Am I the only one thinking Blackrock wants the price lower to enter the space?

What’s the old saying? Follow the money.

The SEC and all of the other 3-letter agencies were entirely asleep at the wheel with FTX. But then they decide to fuck around with kraken. Kraken being apparently quite clean, they remove their ability to remove staking as a service for reasons unknown. Coinbase and Binance US are free to still offer this.

Then they get into a very public passing match with Coinbase, who’s fighting back quite hard… so that goes quiet. Then Binance has its turn in the crosshairs, dropping prices. Now we see exchanges delisting some fairly prominent layer 1s.

Then buried on the back pages is news of Blackrock filing for a bitcoin etf. More are sure to follow.

In my opinion the connection to these is that so many institutional players and big investors are looking for custody solutions. I’m the past, these were the people keeping their coins on exchanges.

And if you want to self custody, well ledger went and fucked themselves too. Sure there are plenty of options, but the seeds of doubt have been planted. And now with the SEC going after big exchanges, they’re sowing doubt there and creating a space in the market for a “new, trusted” custody provider.

Don’t get me wrong, I love new entries into the space… but the use of political connections to weaken the competitors as you seek to enter is some nefarious shit.

We’ve all seen how these songs end. Not your keys, not your coins.

Also, I have suspicions black rock will create “paper bitcoin” though I’m sure they’ll hold some. The urge to cheat is huge… and I doubt the political will exists to hold Blackrock accountable. That topic can wait til a future rant.