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Comment by yitchelle | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have a layman's guess as to what is driving it to hit these ATHs?

Most likely related to SEC allowing futures ETFs to launch as of yesterday (creating more exposure to retail and retirement accounts), but overall there continues to be inflation pressures across the world that are driving some people to buy it. Others are simply speculating.

that's a convenient narrative.

if anything, i'd expect $BITO launch to be a sell the news event. lo and behold, didn't happen. i don't believe retail bought several billions of it in the first day and change of trading.

Why not? Simple narratives usually win out.

BTCUSD basically forgot what down is on october 1st. a great many things happened in the time between that and today. attributing the current price to just one event is naive - but convenient.

I attributed it to multiple events (etf, inflation, speculation), not one.

It doesn't matter whether retail traders buy trillions worth of this new ETF or not. The ETF is a futures ETF. It is not backed by any Bitcoin. It's a pure speculation on the future price of BTC.

Hence the only thing this ETF does that affects the BTC price is drive the hype even higher.

there's exactly 0 chance futures aren't hedged with the underlying.

Central banks around the world printing trillions of dollars and handing them out?

people (i mean funds) buying loads of it, with leverage.

Futures ETF listings

stock to flow.

Volatility.

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