Today is the day the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve (or reject or delay) at least one of the 11 pending spot Bitcoin ETF applications—per its own deadline.
"Most likely is we see formal approvals ballpark 4-6pm today with the Derby starting on Thursday," said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas, predicting that if funds are approved today they could be available as soon as when markets open on Thursday, January 11.
He's one of the ETF analysts who's been closely following what he's dubbed the "Cointucky Derby."
The crypto industry has been eagerly waiting for the SEC to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. for 10 years. (They have been trading for years elsewhere in the world.) Such a product would allow traders to gain exposure to Bitcoin without having to actually buy or custody BTC themselves.

In another round of last-minute amendments, BlackRock and ARK Invest dropped the fees on their funds again. BlackRock will now charge an 0.25% fee on its fund and an 0.12% introductory fee on the first $5 billion worth of assets under management for 12 months.
Meanwhile, ARK 21Shares has dropped its fee to 0.21%. The company said it will stick to its plan to waive its ETF fees completely until the fund accrues $1 billion worth of assets or for the first six months—whichever happens first.

SEC rules allow the securities regulator to delay its decisions by up to 240 days after an application has been received. For the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, the SEC has run out of the extra days to delay a decision—it can only approve or deny the application now.
Bitcoin ETF

Bitcoin ETF: These Are All the Authorized Participants

The Bitcoin spot ETF tea leaves have been read so aggressively they've been pulverized into dust. Nonetheless, there is a high level of confidence across the market that the much-anticipated new investment vehicle will be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission any moment now—today, even. But while the names at the top of the applications are financial heavyweights—BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and so on—each must also designate an "authorized participant." An authorized partic...


This is all happening in the shadow of a market moving fake-out yesterday. The SEC Twitter account was compromised and used to send an "unauthorized" message saying that all Bitcoin ETFs had been approved.
About 15 minutes later, SEC Chair Gary Gensler took to his personal Twitter account to warn that the message was fake. But the damage had already been done: The market plunged and Bitcoin sank below $45,ooo earlier this morning. It has since rebounded slightly and is now trading at $45,153.03, or 3% below its price yesterday, according to CoinGecko.

Now, U.S. lawmakers have written a letter to chair Gensler to "request clarity" on the incident.
In the past 24 hours, almost $96 million worth of Bitcoin options were liquidated. The split on long (optimistic) and short (pessimistic) traders is telling: About $60 million of the liquidations were on long contracts, which are used to bet the Bitcoin price will rise. The rest were on

The U.S. Bitcoin ETF Race

Many firms have filed applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S., but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has historically rejected all of them. That could be set to change in 2024.

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• Bitcoin ETF

Gensler's ‘Compromised’ Bitcoin ETF Tweet Inscribed as an Ordinals NFT

• It was the fake tweet heard ‘round the world. And now it's been immortalized on the Bitcoin blockchain. After U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler confirmed that the Twitter account of the regulatory agency was compromised and used to falsely announce the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF, someone archived Gensler’s response in an Ordinals Inscription. “Just so we don't forget, this tweet has been immortalized on Bitcoin forever,” digital artist Billy Restey tweeted. just so we d..
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• Bitcoin ETF

Bitcoin ETFs Will Not Be a ‘Winner-Take-All Market’: VanEck CEO

• With the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs imminent, the question now is when. Investment firm CEOs are confident the landmark decision will come down on Wednesday. On Tuesday, VanEck CEO Jan van Eck suggested that his firm’s Bitcoin ETF could start trading on Thursday, lending credence to speculation that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will begin approving the various ETFs on Wednesday. “We have precedent... that's what happened with Ethereum futures ETFs," van Eck said during a panel...
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• Bitcoin ETF

Bitcoin ETF: These Are All the Authorized Participants

• The Bitcoin spot ETF tea leaves have been read so aggressively they've been pulverized into dust. Nonetheless, there is a high level of confidence across the market that the much-anticipated new investment vehicle will be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission any moment now—today, even. But while the names at the top of the applications are financial heavyweights—BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and so on—each must also designate an "authorized participant." An authorized partic...

SEC and Twitter Announce Investigations Into Fake Bitcoin ETF Tweet

The regulatory agency says it has terminated "unauthorized access" to its Twitter account.

A single fake Twitter post has sparked chaos in both the crypto space and broader financial markets, and both the Securities and Exchange Commission and Twitter itself are looking into what happened.
"The SEC has determined that there was unauthorized access to and activity on the @SECGov x.com account by an unknown party for a brief period of time shortly after 4 pm ET," the commission told Decrypt late Tuesday. "That unauthorized access has been terminated."
"The SEC will work with law enforcement and our partners across government to investigate the matter and determine appropriate next steps relating to both the unauthorized access and any related misconduct," the statement continued.

Describing the SEC Twitter account as "compromised," chair Gary Gensler rushed to correct the record, saying that "the SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products." The crypto and financial communities eagerly anticipated such a move, albeit most assuming a late Wednesday decision deadline.

The fake news prompted a sudden dip in the value of Bitcoin, and while the fake tweet was deleted, the incident reverberated throughout the rest of the day. Some commentators asked whether the SEC—which broadly dismisses cryptocurrencies as a too-easily-manipulated market—would have to investigate itself.

Meanwhile, Twitter is is also on the case, according to crypto Twitter influencer Walter Bloomberg.

Although a prolific poster on his own platform, Twitter owner Elon Musk hasn't had anything to say about the controversy, instead focusing on immigration, election integrity, and "exclusive shows on X" with hosts Don Lemon, Jim Rome, and Tulsi Gabbard.