Unchained - Why Morgan Stanley Launched the Cheapest Bitcoin ETF on the Market

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

James Seyffart didn't expect Morgan Stanley to do this. Now he's watching to see if BlackRock blinks. Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it... without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges.  Get started at http://nexo.com/unchained Ether.fi is giving Unchained listeners 15% cashback on food and ride apps — and that's on top of the 3% you get on everything else.  Your bank is charging you to use your own money. Laura switched and loves her card! Go to ether.fi/unchained to claim your offer.  Bitcoin’s application layer, Citrea, launched its mainnet, expanding Bitcoin’s utility to privacy, lending, BTC yields, and more. Citrea enables: cBTC: The first trust-minimized Bitcoin on a fully programmable platform. ctUSD: A native stablecoin for Bitcoin, allowing for unified liquidity. Bitcoin Capital Markets bringing demand, and utility to the Bitcoin Network. Explore the Citrea Ecosystem. ======================================================== When Morgan Stanley launched MSBT this week, it didn't just become the first major US bank to issue its own spot Bitcoin ETF — it became the cheapest one on the market, undercutting BlackRock's iBIT by 11 basis points. For a firm not known for fee competition, that surprised even close ETF watchers.  James Seyffart, senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, has spent years tracking how wirehouses have slowly warmed to Bitcoin products. He joins Laura Shin to discuss what MSBT's launch says about where institutional crypto adoption is heading, whether Morgan Stanley's 16,000 advisors and $7 trillion in assets could meaningfully shift flows, and why Seyffart now sees inaction on crypto as the active choice, not the safe one, for portfolio managers.  Plus: Strategy's $14.5 billion loss, Saylor keeps buying, and why MSTR’s S&P 500 question is now entirely a Bitcoin price story. Host: ⁠Laura Shin⁠, Host / Unchained Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠James Seyffart, Senior Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing new here on Unchained is Investment Advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit Unchained Crypto.com. Introducing Nexo, the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your digital assets. Borrow against them without selling. Trade a variety of cryptocurrencies. all-in-one platform, now available in the U.S. Get started today at nexo.com slash unchained.
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Starting point is 00:01:02 Citraea enables Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, Bitcoin yield, and more. Get started at Citraea.xyz slash Unchained. Morgan Stanley became the first major US thing to issue its own spot Bitcoin ETF, which launched, and that was MSBT, which launched on Wednesday. So what made this interesting to me is that this is coming amidst this broader market slump, And oh my gosh, I am so sorry, James. I completely forgot to introduce you. It's okay.
Starting point is 00:01:34 Today's guest is James Safer, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Welcome, James. Thanks for having me back, Laura. It's so nice to have you back. I know you had to stop moderating bits and bips. We miss you, but yeah, it's lovely to have you back in the show. So as I started saying, Morgan Stanley became the first major US bank
Starting point is 00:01:54 to issue its own spot Bitcoin ETF, which was MSBT, which launched on Wednesday. What made this interesting is that this is coming amidst this broader market slump. So tell me, how did MSBT perform? And how do you think the market timing affected its launch? I mean, it performed really well. It traded over $34 million in day one, which isn't like blockbuster. We've never seen this before, but it's top, I don't know, percentile, a couple percentile of ETF launches over the last year or two. So there's still interest out there for Bitcoin spot ETF launches, though I think the Morgan Stanley name of what is behind it, which we'll get into, is a huge driver of that, obviously. Today, obviously,
Starting point is 00:02:35 we're in the second day of trading. It's probably going to trade over 20 million, 25 million to be my guess. We're at 12 and a half, just a little beyond halfway through the day now. So yeah, it's gone pretty well. It took in $30 million on day one. This is not something where I would guess this to be like, oh my God, money's going to pour in immediately. I think this is going to be much more of a slow burn type of thing. If people are going to move assets or interested in Bitcoin, they've had plenty of opportunities. Even Morgan Stanley advisors, they're okay to buy IBIT and some other ETS. I think BF from BitWise, but don't quote me on that. So the advisors that they really wanted could have gotten exposure. The benefit here is it's 14 basis points, which is the cheapest ETF on the market right now.
Starting point is 00:03:17 And when you get to things like spot Bitcoin ETFs or spot anything ETFs and all it does is hold the underlying asset, like the nuance becomes around brand. branding and fees. And now this is the lowest cost provider. I will say Vanek, their whole Bitcoin ETF is a fee waiver. So it's zero fees right now. So they're undercuting gray scales BTC by one BIP. And they undercut Ibit by 11 bips here.
Starting point is 00:03:38 So long term buy and hold oriented investors are probably going to be very interested in this product because 11 bips, it can add up over a long enough timeframe. So yeah, it seems like the fees will really drive a lot of this. But you did mention something about the Morgan Stanley brand. Like, tell me, you know, generally how you think it will fare in competition with other Bitcoin ETFs. Like, you know, who will it appeal to versus the other ones or, you know, who's going to buy it or how, you know, will it sell itself? Yeah. I think it has to be more geared towards long-term buy-and-hold types investors.
Starting point is 00:04:15 Like, that's the people that are going to buy this. Right now, Ibit is far and away the largest. It's also, but there's plenty of others with billions of assets in them. I think there's 12 or 13 ETFs now. They're all for the most part doing pretty well. One thing that no one is touching Ibit on from BlackRock is the volume and the options volume. I mean, they have 97 plus percent of the options volume. So if you're trading and hedging and doing a lot of stuff like that, you're probably going to go more towards Ibit, particularly for shorter term type trades. Obviously, if you want, there's leverage versions of these things as well. So this is going to be geared, like I said, much more towards the advisor base, the people who are putting this in their
Starting point is 00:04:51 retirement accounts. I mean, 14, like I said, if you can get at the lower cost you can get, the better off you are long term. There's competing products. Grace Gales, BTC is only one BPS more expensive. But we see like lower, like if you have a feed that's one basis point lower, it can move flows by the billions in the equity size of the market. I don't see why that won't be the same case on crypto for people who are going to be cost conscious. So long term buy and hold investors and people at the wires like at Morgan Stanley. Um, Obviously, we call it B.Y.O.A. Bring your own assets. Morgan Stanley's wealth platform basically has over $7 trillion in assets.
Starting point is 00:05:28 So when they're advocating for some portion or an allocation to crypto or Bitcoin, you just take a small fraction of that that puts a small fraction of that in their portfolio and it can add up. And so for any Morgan Stanley advisors that previously wanted to, you know, put some allocation of Bitcoin in their clients' portfolios, they probably were sending them to a competing ETF. So how does that affect the business of those products? Yeah, it'll be interesting. It depends exactly what happens because one,
Starting point is 00:06:03 if you're sitting on a loss and you're going to sell. So say right now, a lot of people are probably sitting a losses in their Bitcoin ETS. We know for a fact the average investor in Bitcoin ETFs are sitting on a loss. I think the average price is around 83K, last I checked. So one of the problems is if you sell at a loss, you can't buy something that's substantially similar theoretically because of a wash sale rule. There's a lot of nuance here because crypto technically isn't subject to it, but an
Starting point is 00:06:26 ETF is a security that holds an underlying crypto. So talk to your tax advisors. But if you wanted to swap when it was up, then there is no time limit. So basically you can't do it immediately on the same day, but if you wait 30 days, I think is the number you can do it. So ironically, the, you know, selling to lock in losses might not be what they're going to do. So one, that would be some of the money, right? Some of the assets that are going to go into MSBT are going to be people moving from another product because they're going to go into something cheaper.
Starting point is 00:06:56 Now it's the cheapest product on the market. Also, advisors coming into the market new players that are trying to add allocations. If they're going to sort by fees, this thing is going to be at the top of the list alongside, like I said, grayscale and Vanek. So those are the type investors that are going to come in. Again, it's not going to be the traders. Those people are unlikely to go here. It's easy to kind of eat market share and get flows and do well on AUM, but on volume, it's hard. And on options volume and options open interest, it's even harder because volume and the liquidity tends to go to the center.
Starting point is 00:07:30 It's like a snowball rolling downhill. Okay. And so I saw a lot of commentary was making a lot out of the fact that Morgan Stanley has 16,000 financial advisors who can help sell this. So talk a little bit about how you think that affects, how it kind of. competes long term with the likes of iBid or bitwise or any of these other products. Yeah. So it's interesting. In the ETF market, there's always been this trend of these people trying to do B.YOA type products, right? They're going to launch products that are substantially similar, but they don't have the brand cachet of like, say, for a large cap U.S. equity ETF.
Starting point is 00:08:09 There are plenty of products out there that are basically free to get exposure, but still it's the S&P 500 ETFs that matter. With this, there is no, like, like underlying index. So it kind of comes down to the brand name. And I think one, obviously this is if you're if you're in the space one, I think we could end up seeing other people cut fees, right? If you're charging 25 bips or 22 bips and you're not doing as well or 21 or 20 or whatever it may be and you think if you can get even if you don't want to go down to 14, if you go down to 17, it becomes a lot better of a conversation for an advisor. If if I bit had come out and launched at, you know, 35 or 40 bips, it probably wouldn't be the dominant player
Starting point is 00:08:44 it is. But it got to 25. It was substantially similar to the lowest products in the market at 20 bips when all these things went live. And Black Rock's brand name and cash a and their advisor network was able to take off. Obviously, Morgan Stanley's had a bit of a disadvantage here. They're coming out two years later. But like I said, and as you said, they have 16 plus thousand advisors. They have seven trillion dollars in assets. They are officially now recommending, I think like a two to four percent allocation depending on like the client's growth. as long as they're like position for growth, not, you know, income or conservative portfolio allocations.
Starting point is 00:09:15 They're basically saying it makes sense to put this as a, you know, a satellite position in your portfolio. So, and then that's just one wire house. That's just Morgan Stanley. You also have UBS and JPM Morgan and all these other things. We recently had Schwab come out with recommendations for putting Bitcoin into a client portfolio depending on your growth and conservative characteristics. So all of these things, if you're going to go in, the number one thing you're probably
Starting point is 00:09:38 going to look at one. It might be track record. So like I said, it could be a slow burn. So if this thing is out for a year or two, there's no issues. It's still the lowest on the market. It could, it will be definitely beneficial. But yeah, that's the way I think it's all going to play out. And I'd be interested to see if we see some other players lower fees to compete. All right. So yeah, let's dive a little bit more into the fee thing because I remember the day it was announced. You tweeted in all caps, wow. And, I wondered why your reaction was so strong. Morgan Stanley isn't known to be the vanguard of anything.
Starting point is 00:10:15 They are not out there offering super low cost fee competitive products, let alone the leader in the clubhouse. Again, absent fee waivers. So they also don't launch a ton of ETS. Most of their other ETSs that are out there are technically under brand names. They own a company called Eaton Vance and Parametric. So most of the ETS that are out there aren't like Morgan Stanley branded ETS. So one, it's just fascinating from when they filed that they were going.
Starting point is 00:10:38 to do this because like I said, you can make the argument. If you can make the argument that Morgan Stanley should launch a Bitcoin ETF, then why don't they just launch their own S&P 500 ETF or every other ETF in the sun and then just have only their clients invest in those? And that's not what happens. It doesn't work that way for the most part because of what I said about liquidity coalescing as like a ball rolling downhill. But they have a view here. And I wonder part of it is they obviously think they're going to put client portfolios into it. And they're basically, I'm guessing they're offering this at cost to them. Like there's probably no money being made at 14 bips on this guy. I don't know what they're paying Coinbase and their other BNY Mellon and
Starting point is 00:11:12 these other administrators for the fund. But I think it's one that. I think also they see how much money and they see crypto is growing. There's a lot of money still on like defy rails and crypto and people who don't have, you know, legacy assets like exposure to equities and bonds or an advisor or broker to do this stuff for them. So I think part of this might also just be branding and marketing for them. Like, look, we have the lowest cost Bitcoin product. We understand this thing. Let us come to us and we'll make a portfolio for you. We'll do long-term financial planning. So I think there's a whole bunch of ways you can game out why Morgan Stanley might have done this.
Starting point is 00:11:47 Okay. So you kind of hinted before that potentially their entrance could spark bitwise, or it's not bit by, Black Rock, to drop their fee. But as you mentioned, because a lot of people are underwater at the moment, like there might be just a period where where people aren't moving money initially. So in general, like, how do you think things will shake out initially? Like, do you think that Black Rock will cut fees? You know, do you think that people will switch?
Starting point is 00:12:18 Or like, yeah, just generally, how do you see competition playing out? Yeah, I don't know for sure. I wouldn't bet my life on Black Rock cutting fees. That said, they are extremely competitive and they will, like, cut off their own leg to save the body kind of thing with, but they've done this in the past in the past in the ETF world. They're also, it's 11 BIP, so it's not that crazy. And like I said, they are the leader in the clubhouse and they're the most liquid.
Starting point is 00:12:41 They have a lot of advantages. It's these other players that are now, you know, one of the more expensive products in the market that might drop a couple of bits to get more competitive, I think, to eke out, you know, some sort of competitive advantage. What do I think will happen? Like I said, if you're trying to tax loss harvest, you know, some losses in Bitcoin and you're in an ETF and you're looking at what to do, I don't understand why you wouldn't consider just going to the lowest cost product, assuming you have no problems, you're not concerned about the risk of the way these things are structured. And this thing is structured like every other product out there. And like I said, if you're an advisor who's extremely cost conscious, like, and you're coming to the
Starting point is 00:13:17 market, you're going to go here. So I do think we'll see some money in the same way that we saw when these ETFs launch, we had 11 launch in January 10, 2024, a lot of the money that went to Ibit and BIPB and ARC and BIPB and all these other products, Hold on. It came from grayscale's GBT because it was charging 1.5% and people were waiting for a cheaper or more efficient product. There was a lot of people just genuinely annoyed at Grayscale, even though most of it wasn't their fault. And money poured into these other products. I don't think it's going to be quite that bad. I mean, 1.5% is a world of difference compared to 25 Bips. So I don't think you're going to see money pouring out or even 21 Bips. But you could see some money move. And we do
Starting point is 00:13:54 see advisors that will just completely move all of their assets into the cheaper product for their clients just to save a few bips on an investment. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit about what this move means for the broader category of bank ETFs. But first, we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Step into a new era of wealth. Discover Nexo, the premier digital wealth platform. Manage your crypto portfolio with confidence and control. Receive interest on your digital assets, borrow against them without selling, trade a wide range of cryptocurrencies, all in one platform, now available in the U.S. with 30 days of exclusive privileges for new clients.
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Starting point is 00:16:27 So Morgan Stanley also filed for Ethereum and Solana ETFs and I wondered if there was anything notable that you saw about those filings and also what it says to you that they made those filings, you know, about like their crypto strategy overall. Yeah. Initially we only saw the Bitcoin and Therreep and people were like, oh my God, are they just going to skip Ethereum? That was the first thing that jumped out of me. But honestly, the thing that really jumped out of me is one that it's they there's no like really differentiating factor here right like
Starting point is 00:16:56 sometimes you see a product come to market and it's like very differentiated in some way some of the ethereum products have unique staking now some routine the assets some distribute the the staking income that's all interesting but like there's nothing really that fascinating like i said before like it's just it's holding bitcoin uh so it comes down to brand and fees um i think it's interesting they chose those three i tend to think of them as the big three in my mind even though I know Solana is the third largest by market cap, but by some metrics it might be. So yeah, I think it's interesting in the sense that they're going after the big three and they're going to launch those products. Now that we've seen this one come in at 14 bibs, which is the lowest
Starting point is 00:17:34 in the market, you basically now have to completely expect they're going to come in as the lowest products on the market for those two products as well. But they're obviously leaning into the space. This isn't like a one-time thing. And like I said, it's not just they want to offer these products and their advisors and they want to make money on it. Like I said, I think there's an ulterior motive here slightly to, you know, look like the big bank that is leading most into crypto, particularly when you have people like JPMorgan is doing a lot of stuff with blockchain and crypto and under the things, but like Jamie Diamond is very vocal that he does not like it at all.
Starting point is 00:18:06 So like if you're going to consider going, if you're, you know, pro crypto, pro Bitcoin, what have you, and you're considered getting an advisor, you're much more likely now to consider Morgan Stanley over, you know, UBS or JPMorgan or whoever else. else. So you feel like part of their strategy is to lean into this space as a way to appeal either to a new demographic or as a selling point for anybody that's considering a different or is, you know, considering investment advisors. I have to think that's part of this. Yeah, that's my, I think I'm not the first person to say this so I don't want to act like this is my own. Like I came to this unique insight all on my own, but I my view is that has to be part of what's. I mean,
Starting point is 00:18:46 even still 50, 60% pullback here, there's still a lot of money in crypto and Bitcoin. And they tend to be very, a lot of these people with most of the money are very judgmental against Tradfai. So if you can even pull some of them away and get those new assets in or convince people to put more assets with you, it could work out a long term as a very profitable, you know, marketing expense in some ways. And so now that we're seeing Morgan Stanley step into crypto in a big way, do you think we'll see anything from the likes of JPMorgan or Goldman or like, how do you think competition
Starting point is 00:19:22 will play up? You know, I saw a couple of people who are like, why wouldn't every bank and every wirehouse just launch a new Bitcoin Ethereum and Solana ETF or what have you? I don't know. Like I said, I was surprised that Morgan Stanley filed. Just because you're going to launch a product doesn't mean you can differentiate it via brand and what have you to do this. And now Morgan Stanley has done this, but I don't know, maybe. Like I said, I wasn't expecting Morgan Stanley to do this. That caught me off guard. I just assumed like these wirehouses allowing you, like we talked for years when this thing first came out. Most places still didn't even let you buy the ETS. Like a lot of people didn't understand that like they are guardians here at the wall allowing like certain
Starting point is 00:20:06 funds to be investable in certain funds that are not investable. And it took well over a year for most of these places even longer to even allow people to invest in them. So Morgan Stanley only allowed it in like the fourth quarter of 2025. So like this is a very new thing for them and they're leaning hard into it. And you got to give them kudos. They're not, they didn't come in and then say we're going to charge, you know, 20, 30 bips or the most expensive product in the market. They came in and undercut everyone and we're like, we're being serious here. And you have to respect it. And so what was their justification for for not allowing it before it? And what is it that changed their mind about that? I think they were just always doing research, right? Like,
Starting point is 00:20:44 There's no way to know without talking to the due diligence team, but I've talked to a lot of these. They're called ETF due diligence. And it's the same process for active managers. A lot of times it takes years. They're going to look at the manager's decision-making process. They're going to look at how the fund is structured. They want to understand where the underlying assets are being custodied. They're kind of game playing out any potential risks.
Starting point is 00:21:04 And usually they need like three years of history for like an active manager or a fund before they even consider allowing their clients to invest in it. At these big wirehouses, it's usually smaller. IRAs and stuff like that will move much quicker. That's who we saw the real early adopters of the Bitcoin ETFs, aside from just normal retail people buying in the broker's accounts. But they have all these processes set up because they don't want to go into an ETF that's just going to liquidate a year later and mess up their allocations or has tons of risk that
Starting point is 00:21:31 weren't properly disclosed. So they just usually take a year or two years or three years or even more before they even allow these funds to be bought on their platforms. And even then there's tiers of what is allowed and what isn't allowed. Like there's limits on how much you can buy. There's limits on who can buy. If you don't meet like certainly risk taking ability and willingness to take risk, you can't buy these things.
Starting point is 00:21:54 So all of those things, it just takes time for these banks. These are huge institutions. They're battleships. I mean, they're aircraft carriers. They're not going to like flip a switch on for this new asset. So they actually move quick when you think about the Bitcoin ETFs. But I think part of it is like it's just holding an underlying asset. So they just need to study Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:22:12 It's been around for a long time now. It's not like they need to understand what a portfolio manager is going to do with these investments. And what is the demographic of the typical Morgan Stanley wealth client? Like is it quite a bit older than average or? I actually am not 100% certain, but I would say all of these are, it tends to be skewed much older. These are high net worth individuals. I mean, we're not talking always billionaires, but these are usually people that make and have a ton of money. They tend to be much older.
Starting point is 00:22:42 So, you know, Morgan Stanley bought, I think, E-Trade. They bought a few different things to like try and like skew younger and get more technology into the into their wheelhouse. So like I said, I think a lot of this is a way for them to market to the younger demographic and the specific crypto demographic. Even if you're younger, a millennial Gen Z and a couple of years from now, and if you're an advisor, we've been saying this for a long time, advisors, many of them still don't believe in the space at all and can't, couldn't really even talk to it.
Starting point is 00:23:08 That's not really the case. anymore. They've done their research and the, as long as you've done your research, you understand what's going on, you can articulate why you don't think it should be in portfolio or why it should be. I think most people would be okay with it. But the advisors and people that couldn't even explain what it was or why it shouldn't be in a portfolio, they just didn't like it because it was scammie or fraud fraudulent in
Starting point is 00:23:25 some way. Like that doesn't fly anymore. It's an active decision at this point not to have any sort of crypto in your portfolio. Like for a while, it's like if you wanted to add it, that's good that you're taking a risk. But now at this point, it's so large that it's an active decision not to own. it. The real neutral decision is to own some market cap weighted version exposure to it, which is still very small for the size of the asset class, but it's still a decision. Okay. And last quick question on this, if you were to project what the AUM would be of the
Starting point is 00:23:55 Morgan Stanley ETFs or of Bitcoin ETFs generally in about a year, I'm curious what you'd say because of what you talked about the slow role earlier. Yeah. So I think Eric, my boss and colleague, put the note over under one year out at $5 billion. And that's flow. So AUM, I mean, if Bitcoin doubles from here, it's AUM is going to double, right? So like when you look at AUM, there's two things that affected. It's the money going in and the performance, the underlying asset. And that's for Morgan Stanley? Well, everyone.
Starting point is 00:24:21 So like, yes, for Morgan Stanley. For MSBT, I mean, right now there's a, I don't even know, $100 billion in these things. They peaked at like $180 billion. So they actually held up really well during this massive sell-off. So yeah, I think I would take the under on his $5 billion over. over under, but he basically nailed the over under on the first day trading volume. So I won't second guess him. But yeah, I think it's going to be a slow burn. I think a lot of the traders and people who are trying to make short-term tactical bets are still going to lean towards Ibit because
Starting point is 00:24:55 of the liquidity it has. But honestly, this thing will work just fine for whatever you want to use it for. And particularly if you're trying to allocate longer term, you're going to see people move there. So I wouldn't be surprised if this thing has billions, particularly with that, you know, 16 plus thousand advisors, seven trillion assets. Even if you put a small fraction them at the one to two percent allocation to four percent allocation they recommend, that's a lot of money that can come in from Morgan Stanley directly. Yeah. All right. It could take time. It might not happen in a year. It might happen. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but it could take a long time. Yeah, yeah. And obviously the Bitcoin price
Starting point is 00:25:31 is, you know, it's going to affect that. So let's switch topics before we wrap. strategy just posted a $14.5 billion unrealized loss and then immediately went back and bought more Bitcoin. So I wondered, you know, what you thought would be the point when this could be a problem for shareholders or if you thought the fact that the Fair Accounting Standards Board changed the accounting rule makes the loss like less meaningful to investors? I don't think it makes it less meaningful. I think if you're an investor in strategy, like you want them to do this right you're investing in them so they can like allocate and buy more bitcoin uh you just hope it doesn't you know trade at a massive discount and what have you there's
Starting point is 00:26:15 only so much you can do but like this is what you're you're signing up for sailor to do this in perpetuity like that's what he said he's going to do obviously he's doing unique stuff with his preferred uh i know he announced more stretch buying uh i mean they're buying a lot of bitcoin um so yeah i don't know i am somewhat concerned about like the tail the tailwind effect here like it's just spiraling in a positive direction typically right now because they're still buying. It's concentrated. So those are minor concerns. But the fact that there's losses here, I mean, you should understand this at this point.
Starting point is 00:26:49 I mean, this asset class and strategy itself has dealt with 70 plus percent drawdowns in Bitcoin and all these things. And so if you're signing up to be a shareholder and you're upset that he's buying more Bitcoin, you probably shouldn't be a shareholder. And I wonder if, so I know this is a question more about Bitcoin, but it could also just be about institutional investors and how they view Bitcoin. But as we just mentioned, sailors buying hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin weekly, it's not really moving the price. You know, what do you think that says either about the Bitcoin market or about the general
Starting point is 00:27:22 attitude of institutional investors to Bitcoin right now? Yeah. It's funny. So I talk to institutions who are all aboard. and I obviously talk to institutions who think, again, this is pointless and there's no reason to do this. I mean, Bitcoin feels like a coiled spring. It feels like it's going to have to go in one direction or the other. It keeps making like higher lows right now, which I guess is technically positive, but I'm not a technical analyst.
Starting point is 00:27:45 I'm not going to predict the price. But obviously, there's people still selling heavily if he's buying hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of Bitcoin and we're still, you know, right around 70K. But I will say on the flip side, like this thing has held up pretty damn well for like what's gone on in the Middle East and Iran. If you had told me that the weekend of when the U.S. first started hitting Iran, that Bitcoin wasn't going to go back to its recent low, I would have been like no way. So I think, I don't know. I don't know what it says about the price. It says there's obviously a lot of selling. I don't know how much of it is quantum risk and people concerned about that or what have you.
Starting point is 00:28:22 but this thing is very range bound. But this is an asset class, like we're in a bear market. Typically, bare markets, particularly with Bitcoin, are measured in two ways, percent drawdown and length of time. And we are nowhere near how long a normal bear market last. So I think some people are just, you know, people are dipping their toes in the water, but I don't think anyone's buying hand over fist.
Starting point is 00:28:43 This thing is a momentum asset and right now it's stalled. Okay. So last question about strategy before we go, which is last year, there, were a couple opportunities where it could have been added to the S&P 500. Right now, what do you think the prospects are for that? And yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:02 So it goes back to those accounting standards you talked about a minute ago. So they're not eligible because they have a massive loss sitting on their financial filings. The way to get in, one, they were, they're large enough now to get in. The problem that they don't have is you need to have the most recent quarter has to be positive earnings and the prior four quarters together also has to be positive. Obviously, the most recent quarter is negative, as you said. So they basically need Bitcoin's price to go up for them to get into the S&P 500. They were eligible. The S&P 500 committee decided not to put them in. I think there's a lot of concerns and reasons why they might do that. But the
Starting point is 00:29:41 S&P committee is an active committee. They make very active decisions. Some of the names, one of the names they put in this most recent quarter didn't make much sense to me personally. I really don't know why they did it had to do with a company that owns a lot of SpaceX. But really, there was way other, more particular companies that I thought were higher on the list of qualifying for the index. So you got to remember, one, the S&B 500, yes, it's an index, but people control it. And two, yeah, they're dependent on the price of Bitcoin because now their income is determined by their unrealized losses and gains of those holdings. All right. Well, yeah. Well, I guess it tied its fortunes to the price of Bitcoin. So
Starting point is 00:30:19 Yes, yeah. Yeah, that is what will determine that. All right, James. Well, it's been so fun chatting with you again. I'm so glad we were able to have you on the show. Thanks so much for joining on, James. Thank you, Laura. It was nice.
Starting point is 00:30:31 All right, and thanks to everyone for joining a livestream. We will catch you next week.

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