Category: Gold

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Bitcoin ETFs Gold

World’s First Hybrid BTC and Gold ETF Launched

The world’s first combined Bitcoin and Gold exchange traded fund (ETF) has been launched this week in Switzerland. The product has been developed by ETP issuer 21Shares and cryptocurrency data provider ByteTree Asset Management.

The first ETF product to combine gold and and what has now become known as digital gold – bitcoin – in a single fund was launched on the SIX Swiss Exchange. As Charlie Morris, chief investment officer at ByteTree Asset Management, has said, “We are making bitcoin an acceptable asset to hold and bringing gold into the 21st century.”

ByteTree and 21Shares Make BOLD Move

ByteTree Asset Management BOLD ETP will track a customised benchmark index comprising bitcoin and gold, which rebalances monthly according to the comparative volatility of the two assets. Whichever of the two has been less volatile over the previous 360 days will be given the higher weighting. At launch, the weighting will be 18.5 percent bitcoin and 81.5 percent gold.

While gold ETPs and spot bitcoin ETPs are both widely available independently, at least in continental Europe, Morris claimed that ByteTree’s active rebalancing strategy had improved returns by seven to eight percentage points a year in backtesting. Morris added: “It struck me that bitcoin and gold were always counter-cyclical. It’s obvious to me that bitcoin has always been correlated to the stock market, or to risk assets in general.”

According to Charlie Erith, CEO of ByteTree Asset Management, the investment strategy is “a unique approach to blending a high return digital asset with a traditional store of value, with a low correlation to equities and bonds”. He added:

Gold has historically delivered portfolio protection in inflationary environments, while bitcoin is the digital equivalent of gold with growing adoption by investors as a distinct asset class and a core store of wealth … In a time of rising structural inflation and heightened geopolitical risk, we believe this can act as an important risk and return diversifier in a balanced portfolio.

Charlie Erith, CEO, ByteTree Asset Management

21Shares Has Form in ETF Space

21Shares has been very active in launching ETFs, after releasing a product in December 2021 that provided Australian investors with access to the country’s first direct Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Gold Investing

Billionaire Bill Miller Admits 50% of His Net Worth is in Bitcoin

Against a macro backdrop of structurally low interest rates and rising inflation, it seems that every few weeks a billionaire comes out to declare a Bitcoin position.

The latest is Bill Miller, a fund manager with more than 40 years’ experience in financial markets. Unlike his peers, Miller isn’t diversified – over 50 percent of his net worth is in Bitcoin.

Former Value Investor Turned Bitcoin Bull

In traditional financial markets, Miller enjoys legendary status after his record-beating 15 consecutive years of outperforming the S&P 500 index.

In a video interview with Wealth Track published last week, Miller revealed that 50 percent of his personal assets were in Bitcoin and related investments – a far cry from the “1-2 percent” recommended by fellow investment heavyweight Ray Dalio.

Despite previously disclosing a Bitcoin position, Miller had, until now, shunned the “Bitcoin bull” label, preferring instead to call himself “a Bitcoin observer” – one who is watching the trajectory of Bitcoin as a new technology relative to other game-changing technologies like the printing press, steam engine, automobile or electricity. In his view, Bitcoin is following a well-understood path for the adoption of new technologies.

When asked about why he went so big on Bitcoin, he noted:

It goes against many of the tenets of financial discipline. On the other hand, the people that actually are the richest people in the country all are massively concentrated. You know, Buffet in Berkshire, Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg … they’re not widely diversified, they are highly concentrated and I think that’s because they have a high degree of confidence in the value of those investments.

Bill Miller

Speaking to the question of intrinsic value and whether Bitcoin had any, Miller suggested it was best viewed as digital gold:

It comes down to, at the very basic level, to supply and demand. Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the supply is unaffected by demand. So even with gold, which is $1,800 today, if gold goes to $18,000, there’ll be a lot more gold mined because mines that are unprofitable will become profitable.

Bill Miller

Miller said he personally started buying Bitcoin at around US$200 in 2014 after hearing a talk by Wences Casares, and then continued to buy more over time.

After stopping for number of years, he then decided to get back in when Bitcoin dipped to US$30,000, saying “there’s a lot more money going into it in the venture capital world, and there are a lot of people who are sceptics who are now at least trying it out”.

Despite being heavily concentrated, Miller’s recommendation to average investors is to put 1 percent of their net wealth into Bitcoin because “even if it goes to zero, which I think is highly improbable, but of course possible, you can always afford to lose 1 percent”.

I think the average investor should ask himself or herself, what do you have in your portfolio that has that kind of track record – number one, is very, very under-penetrated; can provide a service of insurance against financial catastrophe that no one else can provide, and can go up 10 times or 50 times? The answer is: nothing.

Bill Miller

At 72 years of age, it’s impressive that Miller has been involved in Bitcoin since 2014. Staying ahead of the technology curve is difficult, but what makes his investment ever more impressive is that he seemingly beat countless tech entrepreneurs to the punch, including Peter Thiel.

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Australia Crime Crypto News Gold Scams South Africa Tokens

Australian Man Charged by SEC for Fraudulent ICO

Australian cryptocurrency entrepreneur Craig Sproule has been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for defrauding investors by diverting millions from a digital coin offering into South African gold mining interests.

Australian crypto entrepreneur Craig Sproule. Source: medium.com

Sproule, currently a resident of California, faces additional charges of making false and misleading statements when selling digital asset securities. Jointly named on the SEC charge sheet are two companies founded by the Lismore-born entrepreneur – Crowd Machine Inc and Metavine Pty Ltd.

‘The Man Behind the Machine’

Self-proclaimed on social media as “the Man behind the Machine”, Sproule has been ordered to pay a US$200,000 (A$280,000) civil penalty while Crowd Machine’s digital tokens will be banned from crypto trading platforms.

Crowd Machine was intended to replace Amazon Web Services, the cloud-based computer infrastructure, with a distributed system. To achieve this, Sproule claimed to have raised US$40.7 million through an initial coin offering of Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCT) in early 2018 that was to fund a decentralised computer network.

Almost $6 Million Siphoned into South African Gold Mines

Instead, Sproule siphoned US$5.8 million into gold mining entities in South Africa, which was not disclosed to Crowd Machine token investors. None of the US$5.8 million has been recovered, and the South African gold mining operations “have returned no revenue”, according to the SEC’s statement of claim.

Along with Sproule and Crowd Machine, another entity registered in Australia, Metavine Pty Ltd, has committed to covering any future civil penalties relating to Crowd Machine. An application for voluntary deregistration of Metavine was filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) last month.

Sproule and Crowd Machine have neither admitted nor denied the allegations, although Sproule will be summarily banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

Shades of Last Year’s BitConnect Fiasco

The Sproule/Crowd Machine imbroglio echoes the circumstances of an SEC lawsuit filed last May against five individuals linked to BitConnect for promoting and selling unregistered securities. That case also shared a connection down under, with ASIC accusing a former BitConnect promoter of defrauding small investors in Australia in 2017-2018.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Gold

Goldman Sachs Sees BTC Taking Further Market Share from Gold, $100k Possible This Year

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS), a multinational US$136 billion investment bank, has released a note to its investors saying that a US$100,000 price tag for Bitcoin in 2022 is possible if it continues to erode gold’s utility as a store of value.

Goldman Sachs and Bitcoin

Even though GS isn’t bullish on Bitcoin per se, Wall Street bankers inevitably follow the money, as reflected in the investment bank’s recent actions.

In June last year, it began trading Bitcoin futures, even though its investors were unsure whether Bitcoin was an investable asset. Later, an internal survey revealed that 60 percent of its wealth management clients were interested in purchasing Bitcoin.

Despite the natural tension between fiat-loving bankers and Bitcoiners, GS’s recent paper was met with delight by Bitcoiners who felt that, finally, a major investment bank saw Bitcoin for the “digital store of value” that it is. The report went on to add that Bitcoin’s userbase may well increase from 100 million to 4 billion within the next five years.

Comparison of crypto technologies. Source: Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs and the ‘Store of Value’ Thesis

In its report, GS commented that Bitcoin would continue to take market share from gold as part of a broader adoption of digital assets. By GS’s own estimates, Bitcoin accounted for 20 percent of the “store of value” market which it said comprised Bitcoin and gold. The value of gold that’s available for investment, in their opinion, is estimated at US$2.6 trillion.

Gold and Bitcoin on “store of value”. Source: Goldman Sachs
Macro and Bitcoin. Source: Goldman Sachs

The note went on to say:

If Bitcoin’s share of the store of value market were ‘hypothetically’ to rise to 50 percent over the next five years, its price would increase to just over US$100,000, for a compound annualised return of 17 or 18 percent.

Zach Pandl, co-head of global FX and EM strategy, Goldman Sachs

While one could debate whether GS’s figures are accurate, as well as its specific understanding of Bitcoin (for example, it doesn’t appear to know about the Lightning Network), it is clear it has become something it is taking seriously.

Whereas most financial products are created at the top and distributed downwards to retail (like mortgage-backed securities), Bitcoin is a retail-inspired monetary revolution that is slowly bringing in institutional capital. Raoul Pal spoke of an impending “wall of institutional money” in 2021. Perhaps 2022 will be the year.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Gold Institutions

Institutional Crypto Custodians Raised $3 Billion in 2021

Investments into institutional-focused crypto custody firms have skyrocketed in 2021 – over US$3 billion has been raised this year, a rate three times higher than 2020.

The amount of capital flowing to institutional-focused crypto custody companies is now worth a total of almost US$3.5 billion, 4.8 times the amount raised in 2018.

NYDIG Leads the Chart

In mid-December, bitcoin holding company NYDIG announced the closing of US$1 billion in investment funding, giving the company an estimated value of more than $7 billion.

A day later, Anchorage, a San Francisco-based crypto custody company for institutional investors, announced a US$350 million funding round.

The top companies leading investment rounds so far are:

  • NYDIG: $1 billion raised;
  • Ledger: $380 million raised;
  • Anchorage: $350 million;
  • Fireblock: $310 million; and
  • Copper: $50 million

More Institutions Replace Gold with Bitcoin

Institutions have been heavily hoarding some of the top cryptocurrencies in the market, and institutional interest in the crypto market has surged to the point that 84 percent of institutions are interested in a crypto ETF.

So far, the idea remains the same: institutions want to escape inflation, and gold was the preferred option by most industries. However, with the rise of Bitcoin and other decentralised currencies, more institutions – including investment firms and banks – are replacing gold with bitcoin.

Crypto News Australia has kept track of the latest Bitcoin purchases made by institutional players in the crypto market this year. You can check our list here.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Gold

$60 Billion Grayscale Total AUM Now Worth More Than World’s Largest Gold Fund

Grayscale is leading the way as the world’s largest digital currency asset manager. The company’s total Assets Under Management (AUM) have reached US$60.8 billion, surpassing $58.3 billion AUM of SDPR Gold Shares, the world’s largest gold exchange-traded fund (ETF).

Grayscale, which operates the world’s largest Bitcoin and Ethereum investment funds, was the first financial institution to bring a digital currency investment product to the public market. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) holds US$43.6 billion AUM, and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust holds US$14.9 billion AUM, according to the firm’s November 10 update.

Grayscale has long been working towards getting a Bitcoin spot ETF approved but continues to be rejected by the Securities Exchange Commission, despite its approval for a Bitcoin futures ETF. Regardless of a Bitcoin spot ETF, Grayscale has managed to flippen gold.

All That No Longer Glisters

Grayscale’s leadership towards investing in Bitcoin has paid off. The company dedicated a marketing campaign, #dropgold, aimed at attracting traditional investors away from gold towards the new gold of the future: the world’s largest digital asset, Bitcoin. “Go Digital, Go Grayscale”, says the dropgold website. “It’s not that gold is bad. It’s just that bitcoin is better.”

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Bitcoin Blockchain Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Ethereum Gold Institutions

$2.2 Trillion Bond Giant Embraces Crypto as ‘Inflation Hedge and Store of Value’

Pimco, a US$2.2 trillion global fixed-income giant, will continue to explore crypto assets that have the “potential to disrupt the financial industry”, according to a report from CNBC.

Exploring Cryptocurrencies as an Inflation Hedge

During an interview with CNBC, chief investment officer Daniel Ivascyn revealed that Pimco had already invested in “crypto-linked securities” through several hedge fund portfolios, and plans to increment crypto assets exposure in the near future.

The move was announced on October 20 after Bitcoin and other high-market cap cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum surpassed record price levels, with BTC breaking above US$67,000 and ETH reclaiming the $4,000 mark, falling just short of its May ATH of $4,300.

Most cryptocurrencies saw a boost in price after the first Bitcoin futures-linked ETF, which saw a massive trading volume on its first days of approximately US$1 billion.

According to Ivascyn:

Now we’re looking at potentially trading certain cryptocurrencies as part of our trend-following strategies or quant-oriented strategies, then doing more work on the fundamental side. This will be a gradual process where we spend a lot of time on the internal diligence side speaking to investors. And we’ll take baby steps in an area that’s rapidly growing.

Daniel Ivascyn, CIO, Pimco

Ivascyn went on to say that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin offer an inflation hedge and a store of value against fiat hyperinflation and declining purchasing power. His comments resemble those of JPMorgan, whereby analysts at the investment bank revealed earlier this month that investors were replacing gold with bitcoin as a better inflation hedge.

Competitive Environment Keeps Pace with Innovation

Cryptocurrencies and the DeFi sector have become highly valuable financial instruments not only for crypto enthusiasts but for artists, content creators, institutional investors and more.

As crypto and blockchain technology advances continue to accelerate, traditional institutions are keener than ever to explore a space that’s innovating at such a pace. To that matter, Ivascyn said:

Pimco is thinking about scenarios where this could take us to ensure we are competitively prepared to deal with what’s a rapidly changing environment that offers a pretty significant value proposition.

Daniel Ivascyn, CIO, Pimco
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Bitcoin Gold Institutions Investing

JPMorgan Says Institutional Investors Are Replacing Gold With Bitcoin

Bitcoin’s market cap hit the US$1 trillion dollar mark last week as BTC’s price surged to US$55,000. Analysts at American investment bank JPMorgan put forward three main reasons behind the recent BTC price surge, and one of them is institutional interest. 

Institutions Are Fuelling Bitcoin

It seems institutions are taking the lead again and driving the price this quarter, when it was retail investors that had out-bought institutions in the first quarter of 2021.

According to a Bloomberg report, JPMorgan said that institutional investors were the main driving force behind bitcoin’s recent price surge, mainly because they see it as a “better inflation hedge than gold”.

The re-emergence of inflation concerns among investors has renewed interest in the usage of bitcoin as an inflation hedge. Institutional investors appear to be returning to bitcoin, perhaps seeing it as a better inflation hedge than gold.

JPMorgan statement

The two other key factors were “recent assurances by US policymakers that there is no intention to follow China’s steps towards banning the usage or mining of cryptocurrencies”, and “the recent rise of the Lightning Network and 2nd layer payments solutions helped by El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption”.

JPMorgan Believes Bitcoin Could Go 10x – But Still Doesn’t Like It

JPMorgan has been one of the most hesitant traditional financial institutions when it comes to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. But as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology demonstrate their usefulness especially in times of financial crises, most institutional investors have decided to engage with cryptocurrencies one way or another.

While JPMorgan still doesn’t like Bitcoin – or any crypto, really – its CEO, Jamie Dimon, recently conceded bitcoin could grow by up to 10 times within the next five years, which could be his most positive comment yet about BTC.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Gold

Billionaire Investor Says ‘Bitcoin Has Effectively Replaced Gold’

In an interview with CNBC during its Delivering Alpha conference, outspoken billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya suggested he could “pretty confidently say that bitcoin has effectively replaced gold and it would continue to do so … and so that market cap is just going to grow”.

Chamath Palihapitiya. Source: Fortune magazine

Long History of Bitcoin

Palihapitiya, a well-known early investor in Bitcoin, has previously advocated to have at least 1 percent of your assets in something that is totally uncorrelated (ie, Bitcoin) to the current financial system.

Whether you support the fiscal and monetary policy or not, it doesn’t matter. This [bitcoin] is the schmuck insurance you have under your mattress.

Chamath Palihapitiya

In the interview, he suggested that Bitcoin is the most “profound iteration of the internet we’ve seen” and when asked about the risk of government shutting it down, he responded that it would be “very hard to kill”.

Despite standing out from this Silicon Valley peers in his endorsement of Bitcoin, Palihapitiya is in good company with other billionaires across the globe who have also entered the fray.

Dabbling Outside in Broader Crypto Ecosystem

Despite the bulk of his crypto investments being in Bitcoin, Palihapitiya indicated that he had put a small amount of capital into other projects that one day could be worth “tens of millions, hundreds of millions … “. Presumably his version of a “small amount of capital” is somewhat different to that of an ordinary investor.

Overall, he saw the impact of the sector as being enormous:

For the first time, I think we’re seeing the initial versions of the solution that we thought Bitcoin was supposed to be. Smart contracts, better savings accounts, better insurance, better credit scoring.

Chamath Palihapitiya


Looking at the bigger macroeconomic context, he mentioned he was very concerned about inflation and found crypto particularly attractive as a non-correlated asset:

Bitcoin, Solana, DeSo, a lot of the DeFi protocols because it’s a great counterintuitive hedge against all of this stuff.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Tracking Gold

How has Bitcoin performed relative to gold? Across almost all timescales, as at October 1, it’s not even close:

BTC v other assets. Source: Casebitcoin

Michael Saylor is perhaps less diplomatic about gold’s weak performance:

Notwithstanding the advantages of “digital gold”, some have however argued in favour of a small physical gold position to guard against black swan, apocalyptic events. Perhaps, then, it makes plenty sense to have a form of hard money with a 5,000-year track record.

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Australia Bitcoin Economics Ethereum Gold Markets Worldwide

‘Rich Dad’ Author Robert Kiyosaki Warns of Global Financial Crash Looming

Author Robert Kiyosaki has been outspoken on Twitter, expressing his take on the current economic situation, America’s leadership, and a fear that the world is headed for “the biggest crash in world history”. He urges citizens to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, and silver.

Concerns over US spending and approval of a monumental stimulus package are driving fear and uncertainty over the value of a dollar. Inflation is looming as the US continues to enter money into circulation. Bitcoin and other cryptos are gaining value, while the US Dollar (USD) continues to lose.

In a video posted to YouTube, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad expresses his views on the current world economy, his disapproval of US monetary policy, and the benefits of crypto.

US Dollar is Losing Its Purchasing Power – Buy Bitcoin

Since 1900, the USD has lost about 97 percent of its purchasing power. This means that whatever used to cost US$1 now costs US$31 – keep in mind that inflation affects this estimate.  

The US recently approved a stimulus package to the value of US$1.9 trillion, which suggests that the purchasing power of the USD against bitcoin may decline even further. When comparing the USD price against the Satoshi, which is 100 millionths of a bitcoin, it appears that since the inception of BTC the USD is losing up to 99 percent of its purchasing value each year. The US$1,400 stimulus cheque that the US Government is handing out to every citizen is likely to continue this trend.

Australia Is Turning to Crypto

The worrying US economic situation is being observed all over the world, and Australia is feeling it too. Many Australians are turning to crypto as wages fail to keep up with the consumer price index (CPI), the cost of living continues to increase, and job insecurity is at an all-time high.

Figures from Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that the CPI has been rising consistently over the past 10 years.

The Australian CPI quarterly change. Source: ABS

The number of Australians turning to crypto to become financially free is on the rise, keeping pace with the demand for workers to be paid in crypto and millennials turning away from traditional avenues of investing, such as property, instead opting for crypto.

Take Note from Venezuela

Venezuela is a prime example of what happens when hyperinflation sets in. The Latin American country’s currency, the bolívar, is the world’s weakest and literally no longer worth the paper it is printed on. Creative artists have instead started turning the notes into bags and wallets, which they can sell for more than the currency is worth.

Venezuela is now ranked third in terms of bitcoin adoption and joins many Latin American countries to take the crypto route. Extremely high levels of inflation are forcing nations to turn to crypto as their native currencies continue to lose purchasing power.