📢 April Signals
🗓️ Key dates to watch
- Every day – GBTC outflows (50% redeemed so far)
- 30 April – Hong Kong BTC and ETH ETF’s go-live
- 1/3 May – Job Openings JOLTs / Non Farm Payrolls & unemployment rate
- 2 May – FOMC meeting (no change expected but commentary will be interesting)
- 4/5 May – PPI and CPI (another warm print could push rate cuts to next year)
🗓️ Fundamentals
- Jack Dorseys Block plans to bring mining capability to individuals takes another step with plans to build their own mining rig.
- Elon Musk’s X having received a money transmitter licence in 25 US states is poised to turn X accounts into bank accounts, initially limited to fiat currencies, but expect crypto to be added soon.
- Hong Kong BTC and ETH ETFs to launch next week, 30 April.
- The IMF says Bitcoin could reshape Global Finance (glad they are catching on!).
🗓️ Market update
The halving went off with out a hitch, such is the programmatic nature of the event, in the immediate term it serves to reinforce the power of the code, and it takes a few months to se the supply demand economics impacted. The supply crunch is on hold while GBTC continues to bleed BTC into the market, having seen outflows of 320,000 Bitcoin, leaving 298,000 in the fund, BlackRock, at 270,000 BTC will soon overtake them then Fidelity. As this happens over the coming weeks flows out of GBTC will become less and less relevant.
In addition to the GBTC BTC hitting the market Macro has been a little challenging too, PPI and CPI both coming in a little warm and the jobs market holding up the Fed has little cause for cutting rates, the market had 6 cuts priced in for 2024 now that looks like just the 1 in December. This is a head wind for all risk assets, but we do see a path were Bitcoin largely avoids a risk based sell off in equities via strong whales accumulation supporting the 4 year crypto cycle and constant BTC ETF flows, the new allocators to these vehicles have not packed their bags.
Whales accumulation has accelerated in recent months giving us further confidence a post halving bull market is still to come. Further Hong Kong, the U.K., Germany any other will launch their own domestic ETF in the coming weeks opening their capital markets to BTC. Further in the US Morgan Stanley and UBS and no doubt other are close to launching their own BTC ETFs i.e. the are not allocating to BlackRock et al ETFs and waiting to launch their own to direct their clients to.
The ETH ETF is on the SEC chopping block, a ‘final’ decision on 23rd of May, we’ve been sceptical of approval for months and nothing has changed our minds yet. What will be interesting in the meantime is other jurisdictions launch ETH and BTC ETFs in the coming weeks, HK due to launch both in days on 30 April, what will the quantum of flows like for ETH vs BTC? Strong demand for ETH could force the SEC’s hand (i.e. they get a call form Larry!).
And a final though of the day for when a TradFi ‘experts’ talk about Bitcoin…
▶️ Bitcoin use cases with Alex Gladstein from the Human Rights Foundation
Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. In this interview, we discuss the ultimate bitcoin use cases. How it is used in commerce, for freedom and how it fundamentally changes energy systems.
The Merkle Tree Capital “Why?”
We know accessing the digital asset sector is challenging, presenting a new set of risks that most investors are not familiar with, and there is a lot of sub-standard information flying around. That is why we created an actively managed unit trust aiming to hold the best digital assets that will form the basis of the ecosystem over the next 5-10 years.
Investors can now access this new asset class without concerns around self-custody or dealing with unknown counterparties, simplify their tax reporting, avoid single asset risk, maximise yield, and access institutional risk management and portfolio construction.
SMART – actively managed, enhance risk adjusted returns, sophisticated portfolio construction, staking yield, simple exposure – no passwords or digital wallets
SECURE – institutional custody, staking in cold storage, insurance, counterparty due diligence
CRYPTO – Blockchain eliminates intermediaries, lowers costs and improves efficiency by bringing transparency and security.