The long-awaited launch of bitcoin spot ETFs in the USA this yr helped engender a wave of optimism that the worth of the well-known cryptocurrency would shortly admire. The logic was easy: With an straightforward, low-cost avenue now out there for normal buyers to buy bitcoin, the supply-demand curve would shift and the worth of every bitcoin would rise.

However the response has been considerably combined. Whereas the worth of bitcoin has practically doubled prior to now yr to round $43,000 immediately, it has largely traded sideways in current weeks. Was the hype and ensuing response one other instance of the previous Wall Road maxim, “Purchase the rumor, promote the information”?

To be trustworthy, we’re checking the flows into and out of spot bitcoin ETFs extra incessantly than we wish to admit, however we nonetheless needed to be taught extra. So, we requested TechCrunch readers in the event that they supposed to purchase bitcoin through one of many new spot ETFs, whether or not they owned bitcoin elsewhere, and what affect they anticipated these new investing autos to have on its worth and on crypto.

A number of dozen replies from founders and operators later, we discovered some attention-grabbing traits. A few quarter of respondents to our little, unscientific survey reported that they don’t intend to purchase bitcoin through an ETF, and already personal bitcoin elsewhere. The place are of us holding their cash? In all places, it seems: Self-custody, Coinbase, KuCoin, all kinds of places. Fairly impressively, Dara Khan, the pinnacle of promoting at Respectable DAO’s bitcoin, stated her pockets ended up on the “backside of the ocean, misplaced it in a boating accident :(.”