Last week, we saw another spanner in the works of the Winklevoss twins, who have recently applied for the first evert Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) to be listed on their cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini.

The ETF application was rejected by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the second time round, causing the markets to stumble and of course, bringing a number of experts out of the woodwork to pass their opinion. Whilst it is clear the SEC decision did impact the value of Bitcoin slightly (though it has now recovered), Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum believes that overall, the association between failed ETF applications and a falling Bitcoin price is over-hyped, in essence, ETF rejections don’t have that much of an impact on the value of Bitcoin.

Buterin has taken to Twitter to discuss the matter:

“I think there’s too much emphasis on BTC/ETH/whatever ETFs, and not enough emphasis on making it easier for people to buy $5 to $100 in cryptocurrency via cards at corner stores. The former is better for pumping price, but the latter is much better for actual adoption.”

I think there's too much emphasis on BTC/ETH/whatever ETFs, and not enough emphasis on making it easier for people to buy $5 to $100 in cryptocurrency via cards at corner stores. The former is better for pumping price, but the latter is much better for actual adoption. — Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) 29 July 2018

Within this comment, Buterin is referring to a problem within the cryptocurrency community that is situated around people focusing on cryptocurrency as an investment and not as a viable currency. The idea of an ETF and of course, the pumping of prices does great things for corporate and institutional investors, though Buterin, like many others believes that actually, forgetting about this and focusing on adoption, via real world cryptocurrency scenarios (bank cards, crypto cards etc) is far healthier for the industry. Okay, a crypto credit card might not help pump the price of Ethereum for example, but it will give it a real use and take us one step closer to adoption.

What do we think?

Buterin has a point, if we focus less on these events then they will have less of an impact on the market. Sadly though, news is powerful and realistically, any big movements from prolific figures like the Winklevoss twins and the SEC is sure to shake up the markets. So long as we prepare for them though, these events will have less of an impact on our investments.