Spot Ethereum ETFs Set to Trade Soon

Plus, WSJ slams my socks

Ric Edelman: It's Monday, July 1st, and Joe Biden is still in the race. Hey, I had a rather horrifying news article hit me in the face over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal. This is just personally devastating story. I just have to share it with you. The Wall Street Journal ran a fashion article with the headline, Stop Breaking Sock Bylaws. Oh my goodness gracious, this article I think was written specifically and directly at me. They had two particular points. How many were there total? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I'm looking at the article right now. Eight specific statements about how bad socks can ruin a man's outfit. That's a quote from the subhead. And two of the eight points just were, you know, stabs in my heart.  

Number one, novelty socks shall be shunned. They said that novelty socks are more often bad than good. And this is just absolutely horrible. And number two, socks are obliged to match. The article said wearing mismatched socks is like sitting two single friends with nothing in common beside each other at a wedding, just because both are alone. It's lazy. Oh my goodness gracious. You see, I'm the guy who pioneered the notion of first colorful socks. And then socks that don't match. I've been doing this for 25 years or more. In fact, it was the very first time I was quoted by the Wall Street Journal. A page one story, mind you, was when I introduced the no tie zone in our offices at Edelman Financial. You know, a financial services company not having its advisors wear ties? This was sacrilege. This was unheard of. This was, oh my goodness. And it was the fact that I instituted a no tie zone was worthy of page one coverage by the Wall Street Journal. And you fast forward and I was just really fed up with the fact that men have to wear this stupid uniform of dark suits and white shirts and dark ties and brown or black shoes with black or brown or dark navy blue socks. How dull and boring. I'm so jealous of women who have such wardrobe flexibility and women can change their hair style, their hair length, their hair color, they can dress in blouses or jackets or suits or pants, the dresses, they can wear a variety of colors. They have unlimited array of jewelry from bracelets to necklaces to earrings to, oh my goodness, and the colors they can select for everything from ruse to lipstick. It goes on and on and on. I'm just so jealous of women's flexibility with wardrobe, but men, we have this stupid narrow uniform that we have to wear. 

And so not only did I introduce the no tie zone, let's be a bit more casual, which today of course is now the norm in corporate America. But I then said, what's with the socks? Let's create some color and so the first thing I started to do was wear colorful socks. And they weren't easy to find. And then there was a New York Times article one Sunday morning proclaiming the colorful socks are now a thing. They didn't even give me any credit for it. And I said well if colorful socks are now the norm, I've got to go to the next level. And that meant wearing different colored socks. I mean, why do we need to be symmetrical? Think about it. You don't wear a watch on both hands. You don't wear the same bracelet on both hands. Why do we need to be symmetrical? So let's put one sock on one foot. Let's put a different sock on a different foot. And I truly mean a different sock. And I discovered incredible benefits of this. Not only was it fun, which is the most important thing, it was incredibly practical, too. Now it doesn't matter if I lose a sock. Think about it. How many times do you have a sock disappear on you in the washer? Or it's just suddenly gone, and you now have another sock that's worthless? Not anymore! It doesn't matter if you lose one.  

Second, getting dressed in the morning is so much easier because we can just grab a couple of different socks without regard to what the pants color is. Really wonderful. It does present a bit of a challenge, I must admit, when you're in a hotel using their laundry because now you have to go to the trouble of explaining on the card you fill out to tell them what you're putting into the laundry bag. That the socks are mismatched. Otherwise they will spend hours looking for the missing sock that they don't realize isn't missing. But anyway, here's the Wall Street Journal just this weekend saying socks are obliged to match. Oh, my heart.  

Anyway, let me get to the important news of the day. There is real excitement going on because it is widely anticipated in the crypto community that the Ethereum ETFs are going to be approved by the SEC tomorrow or Wednesday. There's been a lot of activity behind the scenes. As you probably know, the SEC technically approved the Ethereum ETFs back in May, right before Memorial Day weekend, but they only approved the 19B1 forms. They did not have the time to approve the S1s because of the severe mismanagement of this whole process by the SEC and Gary Gensler. Normally, the 19B1s and the S1s are completed and approved simultaneously. So when the SEC approves, they launch immediately. 

Well, this mismanagement resulted in that not happening. And even though the SEC approved the 19B1s around Memorial Day, the S1s had not been completed. That work has been going on now feverishly behind the scenes. And many of the ETF providers have been telling me in the past week that they have submitted revised S1s to the SEC and they've been engaging in extensive conversation with the SEC about these new S1s, and they are anticipating that the SEC may say okay as early as tomorrow, perhaps even by Wednesday, in time for the July 4th holiday weekend. Which means they're going to be coming to the market any day. If they blow it due to the holiday, then it could be as early as next week. So this is very exciting. We've gone from over a decade of attempting to get ETFs that allow you to invest directly in bitcoin, which we got in January, or directly into Ethereum in which we're now about to get. And now these products are finally here. And it's very exciting.  

One big question that has been unanswered to date is, what's going to be the cost of these ETFs? And what I can tell you is that there is going to be the very same price war that there was for the bitcoin ETFs. I had been in the camp who believed that the ETFs were going to be rather expensive because it can be more expensive to trade these products than ordinary stocks or bonds. But that proved wrong as all of the ETF providers were clamoring for market share back in January with the launch of the bitcoin ETFs. And as a result, there was a massive price war to the point where the cheapest ETF is 19 basis points. That's 0.19%. The second cheapest is 20 basis points. A bunch of them are 25 basis points. They're very inexpensive ETFs. And many of them have been waiving their fees entirely. They're literally free, in an effort to capture your attention and your assets, and the very same type of price war is going to happen with the Ethereum ETFs. VanEck has already announced that they are going to waive their fee entirely for the rest of this year, or until they hit a one and a half billion in assets, and afterwards, it'll only be 20 basis points. So it is going to be really quite exciting because of VanEck is, you know, throwing down the gauntlet at a 0.2%. You know that the others are going to do similar, likewise, perhaps even lower. So these are incredibly inexpensive, far cheapest way for you to buy bitcoin and Ethereum than any other method that you can possibly come up with. And being an ETF wrapper, they're incredibly convenient. Very familiar. You can buy them at any brokerage account. You can add them to a diversified portfolio. You can buy and sell on a daily basis. You can actually trade throughout the trading day, whenever the stock market is open, you can engage in rebalancing and dollar cost averaging and tax loss harvesting. It's just wonderful. Any financial advisor will be able to make them available to you. And we are going to see a continuing mainstreaming of crypto in investor portfolios, not just retail investors like you and me, but institutional investors, endowments, pension funds, the fortune 500. We are going to see massive engagement. 

And the big excitement is of course, that Ethereum is so very different from bitcoin. On tomorrow's show, I'm going to explain to you exactly how different they are and answer for you the questions of how do you pick? Do you own Bitcoin? Do you own Ethereum? Should you own both? And if so, in what combination should it be 50/50 or should it be 75/25 or 25/75? How do you choose between the two? Why are there two different coins and why does it matter? I'm going to get into all of that for you on tomorrow's podcast. Be sure to stay tuned for that.  

But what it comes down to more than anything else is that now is the time for you to become knowledgeable, educated about digital assets. You need to understand all of this. And so to help you, we've got two things. Number one, we have launched our Ethereum Toolkit. This toolkit has all the information you need to understand what's going on with these ETFs and a really nifty, most importantly, one-page grid that is a comparative chart of all eight of these Ethereum ETFs - the different providers, how the ETFs vary, their fees, and all the other key criteria to help you choose among them. 

And most importantly, because Ethereum is only a very small element of the broader blockchain and digital assets universe, now more than ever, you need to get your CBA designation and become Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets. You need to be as expert in this as you are in annuities. You need to be as knowledgeable about crypto as you are about stocks and bonds and real estate and gold and oil and energy and commodities and foreign assets. This asset class is as significant as all of the others. And you need to know what you're talking about. You need to be able to answer client questions. You need to understand the investment thesis. You need to understand how to adapt it into a diversified portfolio. You need to know the difference between bitcoin and Ethereum. You need to understand tokenization. You need to understand DeFi. You need to understand how this new technology works. It's already a $2.5 trillion asset, $2.5 trillion market cap, and it's growing exponentially. Through our CBDA designation and online self-study course, you can get the knowledge you need. And since it's a FINRA listed professional designation, you get to promote the fact to your clients that you now know as much about crypto as you do about annuities, and you can help answer their questions and give them the guidance and advice they have hired you to provide as effectively as you can with every other asset class. Online self-study, take the courses as you wish, average 10 days for completion. Some people binge it through a holiday weekend. Like we have the one coming up. The link is in the show notes for both the Ethereum Toolkit and to learn more about the CBDA professional designation.  

Tomorrow's show, what's the difference between bitcoin and Ethereum? 

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Ric Edelman: I’m glad you’re with me here on The Truth About Your Future. If you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube – and remember leave a review on Apple podcasts. I read them all! Never miss an episode of The Truth About Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. 

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Links from today’s show: 

Become Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets: https://dacfp.com/certification/  

Spot Ethereum ETFs Toolkit: https://dacfp.com/ethtoolkit/  

Wall Street Journal article - The Laws of Men’s Socks: How to Avoid Criminally Unattractive Looks: https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/the-laws-of-mens-socks-an-important-guide-aa2d6e86  

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