Last night marked an unique event as the SEC greenlit 11 proposals for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Regardless of your stance on Bitcoin this decision carries significant, historic weight.
However, all that glitters is not gold.
I've never been a fan of financial derivatives, and my position is even stronger when it comes to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a digital asset, open, and permissionless.
Building an institutional castle on top of it makes little sense—or rather, it makes a lot of sense, but for institutions themselves.
The same entities that have opposed Bitcoin since 2009, deploying all the artillery in their arsenal without making a dent, are now waking up to the fact that they cannot defeat it.
They seek to secure a leading role in this revolution.
Here are just a few of the numerous downsides to such ETFs, off the top of my head:
- Encourages Short-Term Speculation over Long-Term Adoption
- Encourages Centralized Exchange Dependence
- Inhibits Bitcoin's True Price Discovery
- Risk of Fractional Reserve Practices
- Increases Counterparty Risk
- Expensive management fees
- Reduces Individual Sovereignty
- Encourages Price Manipulation
- Potential for Conflict of Interest
In conclusion, don't be fooled by these dying Establishments.
Owning Bitcoin via ETFs is like watching a star in the night sky through a telescope – you can marvel at its brilliance, but the distant lens separates you from the hard and brutal thermodynamic reality of the legitimate thing.
As always, remember:
Bitcoin doesn't need financial dinosaurs; financial dinosaurs need Bitcoin.
Oh, and another thing that should be obvious by now:
not your keys, not your coins.