Sometimes a deadline can be the best thing for productivity. A little anxiety can give you the boost you need to get over the finish line.

But sometimes a deadline can ruin your life. Like, say, you watched a spooky VHS and now a little ghost girl is calling you on the phone to tell you you’re going to die in seven days.

You can share the video with somebody else and pass on the curse, or make your peace and wait for judgment to crawl out of your TV.

Well, the SEC watched the tape, and they’ll have just 240 days to decide all of our fates, as a verdict for Grayscale’s Bitcoin spot ETF application fast approaches.

Espresso Shots

☕️ Will Bitcoin 10x?

Michael Saylor, the billionaire CEO of Microstrategy, certainly seems to think so.

Saylor predicts that this coming year won’t just be a Bitcoin boom year, we’re going to witness a price hike unlike anything Wall Street’s ever seen.

“You’re going to see $12 billion of natural selling per year converted into $6 billion of natural selling a year—at the same time as things like spot Bitcoin ETFs increase the demand for Bitcoin,” Saylor said in an interview with CNBC. “So that’s why all of us are fairly bullish over the next 12 months: demand’s going to increase, supply’s going to contract, and this is fairly unprecedented in the history of Wall Street.”

Weird enough, my cousin Ronnie also predicted unprecedented sales and several billion in natural selling for the homemade flu vaccine he brewed in the shed behind our garage.

☕️ The Rise of GROK

Elon Musk unveiled his ChatGPT rival, “Grok,” and naturally there’s been a surge in GROK AI tokens that have… nothing to do with Grok.

Musk has claimed that Grok has both comedic wit and a rebellious streak inspired by AI from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

And it would appear that Grok already has a few hitchhikers in the form of more than 400 different GROK tokens released by anonymous developers this past weekend.

Again, these tokens are in no way tied to the new AI, and any upward movement is fully propelled by hype.

Meanwhile, retired tight end Robert Gronkowski has seen little to no activity on his newly released GRONK coin.

☕️ Coinbase’s Doge Sweepstakes Heads to Court

A federal judge has denied Coinbase’s attempts for arbitration regarding a lawsuit concerning the company’s “Trade Doge, Win Doge” sweepstakes.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2021 and accuses Coinbase of utilizing false advertising in its Dogecoin giveaway sweepstakes.

Coinbase’s promotional materials may have intentionally obscured that participants could enter the $1.2 million Dogecoin giveaway without trading $100 worth of Dogecoin on Coinbase.

The free entry was allegedly included in intentionally small, faint, and hard-to-read fine print.

The class action lawsuit is still ongoing, but depending on the outcome, Coinbase’s Dogecoin may be placed in a rehabilitation program where it will learn to push elevator buttons and find drugs in the airport.

Polled Brew

Spilling the Beans

The SEC Has Days to Decide.. ⏱️ 😮

The verdict on the Bitcoin Spot ETF applications has all of us as jittery as kids on Christmas Eve.

But unlike federal holidays, the SEC’s answer to the Bitcoin Spot ETFs has never been given an exact date.

We’ve been plugging along, filling a seemingly unlimited advent calendar, with no end in sight.

Until now.

The Federal Register has recently published Grayscale’s application for an Ethereum spot ETF.

This means that the SEC will have 240 days to either approve or reject the application from the date of publication.

It’s not a Bitcoin spot ETF, no, but Grayscale has plans to attack that front in January.

It’s long been unclear which of these titans of TradFi: BlackRock, Galaxy Digital, WisdomTree, or Grayscale, among many others, will be the first to take the lead in the ETF race.

Does this count as taking the lead? Grayscale’s on the board in the Ethereum category, but we all know Bitcoin’s the real hot-ticket item.

On the other hand, BlackRock’s ETF was listed and then promptly pulled from the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s website.

So, for now, let’s call it neck-and-neck.

And yes, it may feel like these applications have a long and perilous 240 days ahead of them, but this is the beginning of the end.

First and foremost, we now have a timeline. That’s crucial. The mists are clearing and at least we know we’re moving forward.

But what’s waiting for crypto at the end of that 240-day application period?

It’s sort of like approaching the final boss of a videogame, for the first time. There’s very little chance that you’re going to beat them and a very likely chance that you’re going to get your shit rocked.

We know, based on… just about everything about the relationship between the SEC and crypto, that rejection — even a petty flimsy rejection — is most likely in store.

But just like that final video game boss, every time you fail, you learn something. You’re finally noticing that glowing weak spot or getting one step closer to memorizing that choreographed fire attack.

Yes, the SEC can shoot one or all of these spot ETF applications down, but they’ll have to provide a reason for doing so.

That just means the next application will remedy that flaw and represent an even more ironclad submission. And the next one. And the next one.

Yes, countless spot ETF applications may have to jump off the SEC’s cliff like so many lemmings dashed upon the rocks — but eventually, one of those lemmings will soar.

Crypto 101

Block Reward: When crypto blocks are created by miners or validators, this is their incentive.

Those participants receive newly minted crypto for the creation of more crypto. Currently, the block reward for Bitcoin mining is 6.25 BTC, which will be halved, naturally, at the next Bitcoin halving.

The Last Sip

The Last Sip: Some rejected taglines for Elon Musk’s new “Grok” AI include “Let’s Grok and Roll,” “Locked, Groked, and Fully Loaded,” as well as a failed endorsement deal with Dwayne “the Grok” Johnson.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.