Also, folks suggested they are using bitaroo? Why is that?

Not unusual at all @Hackofalltrades

And not a lot different from what we're seeing with NVIDIA, Tesla et al.

Anything is possible short term.

pfft, you call that a big drop!? ;)

Who knows for sure what's driving the sell pressure (i've heard the German government is dumping some confiscated coins, and many miners are selling reserves following the halving supply shock -- which is what's happened in previous cycles), but nothing has changed in my view @Parko5

It's more like just because I added exposure to my SM portfolio :)

Some of the data ive seen on the ETFs suggest that most of the inflows are private investors and very little has come from advisor groups and institutions. These typically require mandate changes and/or sign-off from investment committees -- a long process that typically takes 3-6 months minimum. So I don't think we've really seen that money start to flow yet.

Meanwhile, Trump (who, besides being a narcissistic, lying con-man, in my view, is the likely next president of the US) is stating publicly that Bitcoin could act as a strategic reserve asset. Who know what will happen, but the very fact you have a US president (and several other candidates) openly talking about this is notable.

I think there's a few things in play. Mt gox coins about to be released / government confiscated coins selling / NVIDIA currently pulling the speculative punters instead.

Headwinds that won't last for ever.

@Strawman I agree that isn't a big drop but somewhat notable to have a 23% pullback from recent highs

I'm still looking to Dollar Cost Average as this down trend happens.

On the topic of Bitcoin, the other proxy that I think is interesting relative to these ETFs is MicroStrategy.

• I know its not as secure from a custody perspective as an ETF as Saylor could dump the entire Treasury of the company (held in BTC) at any point.
• However, there are scales from the gold standard of Self Custody Cold storage (which is where my own coins sit).
• The advantage of this is that you can also bet against bitcoin (or effectively put a forward order in if the price crashes). Take the scenario that MSTR is trading at approx US$1240 today ... a Jan 2025 620 Put option (effectively a halving of the price of bitcoin) can be sold for US$46 or a 310 Put option (effectively a drop of 75% in the price of bitcoin) can be sold for $7.50
• There is a very strong correlation between the MSTR (blue) and BTC (green) prices (although I think the MSTR has become a bit over-hyped of late so there is some argument it should revert back towards the BTC line)
• Anyway, the plan here is really to sell the PUTs and have them expire out of the money ... the USD$750 from selling one 310 put option is enough to pay for my annual Strawman subscription and buy some more BTC.

Bitcoin sure has been very weak since the April halving event - the drawdown seems deeper and more protracted than comparable periods historically, where there is some weakness over a few weeks followed by strong runs.

What's clearly different this time is those Bitcoin ETFs...

Looks like a bunch of favorable statistics published by someone who makes money from the volume of BTC trading … at least they qualify themselves in the fine print at the bottom.

DISC: BTC is held (until it reaches $1m … but not buying based upon this event)