BTC ETF Approval with Eric Balchunas

Bankless Nation, it is Thursday, January 11th, and the reason I give that day is it's an absolutely momentous day. The Bitcoin spot ETFs just got approved. This happened yesterday, and the markets went live with many of these ETFs today. We brought on Eric Balciounas, who I'm about to introduce and talk to. As you'll know, he's one of the main analysts, ETF analysts, who've been predicting the spot Bitcoin ETF and updating the bankless community about where it is in the process. And he, I think, quite accurately predicted. He said many months ago that with a 95% certainty, we would have a Bitcoin spot ETF in January. And indeed, now we do. So I grabbed some of his time. He's on the circuit today talking to uh many different organizations, but I want to get a market reaction on uh the ETF, how it's doing so far, check on volumes. Also want to talk to him about which products might be winning and uh like whether they're meeting expectations or not, and all of the other details that have come in last minute. So I'm going to get with Eric. We're gonna have that conversation, keep you updated on the latest with the Bitcoin spot ETF, and celebrate this momentous occasion in just a minute. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Bankless Station, we have Eric Baltoonis here. He is a senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Of course, he has been keeping us informed of the spot Bitcoin ETF. And now, here it is. Markets have just gone live. Gonna check in on that with him. Eric, how are you doing?

Good. Uh a little tired running on fumes, but excited. These are great,

these are once in a while situations. Um, so I enjoy the excitement. I've been covering this stuff for a long time and

there's long stretches of just normalcy. So the past uh week in particular has been really exciting

um but tiring.

Yeah, I bet it's tiring. I how how does this match for excitement of other ETF launches in in kind of your career and your history?

Um this one definitely rings with Biddo, which was the futures ETF. Um, but then we've had like

remember when Arc Mania was going on?

There was a lot of um that was about a year where Arc was just doing things that were

Unreal, like supernatural kind of feats. That's a kind of exciting. And then

I'm always excited by Vanguard. I've been covering them for a while. They're almost like a

uh like a slow moving aircraft carrier, so they're not as jumpy or exciting. But what they're the the size and the sheer mass,

I find exciting, and I cover them a lot. So um there's definitely areas that are exciting, but

um this is

really unusual in that it's sort of like two worlds colliding.

Um and the you know, obviously,

a lot of the data uh that we have on the terminal, it's cool, it's interesting to see them up there now and trading.

Um, so the first day or two is big.

Over the next couple weeks, though, this will die down.

There'll be like the the volume will settle, the excitement will settle.

So we're we're kind of we're peaking off. You know, my my engagement on this is probably at the peak the last two days. It's probably gonna start going this way over the next couple weeks.

Yeah, that makes sense. And and your engagement on uh crypto Twitter is a you've become uh I think a mini celebrity of sorts on crypto Twitter, and that's got to be somewhat unique. You probably don't get that sort of uh public reaction with um the vanguard uh ETFs. May may maybe I'm wrong about that, but I I know the crypto community is is pretty loud, at least on social media.

Oh, yeah. So

I went to the Bogleheads conference in uh like after my book came out a year ago,

and um some people had read the book there. So that I will be known in sort of that audience a little bit, but not like this. And they don't, they're not a lot of those people are not on social media. When it comes to social media, yeah,

this audience is very engaged,

very um

vocal

and creative uh and funny. Um so it's fun. I mean, I totally enjoy it. Um,

but yeah, there's really nothing to compare this to, to be honest.

Alright, so so this was a little bit weird. I want to get your take on this. I don't know if this happened. You were you were on air somewhere or live, but this happened on Tuesday. The SEC's Twitter account appeared to announce that the ETF, the spot Bitcoin ETF, had been approved. It it turned out that um, as they said, that their Twitter account was compromised. This was maybe a hacker or some some other person who got into the account and posted some misinformation. Like, what is up with that? Have you had time to digest that? How bizarre is that to happen at the 11th hour?

Um

Really bizarre. I was ex

my initial reaction was it's accurate because I again I never thought

that particular Twitter handle would be compromised. It just didn't cross my mind.

Then the the graphics, you know, I I maybe I didn't read it close enough. Um when I go back and read it, I'm like, okay, yeah, it there's a couple things on there, but

kind of look legit at first glance. And

I was expecting them to announce everything exactly 24 hours later.

So I thought maybe I thought, okay, well.

Maybe they just want to get ahead of this,

drop it as a PR situation,

and then do all the

the backfill with the documents later. That way people aren't just like hitting this on their website and crash their website. Like

I could see that. And so I was like, all right, it's like an early Christmas present.

You know, it's like getting a present on Christmas Eve. Now they're approved.

I thought that was the whole plan. So

then you find out what happened. Crazy.

Um, just ironic, hypocritical a little bit, because you know, they're they're supposed to be into security.

And then like uh the look like the ex-security safety people put out that it was, you know, they didn't have

uh two-factor identification or author, uh what's that called authentication. So

I don't know. Um that's a little egg on the face for them, for sure, on top of this whole gigantic delay on this stuff. And then

um

uh, you know, they have their own issues on

that. But

that was a curveball. Some people started to go, wait a second, they're gonna have the FBI investigate. This is what they're gonna use as an excuse. Some people thought Gary was so maniacal.

That he did that on purpose

so that he could then reject them.

And he has and he also had the staff working for three weeks straight,

you know,

uh around the clock, so he could just go, well, we did the match and direct them. So I I had to deal with a lot of people who had these theories.