It’s always difficult to overstate the level of chaos and madness typically present on Crypto Twitter, and within the digital assets industry, on any given day. But it’s equally hard to think of a single week that brought such monumental—and unexpected—plot twists and developments as this one. Things got to a slow start on Monday—until the afternoon brought declarations from Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, two Bloomberg ETF analysts that have emerged as main characters of the Crypto Twittersphere this year, suddenly announced that they were radically adjusting their previous probabilities that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve spot Ethereum ETFs by a Thursday deadline.Update: @JSeyff and I are increasing our odds of spot Ether ETF approval to 75% (up from 25%), hearing chatter this afternoon that SEC could be doing a 180 on this (increasingly political issue), so now everyone scrambling (like us everyone else assumed they’d be denied). See… https://t.co/gcxgYHz3om— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 20, 2024Twitter—and ETH’s price—immediately exploded. For weeks, the prospect of spot ETH ETF approval in May had been written off as fanciful, for Me watching $ETH pump 20%+ in under 24 hoursJust getting started pic.twitter.com/f2ARpkAOj4— Uncle ⌐◧-◧ (@UncleRewards) May 21, 2024Potential ETH ETF issuers kicked from business as usual into overdrive as the industry’s prevailing mood accelerated into frantic excitement. Interns and lawyers will get zero sleep this week and they will like it https://t.co/eXYgQ37jbN— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) May 20, 2024In real-time, Twitter users attempted to piece together the narrative. How could this have even happened? Experts pointed to seeds planted last week, when a string of surprising For anyone wondering why our odds were low up until yesterday, see below. This was a shock, a “holy sht” moment yesterday even for ppl inside the process. That said, props to @JSeyff for convincing me to stick with a 25% floor (as I wanted to go lower that’s how deafening the… https://t.co/d9Xjt3nurN— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) May 21, 2024The narrative appeared validated on Thursday, when—right at the buzzer—the SEC quietly Crypto Twitter exploded in a cacophony of celebration. ETHEREUM ETF APPROVED pic.twitter.com/KGYFsRW5ZA— gaut (@0xgaut) May 23, 2024we really went from racing hamsters to getting the eth etf approved pic.twitter.com/63gKm4N3kc— hersch (@tittyrespecter) May 23, 2024Industry leaders, including Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal, hailed the week’s events as unlike any he’d previously witnessed.This week, this day, has been a rollercoaster unlike any other I’ve seen. ETH is effectively deemed a Commodity as we’ve always known it to be. I’m proud to be on team @Coinbase, the trusted partner and custodian for many of the issuers who had 19b-4’s approved tonight. pic.twitter.com/nz1HHFbBSQ— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) May 23, 2024As if that wasn’t enough: amidst the entire mind-boggling ETH ETF saga, the U.S. House of Representatives handily FIT21 passes the House 279 – 136 House Democrats voting in favor of this bill: 71.That is a *huge* number of elected Democrats voting “no confidence” in the current SEC, and sending a message to the Biden administration that “anti-crypto” is a losing platform this year. pic.twitter.com/zmlD1VRQfF— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) May 22, 2024The narrative of a historic, overnight realignment of crypto’s long-tenuous relationship with the American government had solidified. Just a week ago, such a state of play would have been dismissed as unthinkable by many.Some cautioned that said narrative might also be too good to be true, however. Certain aspects of FIT21, for example, might be more hostile to crypto than many realize, crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro wrote. man we have been psyopped so bad on this FIT21 thingthere has never before been a spot commodities market that is *regulated*…we are just handing this authority over wholesale to the CFTC and hoping they are not insane fascists like Gary (but he used to be head of CFTC lol)— _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) May 22, 2024“We have to stay vigilant,” Ethereum co-founder and Consensys CEO Joe Lubin told Decrypt. “We can’t assume that we’re not going to be attacked again.”Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
