23rd July 2024 > > Nashville.

tl;dr

It’s all happening in Nashville this weekend.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Despite twelve consecutive days of inflows to the spot BTC ETFs, and some like yesterday at over half a billion dollars were more than loose change, the overnight performance for BTC was what might reasonably be described as disappointing. The cause is likely the movement of half of the Mt. Gox stash of BTC worth over $3bn to two new addresses probably in preparation for distribution to creditors. This short-term impact will be just that.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Nashville

Nashville is host to the bitcoin2024 conference at which presidential candidate Trump is due to speak on Sunday.

Trump’s opportunistic nature has been on full display with his pivot towards being crypto-friendly, both in terms of garnering votes in November, and the millions he has made from Trump-themed NFTs. It is inconceivable that his speech will contain anything other than stuff which will go down well with the attendees.

Markus Thielen, founder of 10xResearch, is furthering the rumour-mongering with this comment:

"Speculation is high that he will announce bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset, which could trigger a parabolic rise in bitcoin's price. Taking profit, or even shorting bitcoin ahead of Trump’s Nashville speech, could turn out to be an expensive exercise."

Options markets have responded with a spike in the volatility smile for far out-of-the-money calls.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pitched as part of his campaign to be President a purchase by the US government of BTC to the tune of 1% of the outstanding debt, equivalent to $350bn or more (US debt rises inexorably by the second) every single year. In comparison, the spot BTC ETFs have attracted $16bn of inflows since January. If Trump announces a policy along these lines, the price of BTC will simply explode, followed by outperformance of high beta coins, especially the memes.

There are those who rightly point out that announcing a policy like this ahead of implementation isn’t the smartest move. But the UK government has in the past announced the sale of gold reserves ahead of actually doing it, so there is precedence for acting so dumb. In any case, as the policy would likely be on a rolling basis, and not simply a one-off as was the case for our gold, the arguments against upfront disclosure lose much of their weight.

I would not want to be short going into the speech on Sunday.

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Other speakers include luminaries such as Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, Cynthia Lummis and Caitlin Long, all of whom are fighting the good fight.

On the other hand, the organisers have rather let themselves down with appearances (possibly not in-person) by Russell Brand and Edward Snowden, which is more than a trifle disappointing.