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Demystifying bitcoin: a closer look at cryptocurrency ETFs

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Demystifying bitcoin: a closer look at cryptocurrency ETFs

Let’s peel back some of the mystery around the recent news propelling bitcoin into the spotlight – the new crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Cryptocurrency is digital money secured by a specific type of public ledger called blockchain. Without a governing body like a government, a public digital ledger transparently records peer-to-peer transactions. Bitcoin, launched in 2009, became the first widely adopted cryptocurrency. Because the number of coins is limited, bitcoin has become a tempting speculative investment.

A historic milestone: the approval of bitcoin ETFs by the SEC

On January 10th 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) marked a significant milestone in the cryptocurrency world with the approval of 11 spot bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs). This includes offerings from fund titans BlackRock and Fidelity. This move is set to potentially transform the landscape of cryptocurrency investing and open new opportunities for traders.

To understand the impact of this development, it is essential to grasp what spot ETFs are. A spot ETF is a type of fund that directly tracks the current, or ‘spot’, price of an asset and in this case, bitcoin (BTC). Unlike futures-based ETFs, which are tied to contracts betting on the future price of an asset, spot ETFs are backed by the actual price of the asset itself.

Boosting confidence in Bitcoin investments

This means that when you invest in a spot bitcoin ETF, the fund purchases actual bitcoin, and the value of your investment fluctuates with the real-time price of bitcoin in the market. These bitcoins are held by a custodian. Coinbase is the custodian for eight of the 11 spot bitcoin ETFs.

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The introduction of spot bitcoin ETFs is a game-changer because it provides a bridge between the traditional financial world and the burgeoning crypto market. For traders, this means easier access to bitcoin investments without the complexities and security concerns of managing a digital wallet or trading on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Liquidity, price stability and broader adoption

One of the most significant advantages of these ETFs is the potential for increased liquidity and price stability. As more institutional and retail investors gain exposure to bitcoin through these funds, trading volumes are expected to rise. This could lead to a more stabilised market with less price volatility, which is beneficial for traders who seek to capitalise on incremental price movements.

Moreover, spot bitcoin ETFs could also lead to broader adoption and acceptance of bitcoin as a legitimate asset class. With the SEC’s stamp of approval, investor confidence in bitcoin could grow, potentially leading to increased demand and, consequently, higher prices.

This parallels the journey of gold ETFs, which increased gold demand substantially and reduced volatility long term.

Bitcoin ETFs vs. futures contracts

Bitcoin ETFs make investing in bitcoin much more accessible to casual traders and retail investors. While futures contracts based on the price of bitcoin require oversight of settlement dates and delivery complexities, an ETF trades like a stock. It simply tracks an underlying index price — in this case, bitcoin spot price.

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The bitcoin ETF offers simple exposure tied to bitcoin’s price swings without needing to directly buy crypto from an exchange or wallet and take on the hassles of storage and security. You can buy and sell the ETF seamlessly like stocks from a standard brokerage account.

The ETF format opens the door to mainstream investment funds, retirement accounts like 401ks, and amateur stock dabblers — not just specialised futures traders. This instantly widens the pool of potential bitcoin investors dramatically.

The ETF coincides with another important moment for bitcoin prices: halving day.

Bitcoin halving day explained

Bitcoin mining is how new coins are created and verified transactions are added to the blockchain ledger. Miners compete to solve complex maths puzzles and earn rewards for each block added. Originally, successful bitcoin miners were rewarded 50 BTC per block, an incentive for mining activity. However, bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million total coins that can exist.

To ensure controlled supply until the cap is reached, mining rewards decrease by 50% every 210,000 blocks mined. This pre-set halving of mining rewards happens approximately every four years, with the next halving day estimated to be in April 2024.

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When halving days reduce the supply of new bitcoins flowing in, simple economics kicks in. All else being equal, when supply drops but demand keeps growing, prices tend to rise. The anticipation of this can spur speculative investing leading up to the halving day.

Impact of halving day on supply and prices

Even without the ETF news, bitcoin’s next ‘halving day’ in April 2024 suggests this built-in increasing scarcity could drive prices up in the coming years.

Of course, cryptocurrencies still come with plenty of risk and uncertainty. But the possibility of more investors and financial giants embracing bitcoin and its derivatives indicates prices could continue climbing. For intrepid investors, crypto ETFs offer a simpler way to stake your claim!

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3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks With More Potential Than Any Cryptocurrency | The Motley Fool

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3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks With More Potential Than Any Cryptocurrency | The Motley Fool

SoundHound AI, Lemonade, and CoreWeave will all profit from that secular trend.

Over the past few years, many growth-oriented investors with a high tolerance for risk have pivoted toward the cryptocurrency market. Several of the top tokens — like Bitcoin (BTC 2.52%) and Ether (ETH 3.84%) — generated impressive gains within a short time. However, many of the smaller altcoins and meme coins fizzled out during the last crypto winter.

Instead of chasing those volatile tokens, which are usually driven by supply and demand, it might be smarter to invest in the market’s more speculative artificial intelligence (AI) plays. Let’s take a look at three of those promising tech stocks — SoundHound AI (SOUN +1.65%), Lemonade (LMND 0.97%), and CoreWeave (CRWV +6.55%) — and see why they could have more growth potential than the market’s hottest cryptocurrencies.

Image source: Getty Images.

SoundHound AI

SoundHound AI develops AI-powered voice and audio recognition tools. Its namesake app can identify songs by hearing just a few seconds of recorded audio or a few hummed bars. However, it generates most of its revenue and growth from Houndify, its developer-oriented platform for creating customized voice recognition apps for a wide range of industries.

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SoundHound AI Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(1.65%) $0.18

Current Price

$11.10

SoundHound has been acquiring smaller companies to expand its presence in the restaurant and customer service chatbot markets. It already serves automakers like Stellantis, restaurants like Chipotle, and credit card giants like Mastercard, and it should attract more customers who want to develop their own voice recognition services without sharing their data with larger tech companies.

From 2025 to 2027, analysts expect SoundHound’s revenue to grow at a 30% CAGR, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) turning positive in the final year. With an enterprise value of $4.5 billion, it might seem pricey at 20 times this year’s sales. However, its early mover’s advantage in the growing voice recognition services market should justify that higher valuation. Over the next decade, it should continue to expand and evolve as it acquires more companies and rolls out more agentic AI tools.

Lemonade

Lemonade sells homeowners, renters, term life, pet, and auto insurance policies. It’s popular with younger and first-time insurance customers because it simplifies the byzantine buying process with a streamlined AI-powered app.

Using AI chatbots instead of human representatives can quickly onboard new customers and process claims in a few seconds. From the end of 2020 to the third quarter of 2025, its customer base nearly tripled from 1.00 million to 2.87 million.

Lemonade Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.97%) $-0.78

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Current Price

$79.41

From 2025 to 2027, analysts expect Lemonade’s revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 44%, with adjusted EBITDA turning positive in the final year. The expansion of its newer pet and auto insurance businesses, its overseas growth (especially in Europe), and its rollout of more AI features should drive those gains.

With an enterprise value of $6.2 billion, Lemonade still looks reasonably valued at five times this year’s sales. However, it could command a much higher valuation if it scales up its business and pulls millions of customers away from traditional insurance companies.

CoreWeave

CoreWeave was once an Ethereum miner, but it abandoned that business model after the 2018 cryptocurrency crash. It subsequently repurposed its mining GPUs to remotely process machine learning and AI tasks, acquired more than 250,000 high-end data center GPUs from Nvidia, and expanded its business from three data centers at the end of 2022 to 33 data centers today.

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CoreWeave Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(6.55%) $6.22

Current Price

$101.23

CoreWeave claims its dedicated cloud-based GPUs can process AI tasks 35 times faster and 80% more cost-effectively than other cloud infrastructure platforms. Those strengths make it a popular choice for companies which don’t want to expand their own infrastructure to support their latest AI applications. As it locks in more AI customers — including Microsoft and OpenAI — analysts expect its revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 95% and 109%, respectively, from 2025 to 2027.

CoreWeave is growing like a weed, yet it has an enterprise value of only $87.9 billion — which equates to 7x this year’s sales and 11x adjusted EBITDA. The high costs of opening new data centers are likely compressing its near-term valuations, but it could have plenty of room to grow over the long term as the cloud and AI markets expand.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Ethereum, Lemonade, Mastercard, Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoundHound AI. The Motley Fool recommends Stellantis and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft, and short March 2026 $42.50 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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XRP Drops Hard as Key Zone Breaks During Broad Crypto Sell-Off

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XRP Drops Hard as Key Zone Breaks During Broad Crypto Sell-Off
XRP slid sharply below key support as a broad crypto sell-off intensified, wiping out leveraged positions, driving extreme oversold signals, and exposing mounting macro and regulatory stress that continues to weigh on digital asset prices.
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Bitcoin Long Signal That Preceded 370% Move Is About To Go Off Again — What To Know

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Bitcoin Long Signal That Preceded 370% Move Is About To Go Off Again — What To Know

Going into the weekend, the price of Bitcoin was unable to sustain the bullish momentum it displayed earlier in the past week. Since Friday, January 16th, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, repudiated by the price resistance above, now trades in a tight consolidatory bracket. Interestingly, this period of silence has been deemed transient, as recent on-chain data suggests an exciting time ahead for the BTC price.

Kimchi Premium Flips Positive As Local Demand Sees Buildup 

In a January 17 post on the X platform, DeFi asset management platform XWIN Finance released an on-chain report, which suggests that Bitcoin might be closer to reaching a turning point than is apparent in its price action. 

This hypothesis is based on the Bitcoin Kimchi Premium indicator. This measures the percentage difference between a cryptocurrency’s price (in this case, Bitcoin) on South Korean exchanges and its price on global exchanges. Simply put, it shows how much more Korean traders are willing to pay for Bitcoin.

When the Kimchi Premium transitions steadily from low or negative levels to cross above historically significant levels, this is typically viewed as a long signal from the metric. This interpretation is because a rising Kimchi Premium reflects growing local demand in South Korea, usually often influenced by retail buyers.

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In essence, Korean buyers are willing to pay more for Bitcoin, hence overwhelming the available supply and consequently pushing prices upwards.

In the post on X, XWIN Finance highlighted that this long signal had been sighted on the indicator. History also attests to the bullish significance of this signal; there have been major price moves to the upside following sustained increases in the Kimchi Premium.

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An example is the last sighting of the long signal in October 2023, where the index rose above a major threshold, as shown in the chart above. The price of Bitcoin witnessed a 370% rally after this signal went off in 2023. 

According to XWIN Research, this same pattern seems to be playing out again in 2026. Hence, if the Kimchi Premium completes its long-signal formation, it could be a sign that buyers are occupying favourable positions for a bullish ride. 

If history does repeat itself, the Bitcoin price could be on track to witness another exciting voyage, with the flagship cryptocurrency possibly putting in a more than 300% surge in the next cycle. 

However, it is worth noting that macro conditions, institutional demand, and derivatives activity would be playing their roles to augment the pattern’s plausibility, as it should not be viewed as a standalone bullish sign.

Bitcoin Price At A Glance

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As of this writing, the price of BTC stands at around $95,280, reflecting no significant change in the past 24 hours.

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