1/1 update below. This post was originally published on December 31
BitcoinBTC and other major cryptocurrencies—including ethereum, XRPXRP and solana—have rocketed higher as a U.S. dollar crisis has grown.
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The bitcoin price is set to close out the year as one of the best-performing assets after gaining around 160% thanks to soaring expectations that Wall Street giant BlackRock is about to blow up the bitcoin market (though it could destroy bitcoin in the process).
Now, as JPMorgan is predicted to take a major step toward a “$16 trillion by 2030” goal in 2024, Goldman Sachs has joined the bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) party—branded the “Cointucky Derby” by one analyst that’s expected to boost the price of ethereum, XRP, solana and other coins.
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If approved, a fully-fledged bitcoin ETF “broadens and deepens the liquidity in the market,” Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, told Fox Business.
“And why does it do that? It does that because you’re actually creating institutional products that can be traded by institutions that don’t need to touch the bare assets. And I think that, to me, that opens up the universe of the pensions, insurers, et cetera.”
1/1 update: The bitcoin price has suddenly surged to over $45,000 per bitcoin as expectations soar the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could approve a slate of Bitcoin ETF applications as soon as this week.
“Bitcoin is trading like an ETF is about to be approved,” trading analyst Scott Melker posted to X.
Meanwhile, Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino claimed BlackRock leaks suggest will maintain “radio silence” until the agency has gone through all the paperwork with “the announcement likely toward week’s end.”
The race for a bitcoin spot ETF was kicked off by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, in June, putting its massive weight behind the decade-long campaign to bring a U.S. bitcoin spot ETF to market.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has repeatedly denied applications for a spot bitcoin ETF over recent years. However, the latest push is widely expected to succeed, with some predictions forecasting approval could come in the first few days of 2024—and triggering a fresh bitcoin price boom that Goldman Sachs’ McDermott thinks will spread to the ethereum, XRP, solana and wider crypto market.
“I fully expect a significant growth in adoption from the buy side next year,” McDermott said. “Then I think probably towards the latter end of the year, probably the following and beyond; you’ll start to see kind of a focus on some of these more opaque asset classes where the value proposition probably is kind of greater just purely because of the opaqueness in pricing, probably less liquidity and most transparency.”
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Hype ahead of the SEC’s spot bitcoin ETF deadline, set for 10 January 2024, has been branded the “Cointucky Derby” by Bloomberg Intelligence’s Eric Balchunas, who predicted on X that “early January is going to be wild”—a sentiment echoed by others.
“[The] next two weeks [are] going to be wild,” Nate Geraci, the president of the advisory company ETFStore, posted to X. “Spot bitcoin ETF race 10+ years in the making.”
This week, BlackRock named the largest U.S. bank by assets, JPMorgan, and trading company Jane Street as so-called “authorized participants” in its spot bitcoin ETF application, meaning the two Wall Street giants will help ease the flow of cash into and out of the fund.
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