The regulatory process is normally a dry affair: Corporate executives ask their lawyers to file paperwork and then sit around until an agency makes a decision. But in the case of pending applications for a Bitcoin ETF, crypto nerds are sharing any detail—real or imagined—with an obsession reminiscent of Swifties tracking the progress of the Taylor-Travis courtship.
This fixation has only increased in the new year even though very little has happened in the last week when it comes to the Bitcoin ETF applications. But that hasn't stopped crypto bulls from gushing that an SEC approval will cause prices to go gangbusters, or others to opine that any price boost from an approval is already baked in. No one really knows for sure, but the crypto world has been happy to fill the information void with speculation, rumors, and conspiracies.
The latest example came on Wednesday morning when Bitcoin fell with a thud after a research report predicted that the SEC's approval—widely expected to come next week—wasn't going to happen after all. By midday, however, the nervous nellies on Crypto Twitter appeared to have persuaded themselves that the report author was wrong and prices made a modest recovery. Their confidence was boosted by a tweet from an unreliable journalist that the SEC will begin notifying would-be issuers on Friday that their applications have been approved, and that trading in Bitcoin ETF shares will begin next week.
This might be true. Or it might not. But what is certain is that this climate of chatter and uncertainty has provided opportunity for some A-plus trolling of the ETF obsessives. Most notably, Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal posted a BlackRock filing to support the position that "ETF might boost the price, but theoretically it could benefit bitcoin in other ways as well. One entity controlling so much of the economic weight of the network might be in a position to push through block size increases, and code changes that enable smart contracts."
This is exactly the sort of thing that triggers paranoid Bitcoiners' fear of centralization, and, while some correctly warned “that's bait!” others eagerly piled onto Weisenthal—prompting him to troll them some more. It's not my style, but I admire the game. At the very least, Weisenthal's jibe underscored just how squirrely the very-online world of crypto devotees can get.
The irony in all this is that those clamoring for early information on the ETF decision are unlikely to get it. The SEC, after all, is tasked with policing insider trading so it would be insane for anyone involved in the process to leak the agency's decision in advance. The upshot is that, when it comes to predicting the outcome of the Bitcoin ETF process, there's really only one thing to do: wait.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
