Oddbean new post about login | logout The spot ETFs sold claims to a combined 1 million BTC! Do they actually hold those BTC? Does Coinbase hold those it should be holding? How can the ETFs have net inflows for 20 days straight and the price doesn't go up like crazy?
No addresses to confirm on-chain so probably not
I believe we currently have the technology to make compact proofs of ownership of a certain amount of btc without revealing which utxos we own. Computationally intensive, sure, but compact and quick to verify, even though thwre are 160M+ utxos. There's a bit of engineering work, but with this, we could embarrass Coinbase Custody into proving they actually hold the coin they claim to. nostr:nevent1qqsrnxu0j3rsnzel2mh4y8emrmgmh9xqvqv82fn4h6d92jtfltplfhgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygzxljlrqe027xh8sy2xtyjwfzfrxcll8afxh4hh847psjckhkxwf5psgqqqqqqsa22rpk
At the very least, they should have some sort of proof-of-reserve.
A friend and I were talking about this a few days ago. We’re convinced a good bit of that is paper-trading. Similar to like GLD for gold.
we will find out once the ETFs hold more than 21 million BTC 😁
Of course, some players will already be committing fraud, which will only increase over time.