Hargreaves Lansdown Bitcoin Tracker
Discussion
NickCQ said:
Someone in the financial press pointed out the irony of choosing to invest in bitcoins through an intermediary, when the supposed value-add of the technology is that it disrupts these intermediaries!
is it not more ironic that a regulated market would chose to invest in an un-regulated product in order to offer good returns?x5x3 said:
NickCQ said:
Someone in the financial press pointed out the irony of choosing to invest in bitcoins through an intermediary, when the supposed value-add of the technology is that it disrupts these intermediaries!
is it not more ironic that a regulated market would chose to invest in an un-regulated product in order to offer good returns?My point is that it is amusing that people will pay HL fees to buy bitcoin because holding it oneself is a pain in the proverbial. Doesn't bode well for widespread adoption.
NickCQ said:
x5x3 said:
NickCQ said:
Someone in the financial press pointed out the irony of choosing to invest in bitcoins through an intermediary, when the supposed value-add of the technology is that it disrupts these intermediaries!
is it not more ironic that a regulated market would chose to invest in an un-regulated product in order to offer good returns?My point is that it is amusing that people will pay HL fees to buy bitcoin because holding it oneself is a pain in the proverbial. Doesn't bode well for widespread adoption.
x5x3 said:
and my point is that the average person in the street will believe that investing in BTC through a regulated entity is safe - how many actually read the small print?
What small print? I have little sympathy for anyone investing in BTC without attempting to understand the volatility of the asset.Compared to the unregulated crypto exchanges at least your BTC and identity are unlikely to get nicked. That's really the definition of safe (as distinct from investment risk).
I wonder who holds the liability of the hedges we’re stolen? That’s the issue we have when offering BTC instruments. In the typical crypto environment the end purchaser carries all the risk as there is nothing they can do, having zero recourse to a faceless wallet etc but once you place an FCA intermediary into the equation that sells an instrument that isn’t a crypto butbis backed by a crypto with those hedges being held in a third party name, it becomes a bit murky as to what happens if the these hedges disappear. Arguably it an irrelevance to the client and the exchange is on the hook but they wouldn’t have the capital to bridge that counter party risk so the instrument would have to be priced to zero to compensate. Thus, would HL shoulder the loss? Seems unlikely and the FSCS wouldn’t come into play as the exchange with the default isn’t part of it?
NickCQ said:
x5x3 said:
NickCQ said:
Someone in the financial press pointed out the irony of choosing to invest in bitcoins through an intermediary, when the supposed value-add of the technology is that it disrupts these intermediaries!
is it not more ironic that a regulated market would chose to invest in an un-regulated product in order to offer good returns?My point is that it is amusing that people will pay HL fees to buy bitcoin because holding it oneself is a pain in the proverbial. Doesn't bode well for widespread adoption.
DonkeyApple said:
I think a more suitable investment product would be a crypto basket that managed to lower the risk by trading the movement on a divided basis personally.
Safety through portfolio diversification in crypto is a fallacy. Speculate on the "top 10" or even "top 5" & you'd be buying mostly utter junk with a very short shelf life. Of course you'd need to know something about these assets to come to this conclusion & those unawares who have no time or inclination to properly research this sector happily assume the top 10 tokens have equivalence to the top 10 FTSE stocks. They don't.
NickCQ said:
My point is that it is amusing that people will pay HL fees to buy bitcoin because holding it oneself is a pain in the proverbial. Doesn't bode well for widespread adoption.
Most bitcoin is held in exchanges. Isn't that adopted? Spending layers are being built for small transactions that don't need L1's finality. They are still markers of adoption, even if users never touch L1 bitcoin.You're right that managing a bearer asset might still be overwhelming for some, but it doesn't disrupt bitcoin adoption.
Behemoth said:
DonkeyApple said:
I think a more suitable investment product would be a crypto basket that managed to lower the risk by trading the movement on a divided basis personally.
Safety through portfolio diversification in crypto is a fallacy. Speculate on the "top 10" or even "top 5" & you'd be buying mostly utter junk with a very short shelf life. Of course you'd need to know something about these assets to come to this conclusion & those unawares who have no time or inclination to properly research this sector happily assume the top 10 tokens have equivalence to the top 10 FTSE stocks. They don't.
The only benefit of other crypto’s is that you can actually use their lagging nature to retard volatility of creating a synthetic index.
DonkeyApple said:
Holding diversification, rather than across different crypto’s.
The only benefit of other crypto’s is that you can actually use their lagging nature to retard volatility of creating a synthetic index.
Do you mean hold in different vehicles? To reduce counterparty risk, maybe. Though if you're concerned about counterparty risk then a far better option is to sit down & learn how to hold the asset itself.The only benefit of other crypto’s is that you can actually use their lagging nature to retard volatility of creating a synthetic index.
Alts were plays vs BTSUSD in the 16/17 bubble. They didn't impact in the 12/13 bull run. They were a result of the ICO boom following the launch of Ethereum. We won't see the likes of that again.
DonkeyApple said:
I wonder who holds the liability of the hedges we’re stolen? That’s the issue we have when offering BTC instruments. In the typical crypto environment the end purchaser carries all the risk as there is nothing they can do, having zero recourse to a faceless wallet etc but once you place an FCA intermediary into the equation that sells an instrument that isn’t a crypto butbis backed by a crypto with those hedges being held in a third party name, it becomes a bit murky as to what happens if the these hedges disappear. Arguably it an irrelevance to the client and the exchange is on the hook but they wouldn’t have the capital to bridge that counter party risk so the instrument would have to be priced to zero to compensate. Thus, would HL shoulder the loss? Seems unlikely and the FSCS wouldn’t come into play as the exchange with the default isn’t part of it?
The crux of this is who holds the physical bitcoin & how. It's been a problem for a while since regulated, reliable, secure third party custodians didn't exist until recently. That market is changing fast & this year many VCs are chasing to invest in custody start ups. There are about a dozen already up and running, serving various needs & sectors & obviously their jurisdiction is important since local regs determine processes. I don't know if anyone has yet brought a UK designed service to market.
The element that's enormously helped this part of infrastructure develop is multisig. I can now easily set up cryptographically secure bitcoin wallets that require signing by 3 of 5 or 5 of 7 or whatever permutation is necessary before access & transfer is possible. You can also add time locks to enforce dates before which access is impossible. This enables all manner of setups from a typical private family situation (eg you & the executors of your estate) through to large scale multi client investment industry intermediaries.
A new scripting element is being built for bitcoin (miniscript) that will allow engineers to create smart contracts to facilitate all this for the corporate environment.
Behemoth said:
The crux of this is who holds the physical bitcoin & how. It's been a problem for a while since regulated, reliable, secure third party custodians didn't exist until recently.
That market is changing fast & this year many VCs are chasing to invest in custody start ups. There are about a dozen already up and running, serving various needs & sectors & obviously their jurisdiction is important since local regs determine processes. I don't know if anyone has yet brought a UK designed service to market.
The element that's enormously helped this part of infrastructure develop is multisig. I can now easily set up cryptographically secure bitcoin wallets that require signing by 3 of 5 or 5 of 7 or whatever permutation is necessary before access & transfer is possible. You can also add time locks to enforce dates before which access is impossible. This enables all manner of setups from a typical private family situation (eg you & the executors of your estate) through to large scale multi client investment industry intermediaries.
A new scripting element is being built for bitcoin (miniscript) that will allow engineers to create smart contracts to facilitate all this for the corporate environment.
You hedge with one of the main broking clearers as that reduces the counter party risk to within the cryptospere to zero due to their balance sheet size. That’s been in place for a couple of years. That market is changing fast & this year many VCs are chasing to invest in custody start ups. There are about a dozen already up and running, serving various needs & sectors & obviously their jurisdiction is important since local regs determine processes. I don't know if anyone has yet brought a UK designed service to market.
The element that's enormously helped this part of infrastructure develop is multisig. I can now easily set up cryptographically secure bitcoin wallets that require signing by 3 of 5 or 5 of 7 or whatever permutation is necessary before access & transfer is possible. You can also add time locks to enforce dates before which access is impossible. This enables all manner of setups from a typical private family situation (eg you & the executors of your estate) through to large scale multi client investment industry intermediaries.
A new scripting element is being built for bitcoin (miniscript) that will allow engineers to create smart contracts to facilitate all this for the corporate environment.
However, quite a few structured products around crypto’s seek to use cheaper services but in doing so open themselves up to that counter party risk.
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