I don’t think so.
The S.E.C.’s action, in itself, doesn’t give Bitcoin any new stature. It merely adds Bitcoin funds to a long list of E.T.F.s that are perfectly legal and simple to buy, but that don’t belong in anybody’s core portfolio. I’d put the Inverse Cramer Tracker in this category, as well as E.T.F.s that track a single stock like Tesla, PayPal or Nvidia, or that use leverage to triple a bet on energy prices or quadruple one on the S&P 500. I could go on and on.
Simply being legal doesn’t make a strategy sensible for most investors. In fact, while approving the Bitcoin E.T.F.s, the agency also issued an explicit warning against FOMO investing in so-called digital assets — as it has done many times before.
“Just because others around you might be buying into these kinds of opportunities, it doesn’t mean you have to,” said Lori Schock, director of the S.E.C.’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy.
The agency’s approval of the new Bitcoin funds does change things in one important sense, though. Until now, it was easy for me to avoid discussing Bitcoin in the context of investing. Why bring attention to something that isn’t right for most people? But now that major financial services companies like BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Invesco and Wisdom Tree are beginning to operate Bitcoin E.T.F.s, and make them available to their clients, silence seems unnatural and, maybe, irresponsible.
So here goes.
Making Sense of Bitcoin
I don’t want to dismiss Bitcoin entirely.
Granted, it’s possible to make — and lose — a great deal of money buying and selling it. And Bitcoin is a serious proposition, in terms of its underlying structure. The use of blockchain, the decentralized, peer-to-peer structure and the complex mathematical code demand respect. Concepts embedded in Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies could have real-world importance at some point, and in some way, though perhaps not as Bitcoin.
This news is republished from another source.
