They've been around as ETNs in Europe for a while. And they've been around as spot-ETFs in Canada for years. Institutions have been buying them, including retirement funds. It will be a very slow process to ramp up though. Gold amount increases only ~2% a year when in demand. It is very difficult to increase that. The American Gold Rush was an anomaly.
LOL. I guess you can tell I was a little kid in the 80s, because OTC to me meant a fraud desk where you trade PINK SHEETS from small fraudulent companies. And yes, the sheets used to originally be pink. The more popular fraud companies simply operate through reverse merger on the fly-by-night NEX board of the Toronto Venture Exchange.
Two options to buy an ETF: from the secondary market (for retail and other smallish order sizes) or directly from the ETF fund company. For a big order, you would compare the average cost of potentially going deep into the limit order book vs. what the fund company can offer you via their authorized participants (e.g., JP Morgan) with their OTC connections. My understanding is, when issuing new shares, the ETF company doesn't bear the risk of price movement as the price has already been agreed upon (by the ETF purchaser and the authorized participant) when they issue the new shares.
But still, the massive difference between daily buying and daily production is 10x. That’s unreal…
Thanks for all the history.. I love it! It makes me remember a bit about why I didn't believe in bitcoin for so long. First, it was difficult to buy, and everything you say here just backs that up. I also wondered if anyone was ever able to sell. Did anyone actually get cash back? Today its obviously trivial, but I was so worried about being scammed that I didn't really do too much research. And last point, as you mentioned about stopping the illegal selling, I was worried that buying bitcoin could one day be deemed illegal since the US has such a wide sweeping rule book. Any proceeds coming from illegal acts or whatever it is could have been enough to get in trouble. So I figured if bitcoin is used for drugs, which it was, and the price goes up, then anyone participating in bitcoin could be targeted. Anyway... that's all in the past now. I would almost take the flip side of this. How is it that initially, price dropped 20% after the ETF launch when the new ETFs were pretty much absorbing all the selling? And since there is a net increase now of 100k bitcoins locked away with ETF+GBTC than there was before the ETFs, why isn't price even higher? 100k of bitcoin sourced from who knows where has barely pushed up price since before the ETFs. I know bitcoin can easily spike 1k, 2k, 3k or more on little volume, but I would still think that price should be so much higher. So it doesn't add up. Its clearly not linear, but I still wonder where all that supply came from and why it came so cheaply. I am so glad to have gotten rid of most of my silver. I have another $1k left to sell, and then I'm only left with about 20 1oz coins, which I may keep just for fun. Selling all my silver has shown me how stupid it is. Not only are the spreads insane, like 10-15%, but its also quite centralized. I literally have to line up and exchange my silver for cash, so in a way, I need permission to use it. If this place closes down, the silver is pretty much worthless to me. How else am I gonna exchange it? Now obviously people can just buy the funds in their brokerage accounts, and that is so much better for this day and age, but I'm fairly certain that before any major price spikes happen to make people feel rich for holding it, the price will be manipulated back down. Absolutely! And its actually a good thing. Let houses go back to being places where people lived and prices reflect the local wages and economy. There is no reason for housing to have a financial premium. Its killing society. Imagine if food had a financial premium and some fuckers snatch up 80% of the world flour production? Would we all be forced to pay $20 or $30 for a loaf of bread? This is exactly what has happened with RE, but now, as the financial premium of RE naturally evaporates, the carnage will begin. In many popular cities, AirBnB is being outlawed, and its already having dramatic effects. I mean I don't like the government telling people what they can or can't do with their property, but government already fucked up RE so bad with 15 years of zero rates that it hasn't been a free market for a very long time. So government is now forced to take drastic measures because they can feel citizens getting their pitchforks ready. I just don't understand how the government wants to make RE affordable, which means a 50% drop, at least, and yet, not want to crash the market and economy, which is a 50% drop would do. I think at some point, the exodus from the US and Canada will be clear to those people paying attention and with the means to leave. Canada is fucked from insane RE and explosive immigration, and US is fucked from the border crisis. Neither countries will be able to keep stable communities, and both countries only function right now because of massive deficit spending. But when things start falling apart, and they will, leaving will be the only choice. I'm gonna come visit you in Asia... whereever you are!!! LOL I also love watching Tai Zen videos, and I see him delivering this very same message, from Thailand I believe. My YouTube feed is all about being an expat now. And although my shitty job here still pays the bills so I'm stuck for now, there is no future in my city, but luckily, also nothing holding me back from leaving other than a job. Wow... what a tangent that was!! LOL
I just did some simple math and it looks like just the inflow from the new ETFs is about the same as all of the projected coin that will be mined in all of 2024. Is that right?
Here would be my math assuming halving is in April. So lets say 8 months of 3.125 bitcoins per block and 4 months or 6.25 bitcoins per block. 3.125 BTC x 6 blocks per hour x 24 hours x 30 day x 8 months = 108,000 6.25 BTC x 6 blocks per hour x 24 hours x 30 days x 4 months = 108,000 So it looks to me for 2024, there will be around 216k produced. Since there is so far about 100k extra inflow above the GBTC outflow, it will likely surpass what is produced this year. But its only been 1 month and we have no idea what the next few months hold.