Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart: The Bloomberg ETF Bros

Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart sit on one of the most traditional finance (TradFi if you're hip to the lingo) perches out there: Mike Bloomberg's gazillion-dollar news, data and analysis business. Yet, as all of crypto anxiously awaited word in early 2024 on whether U.S. regulators would approve bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the Bloomberg analysts were <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/01/08/bitcoin-etf-approval-odds-raised-to-over-90-at-bloomberg-drop-on-polymarket/" target="_blank">must-listen-to experts</a> in crypto.

Their day jobs entail examining all things ETF. For a few weeks or maybe months, there was no hotter story for them than bitcoin, and Balchunas and Seyffart were in the social media trenches, armed with de rigueur <a href="https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1742695896133874098" target="_blank">memes</a>, telling degens and pros alike whether it was likely to be a "yay" or "nay" for the widely anticipated products. (They correctly leaned toward "yay.")

Balchunas caught a very early glimpse of how intense the buzz around bitcoin ETFs could get, <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/352036111478038528" target="_blank">tweeting way back in 2013</a>: "Crazy: Just the mere reg filing of a bitcoin ETF has already gotten more press/tweets than the dozens of new & useful ETF launches combined.”