🚨 Crypto is ripping. Here's why 👀

GM everyone. This is 2036, the crypto newsletter that pays you.

Here’s what we’re serving today 🍲: yesterday, Grayscale won the lawsuit against the SEC over its Bitcoin ETF. The markets are ecstatic. Bitcoin is up +7% and GBTC is up +17%. What does this mean for bitcoin ETFs?

Let’s dig in.

🥔 Today’s meat and potatoes

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Grayscale was one of the first US companies to launch a publicly traded bitcoin investment trust - called $GBTC.

For years, it was the only game in town. If you wanted to own bitcoin in your brokerage account, GBTC was the way to go.

Two years ago, Grayscale applied to have GBTC converted into an ETF.

But the SEC denied it. So Grayscale sued them.

Yesterday, the D.C Court of Appeals ruled that the SEC’s “unexplained [decision] fell short of the standard for reasoned decisionmaking."

The SEC violated the Administrative Procedure Act (all federal agencies must abide by it) by acting arbitrarily and capriciously.

a.k.a Grayscale won, and the SEC took a big L.

Because of regulatory uncertainty, Grayscale funds have traded at a discount to the value of their underlying crypto [it’s one of the arbitrage opportunities in our new section below].

But on the news of the lawsuit, Grayscale investment products soared.

In the last 24 hours:

• Grayscale Ethereum Trust is up +14%

• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is up +17%

• Grayscale Large Cap Index is up +22%

This does not mean that GBTC will automatically be converted into a Bitcoin ETF.

The court simply rejected the SEC’s reason for denying the ETF conversion. Now, the SEC has to go back and review Grayscale’s decision again.

The SEC could do one of three things:

1/ Find another reason to deny GBTC’s conversion to an ETF.

Gary Gensler has waged an all-out war on crypto. Many prominent democrats are heavily opposed to it.

If they don’t accept their loss, the SEC could fire back and stall the process further.

2/ Revoke the listings of Bitcoin Futures ETFs.

Bitcoin Futures ETFs already exist.

However, the court essentially said that allowing a Bitcoin Futures ETF and denying a (spot) Bitcoin ETF is not possible.

3/ Take this loss as a way to exit the war against crypto.

If the SEC accepts the court’s decision and approves bitcoin ETFs (and GBTC’s conversion to an ETF), it could argue that it doesn’t agree but follows the rule of law.

We believe this is the most likely outcome.

All big financial asset managers have filed for a Bitcoin ETF.

And Larry Fink - the CEO of Blackrock - is one of the most influential voices in DC.

The Grayscale case is a huge win for all of us in crypto. And Bitcoin ETFs are almost a guarantee at this stage.

Their timing will mostly be a matter of how much trouble the SEC wants to go through.

That being said, Grayscale’s win changes the game and likely accelerates the approval of Bitcoin ETFs.

We’re not holding our breath for an approval this week (although the first deadlines are this Friday… and anything could happen…👀).

But we’re celebrating by stacking more bitcoin.

And that’s what we’ll pay you to do today.

🍨 Dessert

Stories to read if you have FOMO

1/ GBTC discount narrows from -23% to -17%

2/ Grayscale won… but so did Coinbase

3/ Twitter acquires license to integrate crypto payments

📈 Market opportunities

Yield - Beginners 🌾

• ETH: Earn 4% APR by staking ETH on Lido

• SOL: Earn 6.8% APR by staking SOL on Lido

• [Ending soon] Arbitrage: $GBTC and $ETHE trading at [updated] -17% and -28% discounts to the value of their underlying ETH and BTC.

Yield - Advanced 🌾

• DAI - Earn 11%+ APY on $DAI

• ETH - Earn 17%+ APR with Hop’s ETH pool on Base

• BTC - Earn 14.9%+ APR with Umami’s BTC vault on Arbitrum

Upcoming Airdrops 🌬️💧

• Linea

• LayerZero

• ZKsync

• Polygon zkEVM

📝 Task

Earn BTC for creating a bitcoin wallet

Today’s task is a classic Wallet Wednesday:

Create a bitcoin wallet and send us your address to enter a raffle to win $25 in BTC.

If you already have a wallet, you can submit that too.

And if you’re looking for wallet recommendations, the easiest to get you started is Coinbase.

But if you’re feeling fancy, here are the best options out there for Bitcoin…

• For offline security backup: Ledger combined with Cryptotag 

• For desktop: Electrum

• For Android: Samourai

• For iPhone: Blockstream Green

• For a web wallet: BitGo

• For privacy nerds: Joinmarket 

• For security nerds: Casa

As always, we’ll tally all the participants in a Google sheet and mathematically choose a winner at random who’ll receive $25 in BTC.

We’ll announce the winner of today’s task in Friday’s email.

🖼️ Crypto meme of the day

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