Crypto Markets 'Apathetic' Following Ether Futures ETF Debut: Analyst

Comedian Demetri Martin used to say that when you took a photo of something on your phone and you look through it and that, that was instant nostalgia. Well, we're in the middle of instant nostalgia now because volatility is back to where it was two weeks ago. Why we had the CTF come out man. Well, joining us now to discuss is head of Tasty crypto di uh I'm sorry, is the head of Tasty crypto Ryan Grace. Welcome Ryan. Hey Lawrence. Hello, everyone. How are you? Thanks for having me. Great. How are you? Uh Yes, so we had good. Well, you're doing better than the, than, than the ETF the, the E ETF that went nowhere. There was like, honestly, like those were rounding errors in terms of volumes. There were a couple of million dollars a day at most, not even it was, I don't think it hit a, a two handle there on, on daily volumes. Uh It's been a couple of days since it launched. Um What happened? Why, why no one through? Nobody cares. Is this it, yeah, it feels like that. It seems like that. I think the best way to describe the markets right now, apathetic. Um when you look at these ETF products themselves, um when they're using futures to give you that exposure, the way that they're constructed as, you know, with cano in the futures markets, you get a little bit of negative drag. And so the performance um is not necessarily gonna replicate what you see in the spot markets. And I think um if I pull up my numbers here, you see that with uh the Bitcoin Futures ETF uh Bito, it's up 57% year to date, but Bitcoin is up about 66% year to date. So you're better off just buying the underlying asset um versus getting that exposure via futures. ETF, so maybe that's at play here. You know, it might just largely be what we're seeing across the industry where um low volume, uh you know, lack of enthusiasm, given the fact that you can get 5.5 or, or north of 5% risk free. Yeah, it's uh but speaking of uh risk or midi mitigating risk, uh the Exrp is up because we had a couple of victories at court in the courtroom at least over the past 24 hours. Uh The, a federal judge rejected the S ECs appeal to uh a bid to appeal the case against ripple. So, uh and, and also uh it's Asia arm was awarded a license to offer services in crypto. What are, what are we looking here with XRP, is that at least some, is that the a promising shining light in, uh, the overall market? You're shaking your head. What, what, why is that? Do you, you want the RP army after you? No, I think it's definitely a positive. Right. It's, uh, we've won a battle. The industry has, I suppose, but we haven't won the war. Um, we're gonna have to continue to fight that as an industry. Uh I, I think you see that with the S ECs recent, um you know, kind of kicking the can on some of the ETF approvals. So not that we've seen a rejection, but um we've delayed any decision. Uh I think that was expected here around the first one at the beginning or, or at the middle of this month. And so it's a positive for XRP again, it's, it's definitely um better than it going the other direction. You see the response in the price, but you just don't see that across ALTs. You don't see that across the rest of the industry in terms of the price reaction today. So positive for, for ripple, certainly, but I don't think it changes much um in the grand scheme of things with and, and kind of the battle that, that we continue to have to fight here. Boy, you're about as enthusiastic as a Frenchman on. Uh, you know, I my goodness, I've never seen that this is not happy. Uh So, you know, one other thing too is what's going in, in DC. Right. We, we have the, this chaos in the house. Um, we, we have also two. I and, and it's one can almost say it's related because it all involves interest rates and that is, uh, ad P numbers came out today. Uh, the hiring wasn't as great as people were anticipating. So that might seem more almost at the crest if you will. Um, W what happens here? I mean, what's the, now that we're having all this chaos in DC? And it looks like an economic slowdown is, is starting to happen. Rates still go up uh by the end of the year. That's a great question. I think it's, it's still gonna be dependent on the data that we get. We've got the jobs report on Friday here. Um And you saw the reaction in the bond market yesterday to the jolts, report the job openings and, you know, and I think north of 9 million right now. And so you have an environment where, you know, I think the industry is looking for lower rates. We're looking for that liquidity. Um We've been in this inflationary bear market, but the data on the economic front continues to come in relatively strong and there's no reason that we would see at this point, at least, you know, the fed reverse course in terms of their policy when you look at fed funds. Um I think there's about an 80% probability that for the next meeting we stay where we are. But, you know, that, that's what we've seen previously and that's changed, um, you know, over the course of that, that period. So we'll see what happens. I think it's gonna continue to be a headwind. You know, as long as we have a dollar that's rallying, we have higher interest rates. There's certainly less incentive for people to go out further on a risk curve and, and take, you know, positions in, in crypto or, or tech stocks and you've seen that kind of across the board. But um, you know, we'll see what happens uh with the jobs report this Friday, it could be a catalyst for some short term uh volatility. You mentioned nothing really happening with alt coins. A new coin report agrees with you with the exception of Solana, they're noting institutional interest in Solana. Uh What are your thoughts on Seoul? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, when you look at uh what's being built on chain there, uh there's a lot of positive developments. I think when you just look at, you know, these coins by market cap and where institutions are going to likely participate, just given the size. You know, that is um you know, an area where I think you're gonna continue to see investment. So Bitcoin. So I think just by nature of Bitcoin being first in the network effect and, and being around for the longest, you know, you have that, that um that larger market cap, but you're gonna see that you have seen kind of that trend over time with Ethereum as well as Solana. And so I would expect that that's gonna continue to be one of the, you know, the top investments for, for people that are looking to get into the space. Brian. Thanks for joining us to take a look at the markets this morning. Always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you. That was head of Tasty Crypto Ryan Grace.