It’s like an eclipse only with Bitcoin. Happening today
https://www.nicehash.com/countdown/btc-halving-2024-05-10-12-00
Andy
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Dang that was anticlimactic. I thought I would at least hear a horn or something.
Andy
If you have something to hide, that might make the fee worth it. If people had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t pay the fee, so the existence of the fee implies the desire for concealment 
Steve
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It’s because of the halving and supply and demand. Here is a site which shows the fluctuation.
Andy
I know, it is crazy. Can you imagine Visa jacking up their fees by 1000% on Black Friday?
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No I can’t and I wouldn’t pay it. Surprised anyone would. Can’t imagine why. Even a crook should know better than that.
Andy
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Remember the hysteria over “Cabbage Patch” kids or babies, or whatever the nonsense was about? Mickey D’s offered a “Teeny Beanie Baby” as the toy with kid’s meals for a bit. I was reading of parents ordering a kid’s meal, fishing to “Beanie Baby” out of the bag, then throwing the food away.
Parents can be nuts, and that insanity can be exploited. After all, aren’t “JCs” entitled to every dollar they can extract from the Proles, regardless of means?
/sarcasm
Steve
I think to many people have thought that over the years but I think we can lay that one dead. Since they have bitcoin ETF’s now it would be hard to agree with any of that statement.
Andy
Right now, the bitcoin ETFs are pretty much only drawing money in, so they are essentially only buying bitcoin and paying the transaction fees once. But later, when they trade more often, each up and down in their total will require a buy and sell of bitcoin repeatedly, thereby incurring multiple transaction fees. This will ensure that the “net asset value” of bitcoin ETFs always go down with time. This is similar to the ETFs that attempt to mimic a commodity price movement using futures. Each time they roll over their futures, they incur a cost which represents slippage in their tracking of the actual commodity price. USO is an example of such a fund, see here
Over the long term, the negative roll yields add up, causing United States Oil Fund investors to experience losses…
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But these are not based upon futures. Since contango only applies to etf’s that invest in futures how would that be?
The Trust is not a fund registered or subject to regulation under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The Trust is not a commodity pool for purposes of the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, and the Sponsor is not subject to regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity pool operator or a commodity trading advisor.
Andy
Similar isn’t the same as identical. They are not identical in the sense that they don’t use futures. But they are similar in that the repeated transactions will incur a transaction fee each time that will slowly erode the value. Do you understand the point I am trying to make? Right now, the bitcoin ETF collects millions each day of new funds, and they take those millions and buy bitcoin with it, and pay one transaction fee. In a few months or years, people will sometimes move money out of the ETF, and other people will move money into the ETF. Each day, at the close of trading, or worse, throughout the day of trading, the fund will either have to buy or sell some bitcoin. Depending on the volume, the transaction fees will go up or down, and since those transaction fees come out of the ETF, the value will slowly drop throughout the year.
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You could same the same of stocks, gold, silver. Whatever you are holding. What you are assuming is that bitcoin will never go up and fees will never go down.
Andy
Bitcoins total return is the sum of all the money put into Bitcoin minus the miners fees. Bitcoin is a negative sum game in other words.
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Sounds a lot like a money laundering scheme to me.
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You can and you do! I avoid equity funds with high expenses, and I seek out the ones with low expenses.
This is absolutely not true, bitcoin, like every other thing, will go up, will go down, and will remain steady, at various times. I am making no assertion at all about ups and downs. And [I think] the way bitcoin is designed causes the fees to go up, all bitcoin transfers at the blockchain level require a miner to mine. And each halving makes mining more expensive resource-wise. So the fees are more likely to go up than to go down. Is that incorrect?
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Let’s see how that sounds by changing a few words.
Golds total return is the sum of all the money put into Gold minus the miners fees. Gold is a negative sum game in other words.
Doesn’t really make sense does it?
Andy
What would you consider a low fee?
That would be incorrect. The halving gives half the money, previously to the miners. That is why they call it the halving. The miners can’t charge more. What will happen is that there will be fewer miners competing for fewer coins. If what you are saying is true than fees should have shot up after each halving. While fees do fluctuate at busier times this is not because of the halving.
Andy
I don’t know much about it, other than what I read about it. According to all the media about it, the transaction fees hit an all time high immediately after the halving. See here -
Yes that is true Mark but if you look at it over the years it fluctuates, as I posted earlier up thread.
** One of the most immediate differentiators between BITB and other bitcoin ETFs is its low fees. At just 0.20% per year, with no fee at all for the fund’s first six months, BITB offers the lowest fees out of all bitcoin ETFs proposed or on the market. In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan boiled down the decision to offer the lowest fees to a simple investor equation: “The less they pay, the more they keep.”**
As we were discussing earlier it’s important to have low fees. The fees right now for BITB are at 0 percent, but soon they will go up to .20 percent. I think that is a low fee but maybe I am wrong.
BITB: The Low-Cost Spot Bitcoin ETF Backed by Crypto Specialists.
Andy