1/ Thread explains the rationale for $GBTC over #bitcoin. (Speaking from experience, but not necessarily an endorsement of GBTC):

2/ $GBTC fills a need and is designed to permit exposure to #bitcoin for professional, registered investment advisors in the US. Money managers have unique circumstances compared to individual investors.
3/ #Imagine you are an investment mgr with 250 client accounts (an average-sized separate account manager would have 400). Owning #bitcoin means setting up another 250 accounts - major work with not a lot of reward. If you want to rebalance (stocks/bonds/bitcoin)...
4/ you have 250 transfers to make. Doubles admin workload, makes operational life very complicated. Lots of work for a 5-10% allocation (or less!) to $BTC.
5/ Client reporting is a nightmare. 2 sets of custodian statements not easily combined... A typical client already has 3 accounts, now it is 6 accounts & 6 statements, and there are few software feeds to consolidate data from #crypto exchanges into traditional portfolio reports.
6/ Tax advantages: $GBTC can be held in an IRA, tax deferred. Over long run, you get most of the $BTC return with far less tax liability, usually a net positive.
7/ Regulatory simplicity: some state and federal regulators hate #bitcoin. They can halt an investment advisor's operations on that basis, or at least make life hell. $GBTC is a stock. Regulators may not like it but if advisor is within the law there is nothing they can do.
5/ So for a registered investment advisor, $GBTC is a #bitcoin wrapped in equity, which makes it equity. This solves lots of problems and creates some benefits in a financial industry that is not yet aligned (operationally and regulation-wise) to accommodate BTC.
6/ And that is why investors pay a premium for $GBTC too. It greatly simplifies holding #bitcoin in a traditional portfolio. Don't knock GBTC - anything which facilitates adoption is good for bitcoin. GBTC allows exposure to BTC that would not otherwise exist.
7/ If you're an entrepreneur, there are many opportunities also: for example, a data feed from #crypto and stock brokers that did consolidated reporting: advisors would love this, you could make bank. Also...
8/ a low-cost competitor to https://t.co/KL1iFmiXDf would also be a help. Lots of money to be made in that space ($ billions), especially as boomers transfer their retirement wealth to GenX/GenY.

More from Bitcoin

1/THREAD: WHEN WAS IT CLEAR?

Oct. 8, 2020: The purpose of this thread is to document and timestamp when it first became clear that #Bitcoin was likely to become a major reserve asset for public corporations, and eventually states, with Square's purchase of $50M in BTC.

The purpose is to give something to cite when ppl later claim "But there was NO WAY OF KNOWING..."

h/t @ErikSTownsend who used the same format to call out the impact of Covid on Feb 8 and made me personally aware of the looming shutdown of the country
https://t.co/opuiNgSeqC !


Bitcoiners smarter than me have been predicting the takeover of the dollar by Bitcoin for many years.

In 2014 with Bitcoin barely at $1B, @pierre_rochard wrote https://t.co/EGHa58KqHq, covering all the incorrect narratives of Bitcoin and stating it will overtake the dollar.

"[skeptics] misunderstand how strong currencies like bitcoin overtake weak currencies like the dollar: it is through speculative attacks and currency crises caused by investors, not through the careful evaluation of tech journalists and 'mainstream consumers'" - @pierre_rochard

I first became bullish on Bitcoin in the summer of 2016, around a $3B market cap, but it was still a toy project at that time in the eyes of most in the financial world, while many technologists thought of it as a v1 technology to be improved on.
The defi matrix

As each asset class goes on-chain, it can be stored in a digital wallet. And it can be traded against other such assets. Not just cryptocurrencies, but national digital currencies, personal tokens, etc.

We’re about to enter an age of global monetary competition.

The defi matrix is the table of all pair wise trades. It’s the fiat/stablecoin pairs, the fiat/crypto pairs, the crypto/crypto pairs, and much more besides.

Uniswap-style automatic market making for everything. Every possession you have, constantly marked to market by ~2040.

More liquidity, less currency?

This is an interesting point. Cash doesn’t make you money. In fact, it can lose you money in an inflating environment.

Reliable, 24/7 mark-to-market on everything is hard — but if achieved, means less % of assets in cash.


AMMs boost BTC. Here's why.

- All assets trade against all assets in the defi matrix
- Automated market makers give liquidity for rare pairs
- Everything is marked-to-market 24/7
- Value of cash drops, as you can liquidate instantly
- The new no-op is to keep your assets in BTC

Basically, automated market makers like @Uniswap boost BTC in the long term, because they allow *everything* to be priced in BTC terms, and *anyone* to switch out of BTC into their asset of choice.

Though in practice this may mean WBTC/RenBTC [or ETH!] rather than BTC itself.

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