Good night, angel investors 👼

The Bitcoin spot ETF was officially approved by the SEC on January 10th, US time. This is a day worth celebrating and a day that can be recorded in history ($BTC From only buying pizza to now it has become ETFs in traditional financial institutions! However, as angel investors, we should now pay more attention to the overall impact of this incident, the future trend of the currency circle, and the hot spots we can look forward to.

In this article, I briefly share my own views and events that I will continue to pay attention to in the future.

Fund inflow volume in the currency circle

Starting with fundamentals, the first thing I would look at is the total amount of money these ETFs can bring to the cryptocurrency community. To me, this is the fundamental reason that will positively drive the rise of Bitcoin & the currency circle. As long as retail investors or institutions have greater demand for Bitcoin spot ETFs, the company that manages the ETF will need to buy more Bitcoin spot, forming strong buying pressure.

How to check ETF fund amount? For example, Blackrock's IBIT Bitcoin ETF will be accepted for trading on Nasdaq on 1/11 US time. As long as you find the AUM (total assets under management) of the ETF, you can know the total amount of funds brought in by IBIT. how many.

There are currently 11 ETFs approved by the SEC. The following are the codes of each ETF:

• Blackrock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)

• ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB)

• WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW)

• Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO)

• Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB)

• VanEck Bitcoin Trust (HODL)

• Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC)

• Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust (FBTC)

• Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund (BRRR)

• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)

• Hashdex Bitcoin ETF (DEFI)

One thing to note is that the current NAV (current net asset value) of Grayscale GBTC is still at a negative premium. Therefore, after GBTC is converted into an ETF, Grayscale will most likely sell the Bitcoins in the trust to return the price of GBTC to its net value. As a result, GBTC's total assets under management may be reduced and allocated to other ETFs.

Another breakthrough that may bring a large inflow of funds is the U.S. Retirement Fund. Retirement fund management companies in the United States such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard all manage a large number of Americans' retirement funds, with approximately $5.3T in assets as of now - when Bitcoin ETF becomes an option provided to users by these management companies, these funds will have opportunities Flow into the currency circle.

Three future hot spots and narratives

The Bitcoin ETF has been hyped for so long and it can be said that the dust has settled. The question we have to ask is: What’s next? I think there are three other things worth looking forward to and paying attention to in 2024, namely the Ethereum ETF, the Ethereum Cancun upgrade, and the Bitcoin halving.

• Ethereum ETF

The passage of Bitcoin ETF not only allows traditional financial funds to flow into the currency circle, but more importantly, it "sets a regulatory precedent" (Set A Regulartory Precedence), which means that institutions will be able to draw on this success to issue other types of cryptocurrencies. Currency ETFs. Among them, another cryptocurrency that Gary Gensler has publicly admitted is a "non-security" - Ethereum $ETH - is very likely to be the next target of the institution.

To be honest, I don’t have high expectations for the adoption of the Ethereum ETF in the near future. The reason mainly comes from the reason given by the SEC for passing the Bitcoin ETF this time: "It was affected by the court ruling in the Grayscale case." In other words, the SEC's adoption of the Bitcoin ETF feels a bit like being "forced". Whether it is pressure from the court, pressure from Wall Street, or pressure from the U.S. Congress, Gary Gensler has to lower his head and cast his vote for the Bitcoin ETF. one vote passed

Interested readers can read the public statements made by several SEC Commissioners for the passage of the Bitcoin ETF. You should be able to observe the overt and covert fighting between several Commissioners on this matter (including publicly challenging Gary and believing that Gary caused the SEC's reputation to change. Bad, etc.), very interesting.

• Ethereum Cancun Upgrade

The Cancun upgrade is the next major upgrade for Ethereum and is expected to take place between March and April this year. This upgrade will reduce the handling fee of Ethereum Layer 2 by more than 10 times - in my opinion, this will mainly bring two major benefits:

First: Re-ensure Ethereum’s leading position as a “modular public chain”

Recently, with the rise of the Celestia ecosystem, Manta, Dymension, and Cosmos have attracted a lot of attention and are growing very fast. However, when it comes to the richness of the ecosystem, Ethereum and Layer2 (Arbitrum, Optimism) can still firmly hold the first place. This Cancun upgrade can draw public attention back to Ethereum and help the Ethereum ecosystem continue to grow.

Second: GameFi, SocialFi, DePIN narrative moves to Ethereum

At present, Solana's main "high-performance" single-chain design has led many projects to choose to develop on Solana (if you are interested, check out my Solana research report for a more detailed explanation), instead of choosing a richer and safer ecosystem. Ethereum Blockchain—One of the main reasons is “too expensive!” This Cancun upgrade will solve this problem. The low handling fees will make more projects willing to use Ethereum’s Layer 2 as the underlying architecture, increase the usage scenarios of ETH, and drive more narratives.

At present, the way public chains solve "scalability" can be roughly divided into two categories: "single chain enhancement" & "modularization". Solana, as the leader of "single chain enhancement", has skyrocketed for several rounds; I predict that as a "modularization" Ethereum, the leader in "organizationalization", can use the Cancun upgrade as a hot spot and return to the public eye.

• Bitcoin Halving

The output rate of Bitcoin will be halved approximately every four years, which coincidentally coincides with the Bitcoin price cycle. Therefore, the Bitcoin halving has always been expected by the public to be an upward signal, mainly because "demand remains unchanged and supply is halved." Backtesting based on historical data, Bitcoin will reach a bull market high again within a year and a half after the halving. Therefore, it is very important to pay attention to the next halving date.

According to the current block speed, the Bitcoin halving will occur on April 17th this year. You can use this website to check the progress at any time.

Has the bull market arrived?

In an article I published in early December, I shared my two major bull market catalysts in the currency circle: "Passage of Bitcoin ETF" and "U.S. interest rate cut." Now that the first catalyst has been completed as scheduled, it is expected to bring a large amount of funds into the currency circle. The second catalyst is on the way: I still think a rate cut will happen this year and is another important piece of the puzzle to start a bull market.

This article was written on the evening of January 10th, US time. Tomorrow the Bitcoin ETF will all be launched. At that time, I can report what I observed to everyone in the group. Finally, congratulations to everyone in the currency circle. The approval of ETF will definitely go down in history. Today is a day worth celebrating!