RE: BTC ETFs, WTF SEC? • Letter 131

Happy Bitcoin ETF day, frens! In case you forgot, this is Colton from Hedgehog, the app that helps you buy baskets of cryptocurrency and automate your digital asset exposure wherever you custody funds.

In case you missed my article in CoinDesk yesterday, you should give it a peep for some thoughts on what comes next:

A tantrum, just for a SEC

The biggest news of the day is the approval of 11 Bitcoin ETF applications from BlackRock, Grayscale, Hashdex, Bitwise, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Invesco, Valkyrie, ARK Invest, and Franklin Templeton. Of course, this was news that was accidentally released on Tuesday after market close because the SEC couldn’t keep their twitter 2FA game together and an enterprising hacker decided to make an early announcement. So the SEC had to retract the announcement, only to reissue it a day later! Truly models of responsibility.

Then, to make matters worse, there were some early listings from the CBOE and the SEC also posted their announcement to the wrong page, resulting in page not found errors for all those investors constantly clicking the refresh button. But eventually the approval came through, and for that at last, we are grateful.

Of course, SEC chair, Gary Gensler, doesn’t want you to think for a minute that his acceptance of these products represent any sort of approval of crypto as a whole, or the “non-compliant crypto custodian” who is the registered custodian on 8 of these approved applications. Take a read of his letter for an entertaining afternoon.

DAOs meet DAUs

The better news though, is that these off-chain solutions for giving every day people access to Bitcoin liquidity has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in on-chain activity. One of our investors, Haseeb Qureshi at Dragonfly, points out that daily active addresses have been increasing almost across the board for several chains, now peaking into the half a million range for some of the largest ones.

It’s a sign of a very healthy ecosystem, and a glimpse at the multi-chain future. That’s one of the things we’re really excited about solving, is not having to worry about whether the app you want to use is on Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, or Stellar, or any one of their many L2s. When we’re done, we hope it’ll look a lot like using your native cash and getting services.

More oversight

The SEC isn’t the only one making moves, both FINRA and the CFTC released commentary on risks in DeFi and crypto asset developments. Don’t let us sound like a broken record, but this level of scrutiny and oversight is a good thing because it helps the space gain legitimacy, and educates the average consumer on the best ways to buy, hold, or otherwise avoid different digital assets.

What do you think the next big narratives are? I’m all about DePIN these days (though, ofc, that's not investment advice).

Keep hedging,
— Colton