🟣 ET(H)F Day!

In case you live under a rock, yesterday the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs.

January 11, 2024

It really is a great morning. 

In case you live under a rock, the SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs yesterday. Bitwise’s BITB, ARK 21 Shares’ ARKB, Fidelity’s FBTC, Wisdomtree’s BTCW, Invesco’s BTCO, Valkyrie’s BRRR, Blackrock’s IBIT, Vaneck’s HODL, Franklin’s EZBC, Hashdex’s DEFI, and Grayscale’s GBTC. All ETFs have begun trading today, and volume in the first 30 minutes was over $1B. You can stay up to date with our new ETF tracker. 

It is a historic week. These ETFs have been over 10 years in the making and will allow people wary of exchange risk and self-custody BTC exposure for the first time ever. This is a big step for our industry and deserves celebration. 

The approval itself came with lackluster price action for BTC, but ETH and its blue chip rollups OP and ARB had quite the day. Late last night, BTC and the entire crypto market started to follow in the rally, further fueled by market open this morning. 

All eyes are now on the ETFs’ inflows. In my opinion, if we see the most inflows of any day one ETF ever (~$2.2B,) it could be a catalyst for the return of mania. To give you some bullish inspiration this morning. 

In other news, Circle, issuer of USDC, filed for an IPO! More publicly traded crypto companies beyond miners, Coinbase, and the BTC ETFs will further legitimize our industry. 

In the onchain world, Vitalik has signaled that he supports a gas limit increase. The implications of this, if adopted by the majority of validating clients, would be more transaction throughput on Ethereum mainnet.

— Matt Fiebach

What better way to celebrate an ETF approval than getting 10% off a research subscription? Sign up for Blockworks Research using code "ETF10", only for 48 hours, so don't miss out. You're going to want the alpha over 2024. This one's for Gary.

Yesterday, someone bought $8M USD worth of WIF (Dog Wif Hat), a memecoin on Solana, which was executed across two transactions, one for 6.25M through Raydium and one for $1.8M through Orca. The price of WIF wicked briefly to $4 USD, at which point it had a circulating market cap of $4B USD.

Since there was only approximately $3M USD worth of liquidity across the chain for $WIF, the buyer slipped at least $5M. Additionally, ByBit listed WIFUSDT perpetual futures today at 13:00 UTC.

The whitepaper introduces SatoshiVM, a decentralized Bitcoin ZK Rollup Layer2 solution compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem, using native BTC as gas.

The article discusses emerging applications of social media and speculation, analyzing several startups that introduce elements of betting, prediction markets, and tokenized fan engagement to social platforms in novel ways, with the goal of more efficient information filtering and new monetization opportunities for creators and users.

The report proposes a method for maintaining a state merkle tree that significantly reduces the overhead costs of random disk accesses and tree traversals, through techniques like using a binary tree layout, unique node IDs, compressed metadata, and aggressive caching.

This report delves into the intricate workings of Optimism and Arbitrum, unpacking their differences and potential to redefine the core theses of every crypto investor.

Solana saw a boom in activity to round out 2023 as price appreciation brought newfound attention to the ecosystem. We believe exploring the Solana ecosystem is still a worthwhile endeavor, especially considering the recent pullback in asset prices.

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.