For one, Miami Beach hosted the Bitcoin 2022 conference in April.
Peter Thiel called Warren Buffett a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha” during his speech, which surely gave financial news sites plenty of clicks in the days after.
But behind the conspiracy theories and goofiness, there’s a fundamental promise, which is that each of the 7+ billion people in the world can put their savings in a currency that isn’t controlled by a central bank, and thus cannot be inflated away.
The most important thing going on with Bitcoin in my opinion actually has nothing to do with any of this.
This sounds high and it is, but remember that crypto is far less efficient than traditional sectors of the financial markets, so stuff like this happens all the time as traditional players who do arbitrage aren’t allowed to touch it.
There have been some interesting legal twists and turns that have been helpful to Grayscale’s case in the meantime, and the discount hasn’t budged too much, despite buying by Morgan Stanley and Grayscale itself.
I could be wrong, but it would significantly broaden the pool of people who could get efficient access to Bitcoin and would avoid some of the highly publicized issues with people getting their BTC lost or stolen.
It’s no secret that I’m bearish on the market right now, but GBTC is one of those special situations that can make money even if the market goes down.
At some point, I think we’re going to get a Bitcoin ETF with a 50 bps annual fee or less, at which point investors should happily be able to get crypto exposure without paying excessive fees.
It bears noting that Bitcoin is a risk asset now because it is so widely owned.
The conversion truly should be a matter of “when” and not “if,” offering a nice way to make a profit for patient investors.
Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of TWTR, GBTC either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives.