Breaking Down ETF's Impact on Bitcoin Price with Cory Klippsten

I obviously don't expect 70k to be the the high of this next bull run. I think it'll be significantly higher than that. But what I've been talking about is a an ETF multiplier effect.

Are you still feeling the heat of Bitcoin's latest retracement to the low 40,000? Take a breath. It looks like the tide of the crypto markets is changing again. Billions of dollars are flowing into the new spot Bitcoin ETFs while capital outflows from GBTC are finally slowing down. Does that mean the correction is over or should we expect new lows? And what may be the actual impact of the new ETFs on the Bitcoin price in the long run? I discussed these and more questions with the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, Corey Clipson, before we dive in. I'm thrilled to announce the upcoming return of BlockShow, the leading event in the crypto and blockchain industry. This time it's teaming up with Blockdown, a pioneer in the Web3 conference scene. Get ready to join us in Hong Kong for this crypto celebration from May 8 to 9. Don't miss out on Click the link in the description to learn more about this event. And remember, early bird tickets are limited. And now let's get to the interview. In an interview that I saw from last year, you were recommending people not to trade the spot Bitcoin ETF approval because of a possibility of correction. And that's what actually happened. So you were predicting that Bitcoin would retrace by about 30, 40%. How much further do you think it will correct from the point we are.

Now the only signal that I'm seeing right now that matters is the flows into the non GBTC ETFs. So the new ETF vehicles that didn't exist, GBTC has had absolutely massive selling because there are a bunch of these bankruptcy estates that are selling GBTC now that the discount to net asset value has closed to near zero. There's just a ton of selling going on out of gbtc. We all learned that the FTX bankruptcy sold a billion dollars worth of GBTC over a few days, for instance. So I think it's just kind of inevitable that that was going to happen. I actually think that the amount that it's fallen is amazingly small given the amount of selling that's been going on. And I think that is a credit to not just the flows going into the new ETFs, but what I've been talking about an ETF multiplier effect. And basically this is because of the existence of the ETFs and the credibility of these large financial firms getting into the space and validating it in the eyes of investors that haven't played the game previously. A lot more Bitcoin will be purchased through all of the other sellers around the world, whether it's Swan, whether it's Coinbase, whether it's Relay over in Europe or OTC desks, or even private funds from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. So there's a lot more Bitcoin flows or money flowing into Bitcoin incremental to what otherwise would have because of the existence of the ETFs. So it's their marketing and their stamp of approval that frankly is much more important than, and frankly a lot larger magnitude of flow into Bitcoin than just what's flowing into the ETFs.

A lot of people are saying that this event, the approval of the SPOT Bitcoin ETF is creating even more distance from Bitcoin and the rest of cryptocurrencies. Can you give us your view on the impact that this is going to have on the relationship between Bitcoin and the rest of crypto?

Wow, it's so funny. I have a very fresh example of this that happened about an hour ago. I'm actually squatting in an old office of mine. I just got caught on this side of town, which is why I have the fancy conference room background here. Anyway, I'm friends with one of the desk guys here from having spent time here. And we were in the coffee room and he struck up a conversation with another gentleman that was there who ended up at. I didn't know, but he's the CEO of a fairly large insurance company and they started talking about Bitcoin ETFs. And I got to hear this guy's reaction because the desk guy knows me and knows about bitcoin from, you know, from me and just being interested after knowing us for a few years. So he was making the pitch and the guy was like fully on board and his take basically was he's more comfortable with it now that so much of the fraud has been washed out of the crypto space. So he knew about FTX and he knew about Binance and he basically just didn't trust. Because Bitcoin was so closely linked with all these C5 frauds and all the crypto frauds and pump and dump schemes, it was really hard to separate Bitcoin from non Bitcoin crypto and from just Kind of like crypto scammers generally. And now it's really obvious that there's something there and he's starting to look at it. He doesn't own anything personally. But then when Jeremiah the desk guy said by the way, Corey runs a big bitcoin company, we were right into a conversation about how it fits into insurance company portfolios. I started talking about how I know the CIO at MassMutual and they did $100 million buy. They love it because it's non correlated and because it matches with extreme tail risks that may happen and it's the kind of asset that can go up a lot over time and it actually so dramatically improves the sharpe ratio of an insurance company portfolio. So yeah, right into a conversation like that. Totally impossible, I guarantee you, impossible. Three months ago on the other hand.

We have a lot of rumors, a lot of talking about the possibility of an imminent spot Ethereum ETF being approved as well in the US we saw that BlackRock filed an application for it and Bloomberg analyst I believe Eric Balchunas not long ago said that There is a 70% chance that a spot Ethereum ETF will be approved this year. If that happens, it means that Ethereum will also have the same status of Bitcoin in terms of institutional acknowledgment. Don't you think so?

That's always been the play, right? And the Ethereum foundation and Lubin and Consensys have spent billions of dollars to try to make that a reality and try to confuse regulators to thinking that this was somehow somewhat like bitcoin and they may pull it off. I mean the Church of Scientology didn't used to be a church and they were ran a massive letter writing campaign and choked the courts and they get to have tax free real estate all over Los Angeles. So it's not like things always work out as they're supposed to. A lot of times concentrated interests can influence policy. This is why we have a crappy food pyramid stuffed with snacks from General Mills and Kellogg's. Right? So I suspect that, you know, there's a pretty good likelihood that Ethereum gets away with it as a team and as a tech company with their sort of pseudo company stock that they, they have massive influence over and massive piles of and continue to rake the rewards of through staking. So they'll probably get away with it. I just don't think it'll matter though because people who actually look into the stuff, the deeper you go into it, the less you understand Bitcoin, the less you understand Ethereum as being money of any kind. I think that meme is obviously pretty freaking dead. And we have proof points of this, right? There were a lot of crypto industry requests, for instance, for BlockFi to add Ethereum and Altcoins to the card rewards at BlockFi. And they argued and argued and argued and said all these people wanted Ethereum rewards. They don't. They actually don't. They want to use it to launch grifty scams and pump and dumps and to trade, basically. And the only people that really hold Ethereum for the long term are pretty much the insiders because they're just getting the staking income. And so after a year of marketing Ethereum and six or seven other cryptos versus Bitcoin, it only amounted to 3% of rewards. 97% of the rewards were still taken in Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is something that people actually want to hold. And that won't ever change regardless of whether there's an Ethereum etf. It'll just trade like a tech stock basically, at best.

You said that in this specific market cycle, Bitcoin is likely to break the pattern of diminishing returns that we have been seeing throughout the latest few cycles. So why exactly do you think that this pattern will be broken this time?

Yeah, so I think it's inevitable. And I apologize if I did this math live last time. I can't remember if I did. But the trough to peak up to the top of 2013 was $2 to 1100, so it was 550x. The trough to peak up to 2017 was 180 bucks up to 19,700, which interestingly was exactly 20% of that. It was 110x. So from 550x to 110x, amazingly it continued to be geometric into 2021. So trough to peak in 2021 was from 3150 to 6008, 800 or 69,000 or whatever. It was literally 22x, another 20 or another 80% reduction in the rise. So from 550 to 110 to 22. When I say that we're going to break that cycle of sort of these geometric returns, it's because from the bottom of around 16k, if you went to 4.4, that would only be 70k. And I obviously don't expect 70k to be the high of this next bull run, I think it'll be significantly higher than that. So I think that cycle of sort of change, geometrically diminishing returns is going to break, you know, this year or next year for sure.

Thanks a lot, Corey, for coming on our show. It's always a pleasure.

And you as well.