Starting point is 00:17:41 flowing into these ETH ETFs as what everyone expects you to get for that very reason. Seems everybody's pretty bearish. I think they're going to do exceptionally well over time, but I think there's just a kind of a weird timing and overhang, I guess, of the supply that people are expecting initially here. I just pinned a tweet up in the nest from Eric Balchunas just to give you guys some perspective. Here's volume after 15 minutes of trading. So take that with a grain of salt. Total of 112 million traded for the group,

Starting point is 00:18:16 which is a ton versus normal ETF launch, but only about half of what Bitcoin ETF's volume pace was on day one. Although 50% would be exceeding expectations, in my opinion. Ryan, this just for you, also Bitwise outperforming earlier. So Bitwise early in second place there. That was in the first 15 minutes of trading earlier. But 50% of Bitcoin volume in the first 15 minutes is way beyond expectations.

The Wolf Of All Streets - Ethereum Spot ETF is LIVE! | Crypto Town Hall w/ @Bluemoon_io

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