499 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 15 Feb \ parent \ on: How Many People Are Asking You About Bitcoin Now ? bitcoin
I wonder how much ETFs will subtract from retail spending on exchanges. It really seems like the only benefit is to have something in a tax advantaged account... I guess it makes it really convenient if you want to have everything under a Fidelity or other brokerage...
It will completely deter new entrants that only care about price exposure from creating exchange accounts. That's probably 99% of new bitcoin buyers. Hopefully they'll get curious and fall down the rabbit hole once their ETF holding appreciate, but most of them will rebalance out of the position a few times first.
Even after falling through the rabbit hole, the majority of them won't leave the ETF because the risks are too abstract. They'll be like all the gold bugs that hold no actual gold. We should all be thankful that we joined bitcoin when it was hard, because most of us would've avoided all the pain of self-custody otherwise.
Bitcoiners in the current sense are like computer programmers and bitcoiners in the future sense, ie price exposed, are like computer users. Meaning, the proportion of people that really get it will be vanishingly small relative to benefactors.