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Expectations are rising ahead of the Jan. 10 deadline for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to decide whether to give its first blessing for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
According to a Reuters report, the SEC "may" notify issuers as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday that they have been cleared to launch spot bitcoin ETFs the following week.
Along these lines, Alex Kruger, a crypto analyst, presents what he calls a "Bitcoin ETF base case scenario," which he anticipates will happen around Jan. 8-10.
In a positive scenario wherein a Bitcoin spot ETF gains approval, Kruger predicts the Bitcoin price's immediate reaction to be an upside move, citing the rationale that this is currently 90% priced in.
Bitcoin ETF base case scenario:
— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) December 31, 2023
#1 When: Jan/8-Jan/10
#2 Immediate reaction: up on approval (rationale: currently 90% priced-in)
#3 Follow-up: drop below pre-approval point into launch ~2 weeks later, cleaning up all late levered monkeys (rationale: market very hot now, with… pic.twitter.com/2E1xyR5oDA
As a follow-up to this, Kruger predicts that the Bitcoin price might drop below the ETH pre-approval levels (if approved) into launch nearly two weeks later. He adds that this remains speculation given that there is no official date for the launch; it might be days after approval or much later, considering how many ETFs are in the race. However, Kruger believes that sooner rather than later makes more sense.
In what might follow after the launch of a Bitcoin spot ETF, Kroger predicts strong inflows or volume to reestablish the upward trend. On the other hand, if inflows are weak, prices may fall as front-runners dump into a few bids.
In a bearish scenario where the Bitcoin spot ETF gets rejected by the SEC, Kruger predicts that prices might rapidly collapse. Either way, he urges traders to be on alert in January.
Bitcoin set to close 2023 as one of best-performing assets
Bitcoin is set to close the year as one of the top-performing assets, up more than 160% and beating all major traditional assets even in risk-adjusted terms, thanks to ETF hype.
Optimism about a spot BTC ETF began to grow after BlackRock filed, and since then, BTC has rallied from $28K to nearly $45K.
According to Kaiko, despite a fairly dull middle of the year, Bitcoin has one of the strongest Sharpe Ratios of any major asset this year, second only to semiconductor behemoth Nvidia, whose shares more than doubled from January to May on AI hype.
At the time of writing, BTC was up 1.2% in the last 24 hours to $42,620.