Within weeks of MicroStrategy announcing its $500 million investment in Bitcoin[1], Square’s $50 million investment in the asset stole all the headlines. These developments have been big news for many in the community, with crypto-Twitter seeing more rocket gifs than ever before. What does this mean? Does this mean that the entry of smart money is lowering the barrier for retail investment? Does this mean that profit booking opportunities have multiplied? And finally, will a Bitcoin ETF finally get a regulatory nod?
Bitcoin’s 30-day volatility has dropped || Source: Twitter[2]
CEO and Founder of Global Macro Investor and Real Vision Group, Raoul Pal, recently shared a tweet about Bitcoin’s drop in volatility, a tweet wherein he suggested that there was a correlation between volatility and volume. A big move is coming soon, he added.
While on-chain analysts are expecting a massive impact on the cryptocurrency’s price, there may be another side to the latest developments in the ecosystem. The entry of smart money and rising Open Interest on derivatives exchange CME suggest that it may be time for a Bitcoin ETF to finally get the nod from regulators.
This would be a HUGE deal, especially since all proposals for Bitcoin ETFs[3] since 2017 have been turned down. More often than not, the reasons cited for the said rejections have been that Bitcoin is traded on largely unregulated exchanges, leaving it susceptible to fraud and manipulation.
Besides regulation, factors such as market capitalization and volume/ liquidity possibly played an important role in the SEC’s[4] ruling. The total market capitalization of Bitcoin is equivalent to the market capitalization of Brent Oil. This is enough to put liquidity in perspective.
However, in 2020, this has changed. Liquidity has increased 3x, or
