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👀 WTH happened yesterday

👀 WTH happened yesterday

PLUS: What's next for GBTC?

Alex M.
October 17, 2023

GM everyone. This is 2036, the crypto newsletter that pays you.

Here’s what we’re serving up today 🍲: yesterday was both a) one of the most volatile days of the year and b) one of the most revealing. It showed us what’s to come for bitcoin. Fake news, Larry Fink, and the Bitcoin ETF.

Let’s dig in.

🥔 Today’s meat and potatoes

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Yesterday was just another Monday.

I had my morning shake, kissed my kitty cat on the cheek, and was going about my day.

Bitcoin was doing its recent thing - hanging around the $27.5K mark.

Traders were arguing about how bitcoin wouldn’t cross $28K before the end of the year.

It was obvious - written in stone, in fact, it was ordained - and they had a million charts with obscure names like “Fibonacci sequences” and “Bollinger bands” to justify it.

But then the news dropped:

The SEC had approved Blackrock’s bitcoin ETF.

I couldn’t believe it. Within a few minutes, every crypto influencer had retweeted it.

The market went nuts.

Bitcoin immediately skyrocketed to $30,720. It didn’t care about Bollinger bands or Fibonacci nonsense.

Traders who bet on bitcoin going down lost $130 million.

this is yesterday’s actual price chart

Everyone was euphoric.

The Blackrock ETF approval was the moment we had all been waiting for.

The big boys had finally approved of our magic internet money.

And it came months earlier than expected.

It seemed almost too good to be true.

As it turns out - it was.

Within a few minutes, Cointelegraph changed their initial tweet to include the word “reportedly”.

Now - “SEC approves iShares Spot Bitcoin ETF. Reportedly.”

Confusion set in.

Nobody could find a source confirming the whole thing was true.

All we had was a Reuters article that said so. Turns out, they just got it from the same Tweet as everyone else.

[thanks for your deep investigative journalism, Reuters].

But then Blackrock came out of the woods.

The rumors were false. Their ETF was still awaiting approval.

So Cointelegraph deleted their initial tweet.

It was all fake news.

My heart sank just as hard as bitcoin:

🎢🎢🎢🎢

Cointelegraph opened a 3-hour investigation.

They found that the source of the news was a now-deleted Telegram account whose profile picture was Pepe the Frog:

But it didn’t stop there.

Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, then went on FOX to sing the praises of the orange coin.

He said - I quote -

“this event shows the pent-up interest in crypto”
“we are hearing from clients around the world about the need for crypto”
“the rally today is about a flight to quality in times of war. I believe crypto will play that kind of role - as a flight to quality”

We got a little hope back. We all love Larry now.

Bitcoin went back to $28,400.

But then we all realized what’s about to happen.

Yesterday, we got a preview of how the market will trade when the ETF does get approved.

The experts are all wrong: the ETF isn’t priced in.

The efficient market hypothesis is a lie.

And we’re all in for a wild ride.