The Weekly Wrap: ProShares Short BTC ETF, Iran cracks down on mining
Jun 24, 2022
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Posted via Voyager’s Twitter before they announced a $650m exposure towards 3AC (via Twitter)
1. ProShares BTC Short ETF launches amidst market nosedive
The Facts:
- ProShares, the largest provider of Bitcoin-linked ETFs, launched the first-ever Bitcoin Short Strategy ETF (BITI) on Tuesday, June 21.
- They announced Wednesday that BITI traded more than 870,000 shares worth $35m on its second day of trading.
- The new ETF launches eight months after the first Bitcoin ETF BITO debuted as one of the most heavily traded ETFs in market history.
- As a short ETF, BITI is designed to give investors a way to profit from BTC price decreases.
Why it’s important:
- The new ProShares ETF launches amidst a sell-off in risk-on assets with Bitcoin hitting a new yearly low of $17’601 after almost 13 weeks of red candles and liquidation cascades across the whole crypto ecosystem.
- While BITI hit promising stats on its launch, BTCC Purpose ETF, the largest Canadian Bitcoin ETF, saw an outflow of 24’510 BTC with its AUM dropping 50% on Friday, indicating a massive capitulation from a forced seller.
- Likely influenced by the 3AC meltdown, GBTC’s discount reached an ATL of 34% only two weeks ahead of the SEC’s decision on their spot-based Bitcoin ETF filing.
(Source: Dune, Bitcoin Suisse Research)
1.36b
New ATH in daily gas used by the Arbitrum sequencer
2. Power shortages force Iran to crack down on mining
The Facts:
- Power shortages have forced the government of Iran to halt mining operations for the third time within a year as electricity to licensed crypto miners will be cut off starting June 22.
- Recently, Iran’s electricity consumption recorded an ATH of 62’500MW during peak consumption that almost hit the country’s maximum capacity.
- 6.9% of all Bitcoin mining globally took place in Iran in June 2021, yet the country’s hashrate share fell to 0.2% by January 2022.
- Meanwhile, Kazakhstan proposed higher electricity fees for crypto miners in February 22, raising the tariff from $0.0023 per kWh to $0.01.
- Two months before, in December 2021, Russia also proposed an increase in electricity fees to target crypto miners.
- And despite the ban, China still holds 21.1% of the hashrate (as of January 22) according to the Bitcoin Mining Map.
- Hence, four Chinese provinces increased retroactive electricity charges if any underground crypto mining facility is uncovered.
Why it’s important:
- The measures in Iran hit after the country only gained 1.2GW in its power generation capacity in 2021 against the projected 3.5 GWs while hitting new ATH in electricity consumption.
- With the geopolitical tension impacting energy demand and supply, the hostile stance towards Bitcoin mining seems to accelerate globally.
- Despite the mining halt, Iran is known as a proponent of digital currencies with US trade sanctions cutting them off the international financial system.
In other news
- dYdX announces dYdX chain based on Tendermint and Cosmos SDK (via dYdX)
- Avalanche hits second place on DefiSafety’s leaderboard (via Twitter)
- eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin (via Twitter)
- EU pilot regime for market infrastructures based on DLTs (via EUR-Lex)
- Uniswap acquires the first NFT marketplace aggregator Genie (via Uniswap)
- Ava Labs releases non-custodial browser extension Core (via Avalanche)
- Cardano’s Vasil upgrade postponed by devs (via CoinDesk)
- Shopify allows token gated NFT utility for merchants (via Decrypt)
- $100m drained from Harmony's Horizon Bridge (via Cointelegraph)