⌐◪-◪ → Just when I thought the spot BTC ETF new cycle was coming to a quiet end, the SEC's Twitter account gets hacked and Tweets a fake ETF approval.

The timeline was roughly: T-0: SEC tweets approval, T+15: Gary tweets SEC's Twitter was hacked, T+20: SEC deletes fake approval tweet.

So, for a solid 15 minutes, everyone thought that the ETF was approved, and when Gary tweeted that the SEC's account was hacked, nobody knew what to believe anymore.

After the dust settled, however, X confirmed that the hack was due to a SIM swap, and that the SEC did not have 2FA enabled. Absolute gross negligence.

The fake ETF approval unfortunately caused $90M in liquidations, making the SEC one of the greatest market manipulators of all time.

So far, the aftermath has included: fake tweet inscribed on BTC, SEC and X announced investigations, Coinbase execs offered Gary security tutoring, and 2x Senators demand Gary explains himself by Jan 23.

As scary and negligent as this event was, I still think it's a pretty awesome addition to our collective crypto lore.

⌐◪-◪ → Okay, now that we've gotten the bad news out of the way, how about some good news?

Our favorite Bloomberg ETF analyst confirmed that "ALL SYSTEMS GO" for a spot Bitcoin ETF approval today.

So, despite the SEC's massive mishap yesterday, it looks like everything is still on track for live trading later this week.

Meanwhile, the ETF issuers continue to battle it out for the lowest ETF fees. Bitwise was in the lead at 0.24% yesterday and just slashed their fees to 0.20%; however, BlackRock slashed theirs to 0.12% for the first $5 billion, and then an ongoing 0.25% thereafter.

If this fee battle continues, trading spot Bitcoin ETFs might be cheaper than using exchanges.

⌐◪-◪ → OpenSea's devs finally did something! The company just announced a brand new self-custody wallet focused on a better onboarding experience for new users.

While I don't see any major breakthroughs here, there are plenty of wallets and marketplaces that allow new users to set up a wallet with email and purchase digital assets with a credit card. This is still a net positive for the space.

Why? Well, even though OpenSea has lost a lot of ground in terms of NFT trading volume to Blur, it's still the NFT marketplace that most of the non-crypto natives know and love.

So now, as the bull run continues and new users FOMO into crypto/NFTs, they'll be greeted with a familiar Web 2 experience at what I believe will be the first marketplace they try, OpenSea.

This is good. The less friction to onboard, the better.