Not really but people always need their boogymen. Blackrock is generally viewed negatively but Larry is very clear about what Blackrock does. The company manages money. None of the trillions they have access to is their money. He repeats it over and over. Blackrock is behaving based on the requests of its clients. But that falls on deaf ears because people would rather rip into Fink for ESG stuff while Blackrock also has oil and gas investments. Instead of reaching for the logical conclusion that maybe with trillions under management Blackrock has sizeable clients from both industries I guess its just easier to say "REEE FINK BAD REEE" and put no energy into thinking about things.

So, ETF's are not bad. In the case of Blackrock this is them attempting to meet the needs and demands of their clients. ETF's can be integrated into retirement plans which means you no longer have to hold Bitcoin to feel its effects. Its effects can be felt by your automatically managed 401k account instead. You don't even have to be aware and most people won't because most just open an account with their employer's provider and let it do its thing. This is how Bitcoin integrates into every day lives.

Custody of Bitcoin really has no need to be the focus of everything involved with Bitcoin. Care less about the custody and more about the utility.

I know I'm going to have to start looking over my shoulder after saying this on SN but I guess that's what the 2nd amendment is for (and also Darth is away for a while):

A bitcoin ETF is probably a good thing. As you say, an ETF is just another custodian. There is counter-party risk to be sure but I do think that the SEC is a fairly efficient regulator, and bitcoin by its nature is much easier to audit. Also, if BlackRock or another ETF issuer were to engage in some fractional-reserve fuckery, I'm pretty sure that's a market inefficiency just waiting to be exploited by some hedge fund.

Who knows, maybe some people will start with an ETF and then move on to self-custody as they learn more.

In addition to all of the legitimate use-cases for bitcoin, it happens to be an excellent portfolio diversifier (for now). I have a few percent of my retirement account in a bitcoin futures ETF, specifically because of its volatility. I don't care if it's a fiat game or whatever - I still live in a fiat world and I need to pay fiat for most things.

As for the U.S. government sitting back and watching bitcoin destroy the dollar (@siggy47) - maybe they understand it's inevitable and are trying to navigate it in the best way possible. At the very least, an ETF ensures they make some money from capital gains tax. And who knows, maybe Satoshi Nakamoto was a CIA team that realized that the best way to propel America forward was to gradually switch to a harder currency while re-paying our debts to our geopolitical competitors in rapidly-depreciating fiat.

ETFs are a fiat game, while Bitcoin is creating a new game entirely.

They want to keep you in the fiat game while they play the new one. So yes, ETFs are that bad, as with every other fiat-denominated "asset" out there

Do you want to win the fiat game, or the Bitcoin game?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

let's be honest, it IS a great thing we are about to have an ETF, it symbolises how far BTC has succeeded in terms of institutional recognition and provides a green light for the next wave of adoption

the big questions now are not whether it will be adopted, but how..

the banking oligopoly still has tight control over financial markets (and the organisations that regulate them)

and the biggest bitcoin businesses will very soon be that exact same banking cartel

It's really bad that they try to package something that only exists for the sake of decentralization and self-custody etc and package it in something that explicitly is centralized and fiduciary

It's "not bad" in a sense that you don't have to own it and can choose to ignore its exsistence

Yes. It's all that bad.