The SEC attaches a string to Bitcoin ETFs

> It’s objectively one of the best-performing assets in human history.

I feel like this ignores the question "should it be"?

What purpose is it filling for society in its current state?

I find it highly unlikely that 100% of its daily volume ($26b) is treating it as a currency (exchanging it for goods + services).

I don't have the statistics but I'd go as far as to wager less than 50% of its volume is using it as a currency/vehicle for currency/vehicle for utility at all.

Which goes back to the original question: just because it's one of the best performing assets of all time doesn't mean that it should be if you introduce logic + reason + facts around it, right? Who is using it for what currently and at what scale? Are 99.99% of people using it as a vehicle for speculative investment and nothing else? How many dollars are being pumped into it every day (inflows)?

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-beanie-baby-craze-came-...

I believe they are referencing wash trading[1], where trades are made of a certain security but the buyers and sellers are the same person/group. This makes it appear like there is more demand for the security in the market, enticing buyers who look solely at trade volume. Forbes did some investigation[2] and found that a a lot of the trades that occur on exchanges are wash trades. So while it's clear that bitcoin is a cultural phenomenon it's hard to say exactly how much of the market is real and how much is a show to get more people holding bags and willing to pick up more.

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washtrading.asp

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/08/26/more-than-...

Well, here in the Netherlands, banks someone flag grocery transactions as suspicious with the result that average joe will have to provide evidence and all kind of crap to prevent his bank account from being closed. “CDD”

If that happens, you’re cut off. No more insurance, banking, mortgage, nothing.

I know OTC desks that can handle that for competitive spreads

but Coinbase also services the Eurozone and UK. they also have an OTC desk.

all been easy for over half a decade. you dont mention that word to banks.

by large amounts I was referring to large amounts of notional US dollars worth of bitcoin

if bitcoin becomes more scarce with that large notional demand, it will be fewer bitcoin traded at higher prices

regarding the block-halving issuance schedule, one of the advances bitcoin heralded 15 years ago was being an infinitely divisible asset. so if people want to hoard their bitcoin then smaller and smaller units can trade in that reality, to accommodate larger and larger notional values of fiat to trade.

but this alone goes hand in hand with the purpose of the block halving - thats just a subsidy to spur a parallel economy, as the block reward is intended to be supplanted by the transaction fees to redistribute bitcoin. this is already working successfully, most bitcoin blocks this year have transaction fees greater than the block reward. the same has occurred on the Ethereum network for extended periods of time too.

the SEC’s arbitrary and encumbering standard increases the number of transactions on the bitcoin network too. strengthening the velocity of transactions and therefore its transaction fee economy.

this has come to fruition in every macroeconomic environment now. one can transparently see how bitcoin is hoarded, to me its more interesting that it matches the same distribution of most other asset classes. The M1 in currency is the tiny percentage actively traded and used as cash with merchants, a small percent of the float trades for equities, commodities. no-coiners try to use the same standards to denigrate bitcoin, but functionally bitcoin and crypto do meet their prior bars and surpass them solely due to the pressure.