Benefits:
• produces a short-term spike in BTC price that settles down rapidly.
• ETF approval will turn major institutions into bitcoin marketers.
• Regulated options managed by genuinely reputable entities like Blackrock could starve sketchier operations, broadly reducing fraud.
Risks:
• The rising price of bitcoin, could pull other crypto prices up – becoming a catalyst for an unsustainable crypto-bubble
• Appreciating crypto prices almost inevitably attract new waves of fraud and even crime
• ETFs might increase overall crypto market volatility in some ways. The ETF will be held by many less committed investors. That means more bitcoin will be available to be liquidated nearly instantaneously in moments of market uncertainty.
• Transaction volumes ultimately generate fees for bitcoin, supporting hashpower and the security of the chain. If everyone instead just parked their bitcoin in an ETF, Bitcoin itself could be threatened.
• Bitcoin generates no native yield, so if you’re paying an ETF to manage your coins, you depend entirely on price appreciation to generate returns, and they must outpace whatever fees you’re paying.