Tom here.

No matter how well ETFs perform, Bitcoin can’t seem to reach new all-time highs.

That’s because most of the money piling into the spot exchange-traded funds — which saw a record-breaking 19-day streak of inflows — is quite possibly being deployed by hedge funds looking to arbitrage discrepancies between the spot and futures markets.

In plain speak: Traders are buying ETF shares and selling the same amount of Bitcoin on a different venue, profiting from the price difference.

But the ETFs’ long-term future looks assured. 

VanEck’s head of digital assets research Matthew Sigel told DL News he expected crypto ETFs to have $500 billion in assets by the end of the decade.

In that scenario, Sigel said, Bitcoin would be trading for roughly $350,000, while Ethereum would be priced at about $22,000.

Elsewhere, SEC Chair Gary Gensler told senators on Thursday that spot Ethereum ETFs would likely launch sometime this summer — and that will certainly attract more investors.

For now, however, Bitcoin remains bound to macro whims, especially since the hot ball of money — most of the speculative fervour — seems focused on Nvidia and the AI scene.

The top cryptocurrency jumped when low US inflation figures came in on Wednesday morning. 

It dipped again that same day when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made hawkish comments.

In the midst of it all, short sellers are making bank by betting against Bitcoin miners — despite Donald Trump coming out in support of the mining industry on Tuesday. 

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Post of the week

Martin Shkreli and PleasrDAO, a crypto collective, have been bickering over the infringement of copyright laws in relation to a copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album that used to belong to Shkreli but now is owned by the DAO. 

And it’s not often that Shkreli finds someone with a sharper tongue than his.