First off, I would like to commend you on your videos, not only in their content but also in their timing. Though you cannot hold someone’s hand or even offer much sought after comfort in the real world of speculation, a calm, even monotone voice of reason is something most welcomed.
I agree with your assessment and think that Bitcoin will continue to correct over the holidays and move back up aggressively around 1/15/2018. There are a lot of eager investors (speculators) who have yet to get their accounts funded, wanting to ride the next wave.
That being said, let’s talk about something that I believe to be very interesting. As I took the time to go through the very, very long process of obtaining a Coinbase account, which now seems light speed compared to that of Bitstamp, I began to look for other was of investing (speculating) in crypto currency. My search led me to GBTC. I have a brokerage account so it was almost an instantaneous process to buy shares of the fund. My thought was that I could get in the game while I was waiting for my bank funds to show up in GDAX. I had done some research and found the fund produced about a 1600% return over the last year, which was indeed lower than a direct investment in Bitcoin, but still pretty good. I have read all about the horrible things that could happen to the fund but have chosen to place some bets there regardless.
I have found that on a buy/sell cycle I can double my money just by following Bitcoin. In a 7 day period, $7500; Bitcoin buy in @ $17500 and sell off at $19500 would yield about $800 in increased value. That same amount of money placed in GBTC just about doubled. I have done this more than a few times with the same results. I wanted to get your take on the topic and would be most interested in what your thoughts are in the long term viability of GBTC.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
GBTC is a double play - you're not just betting on the price of Bitcoin, but also the premium to net asset value (NAV). So you really want to try to line up both where you buy Bitcoin at a low AND GBTC at a low premium to NAV and hope to capture both a rise in Bitcoin AND the premium. It's an odd instrument that I wouldn't recommend to most people, but if you know what you're doing it can be a nice play.