The risky business of bitcoin ETFs

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to approve the first exchange-traded funds holding bitcoin. But regulators still have concerns, and a recent hack of an SEC social media account have only heightened fears. Plus, the pandemic relief funds that’ve been keeping state budgets afloat are gone. We’ll unpack why state budgets can be trickier beasts than the federal budget. And: This is normally a zombie-free zone, but “The Last of Us” TV series has us reconsidering.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “SEC Hack Adds to Unease Over Bitcoin ETF Approval” from The Wall Street Journal

- “State Budget Problems Spread” from The Pew Charitable Trusts

- “‘It was a mirage’: States face budget woes as huge infusions of federal cash run out” from Politico

- “The Last Of Us Show Casts Beef Actor As Key Character” from Kotaku

We love to hear from you. Send your questions and comments to makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's Jay. He's like, enough with the chit chat. Hello everyone, I'm
0:07.8	Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today makes sense.
0:11.2	That was very Charltonthorpe-esque of him. Maybe Jake. I don't know. Anyway, I'm
0:14.8	Kow Rosal. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday. It is January the 10th today.
0:20.6	Yes, and we're going to do some news and then do some smiles-ish. Let's get into it,
0:26.4	Kai, why don't you go first?
0:27.6	So I will start and let us preface, let me preface this by saying that by the time you
0:32.1	hear this in the next I don't know
0:33.8	with what frequency people listen 18 24 hours delayed whatever this may have
0:39.0	already become news but I want to bring it up because number one we haven't
0:41.6	really talked about it number two it could be a big deal and number three oh by the way cyber security.
0:45.3	So yesterday the Twitter account of the Securities and Exchange Commission was hacked
0:52.3	which number one is bad enough because
0:54.7	that obviously is a key regulator for financial markets in this economy, one of the key regulators.
0:59.7	But number two, it was hacked to put out a tweet that said that the SEC had approved what are called,
1:08.8	or what is going to be called a Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund.
1:13.7	That is to say a fund, sort of like a mutual fund, right?
1:18.1	That is traded like a stock on an exchange
1:21.8	in which you can trade on Bitcoin, right? It was erroneously sent out
1:26.2	yesterday. The SEC is expected to vote probably to approve a Bitcoin EDF soon-ish,, is. Maybe this week. But yesterday, it did not happen for real. And yet,
1:38.3	Bitcoin spiked. Many billions of dollars changed hands. Not really great. So that's problem number one problem two is and I am and I've said this on the radio and I've said this on this podcast I'm a
1:49.6	Cryptosceptic it is not real money. It will not be real money for quite a while and it is right now a deeply, deeply speculative instrument.
	...

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