David Canellis

All things considered, there probably won’t be a BONK ETF anytime soon.



But the notion that cryptocurrencies might one day invade the stodgy stock market via ETFs is seriously compelling.&nbsp;



Mad Money host Jim Cramer was on the right track during his CNBC appearance yesterday. “Why shouldn’t there be a BONK ETF?” Cramer asked SEC Chair Gary Gensler.



However, the real trick to getting SEC approval has turned out to be courting CME, which is regulated by the CFTC — and not Gensler&#8217;s agency. Bitcoin and ether both had futures markets for years before spot ETFs were approved.



Perhaps a dog coin fund might be an easier sell. Coinbase Derivatives, which is also regulated by the CFTC, <a href="https://www.cftc.gov/sites/default/files/filings/ptc/24/03/ptc03072412521.pdf">launched</a> its own dogecoin futures markets not long ago.



CME Group <a href="https://www.theblock.co/linked/102033/cme-group-is-not-launching-dogecoin-futures">denied</a> it had any plans for dogecoin futures when rumors circulated in 2021. What better time to revisit that decision than now?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CNBC talks memecoins — a bull signal?</h2>



It wasn’t even just a BONK ETF that was floated on CNBC yesterday. Cramer also made the case for ETFs backed by sushiswap, polkadot, cardano (he called it “cordano”), immutable, ronin and osmosis and myneighbouralice.



“[They have] all traded millions — I’m talking millions of dollars this very morning… I would think that BONK is a natural, and osmosis… shouldn’t we have some sort of product?”



Gensler sidestepped by redirecting the question to the matter of disclosure. Today is the SEC’s 90th birthday, he said, and reminded the audience (talking into the camera) that President Roosevelt created the Commission to ensure sellers of securities openly inform prospective investors so they can make better decisions.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="868" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-87371" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-4.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The moment Gensler found out about $CRAMER, which <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/cramer-coin">spiked</a> up to 500% following the segment (Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-VO6dtFRes">CNBC Television</a>)</figcaption></figure>



Gensler’s point was that those disclosures supposedly aren’t happening across crypto. If you ask lobbyists, industry lawyers and founders, this is because issuers and protocol stewards simply don’t consider the tokens securities or investment contracts — so there’s no disclosure required. And in many cases, there’s no centralized entity through which to disclose.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/memecoin-mania-learn-risk-management">Memecoin mania can teach us something</a>



Then Gensler came for the crypto exchanges.&nbsp;



“These crypto exchanges, Jim, are doing things we would never allow this New York Stock Exchange to do,” Gensler said. “Our laws don’t allow you to trade against your customers.”



But the previous questions were awkward for Gensler, even before Cramer brought up memecoins that borrow likenesses of celebrities and other media personalities, including himself and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gensler-memecoin-outperforms-market">the SEC chair</a>.



(Gensler said those should be registered as securities, but it’s unclear whether he fully grokked the concept of memecoins about public figures that weren’t issued by the actual person.)



Cramer may not have remembered, but the SEC already labeled cardano a security in both <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-coinbase">Coinbase</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-10-tokens-securities">Binance</a> lawsuits filed last June, alongside a dozen others including solana, polygon, BNB, internet computer, filecoin and Axie Infinity.&nbsp;



So far, the companies and entities working to build out those ecosystems haven’t been sued — just crypto exchanges found listing them. Tron founder Justin Sun was sued separately months before over TRX and bittorrent (BTT), while the SEC stung Ripple Labs for XRP in December 2020 and sent Uniswap Labs a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-issues-uniswap-wells-notice">Wells notice</a> in April.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/18265472/embed#?secret=0gLtI6aGWI" data-secret="0gLtI6aGWI" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The colorful band of lines beneath the cross pulls downward following the lawsuits — but few have recovered</figcaption></figure>



Still, the Binance and Coinbase lawsuits coincided with a severe drop in the bitcoin ratios for the tokens singled out by the SEC.&nbsp;



Most had fallen more than 10% against bitcoin in the three days following the suits, with those losses doubling over the next two weeks or so. Bitcoin itself dropped around 7% over the same period.



To date, only bitcoin ratios for solana and near have made it back out of the 13 tokens named by the SEC, followed by ICP, which is only just short. Ironically, near and ICP have been largely invigorated by the AI narrative, of which Gensler is a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-gensler-ai-better-than-crypto">huge fan</a>.



However, beating bitcoin (and thus growing the bitcoin ratio) has been tough this bull market, and tons of cryptocurrencies that haven’t been named as securities by the SEC have underperformed.&nbsp;



This bull market has been lacking a true altcoin season. Perhaps a few filings for dogecoin ETFs will be the catalyst.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb&#8217;s crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He&#8217;s a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co</div>


<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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Jim Cramer is right: Dog coin ETFs are this bull market’s missing spark

BONK, the dog coin currently at the heart of the Solana space’s hopes and dreams, holds the record for 2023’s biggest Coinbase pump.



Coinbase listings are a big deal for crypto projects. More users implies more volume, and more volume should mean higher prices, some might say.



But it seems the most bullish thing about making it to Coinbase isn’t the actual listing — but the lead up.



Take <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bonk">BONK</a>. Mid-way through its pearl-clutching 18,000% pump, Coinbase posted on X to say it had added BONK to its listing roadmap.



Markets were taking a breather on BONK at the time. What was a $20 million community coin at the end of October had ballooned to a near-$900 million powerhouse by mid-December, and it was now looking at a 40% correction.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> listings generally happen in three stages: roadmap, confirmation of support and then fully-fledged trade.



<ul>
<li>BONK, on other crypto exchanges, tanked up to 27% about five hours after the roadmap announcement, during which time bitcoin remained flat.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Nearly 18 hours later, Coinbase confirmed US dollar markets for BONK would open on the following day, at midday in New York.&nbsp;</li>



<li>BONK rallied up to 50% in the meantime and more than doubled in the 18 hours after it hit Coinbase.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



Two days after its listing, last Friday, BONK was, for a moment, worth more than $2 billion. It has since retraced by two-fifths.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16192579/embed#?secret=jnQKrt4poz" data-secret="jnQKrt4poz" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">More than $500 million in BONK has been traded on Coinbase since its listing</figcaption></figure>



Despite its current pullback, BONK is still up nearly double since Coinbase confirmed its listing last Wednesday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">All Coinbase listings this year have pre-pumped</h2>



BONK may seem like an outlier, but it’s not alone.&nbsp;



Coinbase has listed 15 other cryptocurrencies this year, and all went up in the time period between Coinbase confirming their listings and the actual listing taking place – save one, the Ripple-centric smart contract network, flare (FLR), which ended up even.&nbsp;



Bitcoin, which generally leads the market, rose more than 2% alongside those cryptocurrencies on only two occasions. This indicates little correlation between the price of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies listed on Coinbase, at least in the short term.



(Liquid staking tokens, or tokens which already had trading history elsewhere weren’t included, as the effect Coinbase would’ve had on their prices would’ve been far less clear.)



BONK’s pre-list pump was beaten by another obscure cryptocurrency, DIMO, a token used to pay drivers for sharing their data. Coinbase confirmed its listing on April 17 and two hours later, DIMO had more than doubled before scaling back to 40% ahead.



The data suggests Coinbase’s X posts about new listings are indeed correlated with higher prices. The same can’t really be said for the actual listings.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16192705/embed#?secret=E6mePZxaci" data-secret="E6mePZxaci" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">BONK’s first-week Coinbase returns are easily the best of the year</figcaption></figure>



Nine of the 16 cryptocurrencies analyzed ended the week after their Coinbase listings in the red, ranging from 36% down in the case of algorithmic stablecoin-adjacent Sperax, to the minus 5% recorded by osmosis (OSMO), the token for the Cosmos decentralized exchange token of the same name.



VOXIES, the crypto tied to the NFT universe, spiked up to 26% one hour after Coinbase confirmed its listing in February. It sank by nearly a third in the four days following.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">More than half of Coinbase listings tank in their first week</h2>



It’s too early to tell how BONK will do at the close of its first week on Coinbase, as it’s only been trading on that venue for four days.



Still, BONK’s 128% rally in the 14 hours after its Coinbase listing holds the record for the year so far — more than double DIMO’s and VeChain’s second cryptocurrency, VeThor.



Whatever effect Coinbase listings have in immediate prices, they apparently diminish over a longer period. About half have gone down in the months since their listings, many by more than 50%.



Data availability asset celestia (TIA) and ad-hoc telecoms token helium (HNT) have exploded by up to 400% since their debuts. HNT joined Coinbase in July while TIA made it on Nov. 1.



Of course, these digital assets were added to Coinbase when crypto markets were relatively hot. Announcements of listings in proper bear markets may not have the same effect.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter</a>.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

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