SEC pushes back BlackRock’s spot ether ETF decision: CNBC Crypto World

CNBC Crypto World features the latest news and daily trading updates from the digital currency markets and provides viewers with a look at what’s ahead with high-profile interviews, explainers, and unique stories from the ever-changing crypto industry. On today’s show, Zachary Bradford, the CEO of CleanSpark, explains how the bitcoin miner is preparing for the upcoming halving.

Chapters:
00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, Jan 25, 2024
0:23 – Bitcoin falls
0:39- The headlines
3:27- CleanSpark’s Zachary Bradford

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SEC pushes back BlackRock’s spot ether ETF decision: CNBC Crypto World

Today Bitcoin Falls below $40,000 once again the SEC delays its decision on Black Rock Spot ethereum ETF and clean spark CEO Zachary Bradford explains how the Bitcoin miner is preparing for the upcoming having welcome to cnbc’s crypto world I’m Talia Kaplan crypto prices are back in the red today as of noon Eastern

Bitcoin slid below the $40,000 level trading around 9,680 ether and salana both dropped more than 2% with ether falling below the $2,200 mark okay let’s talk about the top stories the SEC is pushing back its decision on black Rock’s proposed spot ethereum ETF the reason for the delay

Well in this filing from yesterday the agency said it needs more time to review the proposed rule change now this marks the first of several delays the SEC can employ before the regulator must announce a final decision for this ETF that has to happen within a 240-day

Period from when the SEC opens comments on the applications late last year Black Rock filed an application with the SEC to convert its ethereum trust into an ETF now a final decision on all pending spot ether ETFs including black rocks could come in May as that’s the earliest

Final deadline out of all the applicants that would be similar to the sec’s decision on all the spot Bitcoin ETF applications which were approved all at once on January 10th now Black Rock Invesco Arc and venk are among the firms in line for approval for a spot ether

ETF as well as grayscale which is seeking to convert its existing ethereum trust into an ETF next bitwise says that it’s the first US Bitcoin ETF provider to publish the addresses of its Bitcoin Holdings the asset manager posted its wallet address on X saying anyone can verify its Holdings and flows for its

Bitb fund right on the blockchain we looked up the address and according to coint tracker the wallet currently holds about $488 million in Bitcoin bitwise said the move was the first step toward increasing public transparency and hopes to do more in the future finally North Carolina Congressman Patrick McKenry

Joined CNBC squawkbox this morning and discussed Capitol Hill’s progress on regulating digital assets McKenry is a big proponent of crypto and has a few bills before the house to create new guidelines for the industry those have been on hold though as Congress has wrestled with budget talks and internal

Fighting look when the house basically attempted to commit political suicide Republicans in the house tried to commit political suicide in the fall it gummed up three or four months of house floor action so I’ve got major policies in capital formation data privacy and crypto that we haven’t moved across the

House floor and I intend to get those moved across the house floor this year we can still do big deals even amidst the longest uh presidential campaign general election campaign in American history we can still get these things done and build consensus and I think there’s a need uh for Market structure

On on crypto now if these bills don’t make it through Congress this year they’ll be set aside on top of that McKenry is retiring at the end of this term so he won’t be in Congress to reintroduce the bills next year all right let’s talk about Bitcoin

Mining for our main story crypto world’s TAA mckel got the chance to sit down with Zachary Bradford the CEO of cleanspark and he breaks down how the minor is preparing for the upcoming having clean spark wrapped up 2023 in a pretty good position the company mined nearly 7,400 Bitcoin and saw its yearly

Revenue grow $37 million from a year prior reaching $168 million now the Bitcoin miner is turning its sites to 2024 and faces some major milestones for the network including the having and a wave of new Adoption from Wall Street clean spark kicked off the Year by announcing plans to launch an in-house

Trading desk with the hope that it can make use of its Bitcoin Holdings I asked CEO Zachary Bradford about the timing of that decision the now came because our Bitcoin balance uh has gotten large enough so we had just over 3,000 Bitcoin as of now on our balance sheet and we’re

Believers on it on a long-term basis increasing in value but unlike a money market or something like that where when you put your money in the bank you get a little bit of Interest we’re really basing 100% of its value increase on a very long-term thesis so now that we

Have a larger balance We believe We want to bring it inh house and that trading desk would only serve our Bitcoin we wouldn’t have outside clients we wouldn’t create products or anything but we would have traders that work for our company and they would then trade that

Bitcoin to generate a little bit of yield based on the volatility of Bitcoin of course I also had to ask him about the recent launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the recent selling pressure on bitcoin I think what at least we we believe we’re seeing is you know these

ETFs they’re from traditional finance and they were smart about how they moved into Bitcoin they didn’t want to push the price up overnight they wanted to have a nice smooth entry points and because frankly that would allow them to have larger returns that they would be able to show their shareholders um over

Time so we see this as something that’s going to provide a Tailwind for the price action of Bitcoin which then benefits the miners because it affects supply and demand so all the buying that they have should be paid PA and long-term buying that will kind of soak

Up that Supply in the market and and to a certain degree permanently put it on a shelf now looking ahead all miners are gearing up for the having when mining rewards will be cut in half overnight I asked Bradford how his business is preparing for that event and how it

Intends to weather the volatility that’s expected post having if you measure Revenue at fitcoin our Revenue would be cut in half in a single day when measured in dollars though which is what all us report to you know as public companies especially in the SEC um that’s that’s what goes out to the

Public we believe that again bitcoin’s value will go up so revenues may take an you know a near term that day the impact occurs and we think it’ll recover quickly over time but more importantly if you think about the Bitcoin rewards is you know the pie got smaller and all

The miners that exist it’s about the size of that pie we think that there will be miners that are less efficient and can’t handle that Revenue shock so we think as many as 30% or you know 15 to 30% of miners will actually have to turn off shut down so with some miners

Expected to Faire worse than others after the having is Bradford if he expects failures among Bitcoin Miners And if clean Spar could acquire any of them I think that we will see failures in the space you know we already saw in the last Market there were a couple

Bankruptcies both in the public and the private space I think we’re going to see that again so I think that there’s going to be great opportunity on an m&a basis you know we’re thinking about the facilities or the data centers that miners are operating in if there’s a

Data center full of old equipment that is no longer efficient um we’d love to buy the facility and move in and I think that there’s going to be a lot of similarly mined um operators as as Bitcoin miners so I think that’s where we’re going to see a lot of

Consolidation and Acquisitions will be the really around the real estate holdings maybe less around the actual companies and the comp of result may fall by the wayside some of them I’m also a big believer that in the next 4 years there’s only going to be three to

Four winners in the space because you know from a capital markets point of view you know let’s think of tech the people invest in Apple or the new startup well they invest in new startup when they believe it has a lot of upside when they want the sure thing they

Invest in Apple and I think what we’re going to see is as some of the miners get bigger and bigger that flight to Quality is going to be more important and as a result it’s going to become an outsize there’s going to be three or four winners just like you know there

Are three or four cell phone providers that people actually buy their cell phones from clean spark itself still faces stiff competition from other publicly traded miners like Riot and Marathon both of which saw huge gains in 2023 and hope to keep the momentum going in 2024 we’ve spent years you know

Preparing and we’re already going to start thinking about 28 as soon as the next halfen occurs but it’s about timing the market I’m a big believer in in timing um and that’s not always you know there’s multiple approaches you can take a dollar cost average approach to your

Investment thesis or you can take a thesis of timing the market um so we’ve actually chose to invest in the last bull market and we’re going to try and time before the next bull market takes off so for us that’s going to be when do

You get in and when is it too late that’s going to be the hard part we think is really trying to time the market to get the best value okay before we go let’s get to one last thing Eco the company behind crypto wallet beam announced today that it

Acquired an app that lets people pay for online purchases using stable coins that deal means beam wallet users can soon spend stable coins at places like Amazon and more we’ll be talking with the CEO of beam tomorrow about that announcement and why he thinks spot Bitcoin ETFs step

Away from the ideals of crypto be sure to catch us then