I'm not excited but I can see the up side of this. I can also see the down side. Others have spoken of the down sides but here's a list.

There are probably more.

The upside

Why is Blackrock doing this? One highly like reason is that their customers want bitcoin in their investment portfolios. Yes, they should do it the right way but few start from that point. A lot of hard lessons are gonna have to be learned. Traditional finance isn't going to just say, ok. I guess we are obsolete now. No, they are gonna try to make money off of bitcoin as well.

The entrance of Blackrock makes it more likely others will follow. Yeah, people here don't care about this stuff but we are the early adopters that get it. The boomers don't get it. They won't get it for the most part but more people buying, even not self custody will make it less likely the state comes after bitcoiners. We aren't gonna just jump from fiat world to bitcoin world in one step. Many people will do dumb things. There will be battles, mistakes, and ugly mistakes.

This gives more people access to bitcoin. Specifically people that would never self custody. Yeah, they may get scammed. They may get burned. The state can take their bitcoin if they don't have custody. These are lessons some will only learn the hard way.

This takes more bitcoin off the table raising the buying power of bitcoin.

In short, I'm not afraid of Blackrock. I'm not a fan of Blackrock either. On net in think this will be one step on the way to a bitcoin standard. I'm not excited about it but I'm not angry or worried either.