Topic: Bitcoin EFTs are bad for Bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency. (Read 482 times)

You're missing the point: whoever is buying these ETFs is doing it because he doesn't want to deal with KYC on exchanges, buying an external wallet, store your seed phrase, etc etc. Of course it has nothing to do with Satoshi's idea but if someone just wants to make some money speculating on bitcoin, well, nothing wrong with it. At the same time I see this as a lot of free advertising for bitcoin and I'm sure that some people out there will get more curious and after the ETFs they'll get the real bitcoins.

The ignorance runs strong with this one. Very very strong. I suspect you are very young and inexperienced.

Example: Expose one's ROTH IRA to an ETF, pay no taxes on it when I retire and withdraw. Expose my 401K to ETF and my employer matches 100% pre tax. I pay tax when I withdraw but being retired I would be in a much lower tax bracket.

Trading: I can move in and out of an ETF without incurring a fee and much much faster than the network.

Corps: Having a wallet is a giant PIA, the big boys don't do it (Saylor or Musk). ETF is far more palatable. Wait until the sovereign funds poor in.

ETF is now where bitcoin just got it's big boy pants and that's a great thing.

Drawbacks: I can only trade during trading hours, but the big boys don't give a shit that's the way it's always been.

Not ETF but kinda related: I can hold BTC in Fidelity which I trust 1000X more than any exchange and I don't incur any on and off ramp fee's and they handle the tax paperwork perfectly.

conclusion on personal not corp: Is this the only thing? of course not, never hold everything in one place! NEVER! Sure hold your hardware wallet! Keep some on an exchange for ease, I do buy things sometimes as my HW wallet is inbound only, never been outbound. And if you have a substantial amount of BTC, keep a few HW wallets on different technologies.

There ya go youngsta.

 

Any investor that buy ETF are only scum bags that are scared to be their own banks, scared to protect their own keys because they are not man enough to protect it. What is that hard in buying a hardware wallet and push some bitcoin in it? If you can have thousands to buy some bitcoin, I don't see why it's now a difficult thing to buy a hardware wallet that is less than 200 dollars, they rather watch Blackrock goes down and later ask for bailout of bankruptcy than hold the bitcoin by their hands.

To think that they will not ever have the feeling of holding a bitcoin and how to even transacts with it kills the vibe of bitcoin with this ETF stuff but on a second thought, you can't force people to do what they don't want to, they should enjoy their mimic bitcoin and will enjoy the native bitcoin.

Net-net, Bitcoin ETFs are not "bad for Bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency" because in actual reality, Bitcoin was never a decentralized digital currency.

All the ETF is doing is formalizing Bitcoin's place as a pure meme investment, aka a pyramid scheme.

There were thousands of pyramid investments before Bitcoin, and there will be thousands after. There's nothing wrong with investments like this, and with Bitcoin's market cap, I think we can safely say there's a demand for this kind of product.

But the blockchain architecture always made it impossible for Bitcoin to scale to the level of a real digital currency (unlike, say, Haypenny), and it will never be used as one in a mainstream way. And that's... okay!

WOW doomad is waking up
same goes for "inbound balance" a subnetwork channel partner has suggesting the recipient will get when they close channel. is also IOU
it took doomad 6 years to realise this.. hope he doesnt waste more years promoting the LN scheme of IOU

as for

you wont even get bitcoin if you redeem/sell/dispose the shares. you get an allotment of FIAT that ~pegs to bitcoin price (minus broker fees)

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the benefit FIAT earners see of ETF is they can use their pre-tax salary to buy shares exposed to a asset price. and later on, if in the right investment plan not pax tax on the exit. thus benefit from price exposure ,, aswell as saving on tax on both investment and divestment.. but never owning bitcoin inbetween

however actual bitcoiners have to use AFTER tax salary to buy real bitcoin and then pay cap gains on the profit when selling bitcoin

This means that spot ETFs make it easier for investors who are not skilled at investing because they can monitor Bitcoin prices from their own accounts. But I feel there is something strange about the security of Bitcoin if people invest in large companies that have been approved by the SEC because I don't know how investors have complete control over the Bitcoin they invest.
If we usually store Bitcoin in an open source wallet and have control over Bitcoin ownership because we hold the seed transaction and we store it.

We can trust no one other than people who have been tested and are truly trustworthy. What about those who invest in the company. If they don't hold the keys, then it's not the investor's Bitcoin but the company's Bitcoin.

You aren't wrong, but we have to admit the reality. Most people don't feel comfortable trading Bitcoin on a decentralised exchange. They always seek to trade on centralised exchanges. In this scenario, a Bitcoin ETF is a good idea for investors who aren't ready to invest themselves in Bitcoin. Even they don't want to use centralised exchanges; hence, they only focus on ETF companies. Though there is nothing positive for us, there is also nothing negative. Though they don't like on-chain Bitcoin, they have an interest in it.

I suspect that, numerically at least, almost no investors in Bitcoin hold actual private keys themselves on their own person.

Bitcoin is, in practicality, mostly a meme investment instrument, not a currency...

But they aren't "their bitcoins".  That's the whole point.  All they have are IOUs.  Nothing belongs to them.  If people want to get comfortable with that, then they can.  As long as they understand the implications.  But I don't think most of them do. 

If you buy from an ETF, you do not own bitcoins.

Until you withdraw your funds from an Exchange to a wallet where you control the keys, you do not own bitcoins.

The moment you send BTC to a custodian, you no longer own those bitcoins.

But, then again, that's what people have become accustomed to when their fiat wages are paid directly into their bank account.  That money doesn't technically belong to you either, until you withdraw it.  The money in your bank account is the property of the bank.  It belongs to them.  Until you take money out of the bank, it's just more IOUs.  One would think the concept would be to do better in Bitcoin, but people seem largely content to repeat the same mistakes and keep playing with IOUs.

Still, it must be recognized that some people are more comfortable when someone else controls their keys, and in return provides guarantees that their Bitcoins are not at risk. Let's face it, many people only care about Bitcoin because it's price. And they don’t want to deal with the details of Bitcoin wallets, different schemes to counter fraudsters, and so on. Owning Bitcoin is actually a big challenge. We often see Michael Saylor praising Bitcoin on Twitter. But does his company store the bitcoins itself? Nobody knows, but most likely not. Most likely, Sailor is buying virtual bitcoins. Simply because it is more convenient for him.

IMHO, when the big boys are playing in BTC, the US government is less likely to do stupid shit. Tail wags the dog. Just like Gensler got his whooped into approving ETF's.

Well, I just see it that if ETFs are not approved, then a lot of investors may not really be comfortable with their investments because they may feel that the future of their assests are not guaranteed and secured and may not be too forward in their investments but now that ETFs are starting to get approval from SEC it will boast investors confidence to be more optimistic that their assets are secured since it has gained recognition by world standard authorities regardless of the fact that it may seem that the motive of creating Bitcoin which is to stand as decentralized medium of exchange may be countered.

We are basically in uncharted waters for the first time.

When I first got to the forum, the overall sentiment was that we needed to get institutional investors to join the bandwagon and make move for massive adoption to take place.  But mow we got it, I'm increasingly seen more negative remarks about while ETF is bad for Bitcoin.

So far, it is my opinion that we are still on track. It's not all changes that are inherently bad. ETF is a necessary evil that has put us on the map to get massive adoption.

I get what are you talking about, and I kinda agree. This is why I'm not buying it and will keep holding and accumulating BTC in my wallet.

Bitcoin ETF is already a PART of my overall bitcoin portfolio. I keep some in hot wallet, cold wallet and some on my exchange. To have all your bitcoin eggs in one place / technology is just plane stupid.

Anywho, Bitcoin ETF is an EXCELLENT add to my Roth IRA! Why? Because what I put in there I won't pay taxes on when I withdraw for retirement in 13 ish years or so!

My 401k choices are very limited unfortunately, wish I could take advantage of that generous matching.

Just think of all the sovereign funds, pensions and corporations that can add BTC to their portfolio that keeps the boards happy. Think MicroStrategy.

Everyone talks about BTC is for everyone, okay, it's for everyone. stop whining.   

We have a lot of exchanges, not just Binance, and not all centralized exchanges ban the 3 countries you mentioned. Even China or Bangladesh are countries that completely ban bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, but there are still many investors who can use CEX to participate in the market.

I know the benefits of decentralized exchanges because we don't need KYC and there are no country restrictions like centralized exchanges. But besides those two advantages, does it have any other advantages? I even tried the P2P feature on Bisq and had to wait a long time to contact the buyer whereas you will be extremely comfortable with CEX when trading P2P. And there are many features that DEX has not provided to us yet. Furthermore, if DEX is as good as you say, why has it not been able to surpass CEX in terms of transaction volume and influence on the market until now?

You and some people here really hate CEX because it goes against the decentralized nature of bitcoin, but we cannot deny their role and influence on the market.

this is the advantage in this market. you don't need to tell everyone that you are in this market. actually, it is better to be discreet with your crypto transactions rather than disclose what you are doing via your social media channels. you can't please everyone nor convince them about what you are doing, so better take this opportunity to enrich your assets. you are not obligated to teach or educate anyone.


the BTC ETF, surely gives a positive notion that crypto in general is a legit financial aspect. hence, this is still good for this market, particularly in attracting new investors in this market. and once they got acquianted, they will surely explore how to invest directly in these various cryptocurrencies. so the regulation actually may boost crypto adoption. do remember way back before that crypto was considered illegal and used only by fraudulent actors in the market.

If you want a decentralized currency that is peer-to-peer then how is that good for Bitcoin. It only servers to give banks more control of peoples money.

How is ETF making bitcoin centralized? How much are they going to own? Microstrategy owns 200k bitcoin and that's still more than BlackRock. Is bitcoin centralized because of it? I don't think so.
Even if All ETFs together end up owning 500k, that's 2.5% of the supply. It's not going to change anything.


I'm not a socialist and I don't care if they get rich from it. That's how the world is, the rich get richer. The rich can put some money in the bank and earn more than you in your full time job. Is it fair? Probably not, but life isn't fair.


It's your choice if you want to hold  your money or give it to BlackRock. I prefer to hold, but I don't have anything against some rich people and companies holding it.
There's a simple solution if you don't want ETFs to hold your bitcoin. Don't give it to them!

Great point!!  Buy bitcoin and keep quiet.

You could argue that when people feel a need for financial freedom outside the current paradigm of centralized banking they will adopt Bitcoin.  People are free to choose and currently they choose convenience over financial freedom.

Think about the concerted effort to paint bitcoin as a tool for criminals.  The media has the power to control the narrative and move public perception.

The Banks have the money to buy whatever media they need to change the way that people perceive things.

Maybe we just have to accept this is the world we live in?

This group should stand for Bitcoin's intended purpose. If we don't', who will?



  

It’s true that bitcoin was intended to be just that, but the function of a decentralized digital currency has long been transformed into a speculative investment asset. This is quite easy to verify: the share of bitcoins holded and traded is higher than those used as money for the purchase of goods and services.

"Futures ETFs and spot ETFs" was not created to fulfill the purposes of bitcoin. Bitcoin ETF's are bitcoin surrogates for speculation (the enrichment of those who sell it).

Of course anyone see. And what do you suggest? Go out onto the streets with posters saying “don't buy Bitcoin ETF”? and "buy Futures ETFs and spot ETFs true bitcoin"?

Those who understand what's what buy bitcoin and keep quiet.

For me and from my understanding of what the ETF approval stands to represent, it is nothing more than the SEC giving a nod to the idea and existence of Bitcoin. It is a way the government and banks are biting hard on a large chunk of control of crypto currency mostly the Bitcoin market, incase it becomes of more value, where adoption rates and interest rates on investment suddenly makes it have more value than the dollar.

It is the interest of many to use BTC as more of an investment option, rather than as money to be spent for payments and transactions. Whatever be the case that has led to the approval of the ETF, it will at least place a target on money launderers and criminals who use BTC  for neferous activities. It would allow more countries make move to adopt and regulate crypto currency with more interest in future BTC implementations of investment benefits.

The reason it may sound classic is because Regulation will allow crypto to be accepted into the mainstream financial system of banks and indeed everything is volatile. And I think this approach should be done in the same way as we handle profits and losses on investments and if we want to profit from you have to stay at the forefront of trading where the reality is that ETF products are currently probably more preferred by novice investors even though at this time BTC price still hasn't risen significantly.
     

My own company is an "off chain solution" (I guess), but I never considered this to be what people consider "blockchain".

Indeed, the design process for Haypenny was, "let's make blockchain faster" and then that finally evolved into the entirely new exchange paradigm that is Haypenny's split/combine single-block approach without PKI and a fairly centralized infrastructure.

So sure, I guess blockchain will scale really well as long as you remove the blockchain part .

i agree with what you say that there is a hidden agenda surrounding the approval of this bitcoin etf. the sec and these securities certainly only want to make a profit from the bitcoin market without getting too involved in it.

in fact, from some of the information i read, they issued this bitcoin etf only based on approval from the sec without the need to directly invest in bitcoin, which is quite surprising. this means that their contribution to the bitcoin market is non-existent, that all they do is add speculation to the bitcoin market to make its price unstable and make it function as an investment asset only for many people.

I'm also a firm supporter of the idea of decentralization and it's true that if you don't own the keys then the coins you have on exchanges aren't yours. Those coins actually belong to exchanges and they can do anything with those coins without your consent. Things have been changed a lot in crypto market from the time of Satoshi, and that's why we should understand that such changes are helping Bitcoin to grow. I also feel that Bitcoin isn't as decentralized as it used to be and who knows in future we may have more centralized power on Bitcoin.

I know that ETF's aren't actual Bitcoin by any means but they are somehow helping Bitcoin to grow. You don't own a Bitcoin when you own an ETF but it's value will always be close to the value of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin goes up then the ETF holder will also make profits from that upward movement and if it goes down then ETF holder will also face losses. I think those ETF's are somehow win-win situation for every holder of Bitcoin. The investment companies behind those ETFs will spend a lot of money to advertise their ETFs and such advertisement will also indirectly promote Bitcoin to wide audience.

Wrong, do you think centralized exchanges and BlackRock don't have terms of service? every centralized entity always forbid some countries, they're not welcome for every people in this world.


I'm aware there's Binance.us, so people who live on there can use this site. But, what about the people who live on those three countries? they need to use other sites. Instead of making it complicated, we have decentralized exchange or No KYC P2P which people can freely trade without need to worry about where they come from and their KYC.

But without centralized exchanges and ETFs, would bitcoin be as popular and successful as it is today? It is true that centralized exchanges, ETFs will gradually make bitcoin more centralized, but on the other hand, it will make bitcoin more popular and accessible to everyone. I believe that any of us who are new to the market need the support of centralized exchanges. So it can be said that everything has its pros and cons, so we cannot criticize those who support centralized exchanges and ETFs. They also have their reasons when they support those things.

You are right, but only if people can see things this way, I was mad about everything but I have a thought about the human mind and I quit, since no one can control the mind of the people it's impossible to tell people what they should do with their Bitcoin.

I always wonder what would have happen to Bitcoin if all its adopters never use Centralized exchanges for once, if all adopters decentralization and only trade Bitcoin using Dexes and Peer to Peer I wonder if centralized exchanges will survive or become a thing today?

Now ETF is even trying to confuse the not so smart investors that Bitcoin is centralized, because this is what ETF is looking like to me, it will be foolish to go with the ETFs and leave behind the real decentralized digital currency, but anyway, since the world is full of foolish people they will surely go the route of the ETFs.

It's not everyone that deserves Bitcoin.

Bitcoin ETFs could mess with Bitcoin's whole vibe of being decentralized. People worry that as these ETFs get fancier, they might attract more rules and tie Bitcoin to the old-school financial system, risking its freewheeling independence. It's like, can Bitcoin stay true to its rebellious roots with all these big players getting involved? Tho some people think these ETFs could bring more people into the crypto game, making it more legit. But yeah, the debate rages on about how to keep the balance between going mainstream and staying true to Bitcoin's wild side.

I think that Bitcoin is about financial freedom, and financial freedom, like any other freedom, is about having a choice. Bitcoin gives us a choice, a way of being our own banks, of using a currency that nobody is issuing and controlling in a centralized way. But freedom means that people can also choose other things, they aren't forced to be pro-decentralization, pro-privacy, etc. Bitcoin ETFs, just like centralized exchanges and custodial wallets, will find their customers. It's just an option that will become available to some people. While Bitcoin, in its pure form, remains an option, I don't have a problem with people having other, more centralized options.

One the one hand: yes, ETFs are the opposite of what I'd want to use. But on the other hand: Bitcoin gives anyone the freedom to use it the way they want. If they want to risk fractional reserve Bitcoin, let them.

Many exchanges have lost their coins in the past. This will eventually happen to an ETF too.

I guess it's a bit of both.

There's another benefit to people keeping coins on exchanges or ETFs: the blockchain simply can't handle more on-chain transactions. Current estimates of the number of "Bitcoin owners" are several timse larger than the total number of funded Bitcoin addresses. That can't all happen on-chain, without massive increases in block size.

I can use Bitcoin right now to order dinner. Of course it's a currency.

On-chain solutions can't, because storing a quarter trillion VISA payments per year in a decentralized way is simply not viable. That would require massive data centers. But off-chain solutions have the potential to do this: the Lightning Network for instance doesn't need to store all transactions, each node only has to store the current state of it's own channels. Except for the problem of on-chain channel creation, this has the potential to scale very well.

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I may even consider using a Bitcoin ETF: unlike my own keys, an ETF comes with tax benefits for pension savings. But that would also mean I have to trust the ETF for decades, and I'm not ready to do that yet.

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Banks are just trying to remain relevant

No, I don't use it for all of my transactions.  I still use fiat.  While cash is still a thing, anyway.  But I avoid online banking/PayPal/GooglePay/ApplePay/etc, so Bitcoin is very useful for times when I need to send or receive funds over any distance.  And once CBDCs are in effect and cash is phased out, that's when I'll be switching to Bitcoin for the vast majority of my daily spending.  Because that's the point where freedom dies in fiat.  Once you understand the 'war on cash' and what it represents, you'll recognise the importance of what Bitcoin is.

We couldn't stop people who had been waiting for ETF approval for a long time and after the SEC approved it, it created a lot of enthusiasm in the media. Therefore as chairman of the SEC Gary Gensler feels challenged because on the other hand he has provided a gift. However the public excitement unwittingly provoked Gary Gensler to cast us. It would be nice if the ETF approval didn't have to be so welcome because as you say Gary Gensler could quickly come up with a new agenda. He has control over whether it is approved or not, the ETF euphoria is only  the first step and if this initial step is debated again by Gary Gensler then the market will automatically respond negatively. Because speculation out there is very sensitive  to news published by the government.

I have experienced similar concerns. Although they contradict Bitcoin's decentralization, Bitcoin ETFs arent the bad guys. Let me clarify. They help established financial institutions profit and concentrate control. They also allow traditional investors to try Bitcoin.

Think about it. Not everyone is tech-savvy or comfortable with private keys. For them, ETFs are familiar and controlled. Traditional funding can raise Bitcoin's profile and, ironically, increase acceptance.

I support the "Not your keys, not your coins" rule. We OGs value true decentralization. However, Bitcoin will draw diverse participants with different objectives as it grows. Staying informed and making decisions that reflect our Bitcoin values is crucial. Arent choices the core of decentralization?

Bitcoin ETF is not essentially bad. Because it brings in liquidity into the market as long as the ETF is a physically settled one. But it all depends on who is running this ETF. Companies like blackrock, has enough money to control the crypto market. Probably that's what we are seeing now. After the approval the market has gone down where blackrock were able to score a huge amount of Bitcoins from the market. So that shows the power that big companies hold.

Definitely an ETF is not serving the main purpose of a decentralized currency. But I am more worried about the manipulation that are going to come into the market.

I do not like ETF's, I would rather have the Bitcoin. But including this "traditional" market is definitely a large plus for Bitcoin, overall.

Bitcoin ETFs are for the traditional boomer I mean investor , so that they can "invest" into Bitcoin as well. This is going to boost the price of Bitcoin, as more institutional investors buy up Bitcoin so that they can later issue someone a piece of paper that says they legally own x amount of Bitcoins, which are still being held in the institutional investor's wallet (and therefore technically the owner is the real wallet holder, not the guy with the piece of worthless paper that says 'trust me').

doomad forgets to mention. these institutions with their sandboxes and subnetworks of middlemen only got them by sponsoring core devs to cludge the code and finance the spam just to make bitcoin annoying, just to promote that people should move over to their sandbox

doomad forgets to mention he adores the fee wars, he adores the congestion, he adores the cludge of code that allowed the locking of value to then play in sandboxes

doomad forgets to mention he adores trying to coax innocent people into using mixers to then tag them as suspicious when users then use bitcoin legitimate merchant services. which institutions then call out bitcoiners as suspicious and possibly criminals for using laundering services

doomads perception is if you dont like the sponsored roadmap, dont highlight the issues, dont call out the issues, dont request the issues get sorted, instead just admire bitcoin for what it is, shut up or go find another sandbox,network,payment system

he wants to pretend institutions have no influence by pretending people should go to sleep and not look for risks(be complacent), even though everything doomad adores is actually not helping bitcoins have open utility

as for his buzzword "censorship-resistance"
just a quick github search for "evict", "abandon", "reject", "purge", "disgard", "orphan" shows that bitcoin has rules to not accept every byte of data ever broadcast.
rules used to be more useful to keep the network clean. but now doomad loves how the rules have been relaxed 'softened' to allow more junk into the blockchain, and he doesnt want to have the junk stopped

So you're saying that unless you use Bitcoin for all of your transactions you aren't "free"? What does that even mean? And do you really live your life without using anything but crypto transactions? How does that work?

Whatever Bitcoin was originally intended for has actually become secondary. It's unfortunate. There are a number of reasons for it, but the point is that Bitcoin is free and everybody is free to do whatever they think is best with it. Bitcoin doesn't have dictatorial powers as to which specific purpose people can only use it with.

And I bet many of those who are preaching not your keys, not your coins are also not using Bitcoin as a currency themselves. I bet most of them are also focused not on Bitcoin's features as money but on its fiat price.

Anyway, the banks can indeed make money out of Bitcoin but they can never control Bitcoin.

Some of us don't particularly care if you get it or not.  If you feel as though there's no benefit in any of this to you, enjoy your other payment methods.  I'm happy with what I've got.

Oh come on. ARPANET didn't have billions of dollars surrounding it and was not a mainstream brand name like Bitcoin is, and that was before virtually every human on earth had a device connected to the Internet.

And exactly why would you adopt a technology that does the same one the existing one does but it's way slower and way more expensive?

I don't see it as a competition.  It's not just that they aren't in the same league, they're playing an entirely different game.  It's like the difference between owning a sportscar and being a professional racing driver.  They can own as many cars as they like, doesn't stop us from racing.  They don't know (or care) how to use the asset they're holding.



ARPANET was declared operational in the early 1970s.  It took a while before that started to look like the internet we know and use today.  From nothing to mass adoption can sometimes take decades.  What ETFs are now doing is loosely equivalent to when AOL tried to build a walled-garden and sell people a watered-down and limited version of the internet.  People soon realised they were missing out on some useful stuff, so that business model died.

You know what's also a really, really, really long time in technology? 12 years  . And billions of dollars and the eyes of the whole world. And yet today Bitcoin is even slower and even more expensive to transact in than it was when it started. And blockchain architecture means it will only get worse and worse.

I completely agree with you that Bitcoin and cryptos generally don't need to serve as a currency in order to be useful. But people shouldn't make it out to be something it's not.

The largest financial institutions now have the power to sell a wrapped bitcoin and will make money regardless of whether Bitcoin goes up or down.  They can use this revenue to market their wrapped Bitcoin to the masses.  Don't forget about the exchanges doing the same thing. The result will be that most people will buy these ETFs not understanding the first thing about Bitcoin all the while giving banks more power over their assets. At the same time these financial institutions will be acquiring actual Bitcoin to hold and hypothecate.

The net effect will be that large financial institutions will own an even larger percentage of Bitcoin giving them control over the transactions that take place.  This is not a peer-to-peer transaction and it is not  trustless.

How will the decentralized Bitcoin Eco system compete with the banks now??

Okay, this is just getting silly now.  Try to gain some perspective.  Banks aren't controlling anything around here.  They have no influence upon Bitcoin's network governance whatsoever.  They've just built themselves a little sandbox to play in where they watch from a distance and place some bets.  They have their own, entirely separate, rules to play by.  Rules which don't impact us.  ETFs are mainly a plaything for the wealthy.  What they do (or don't do) doesn't matter in the slightest to us.  

At no point can those institutional investors become a threat to censorship resistant transactions and all the other stuff we care about.  Just because a bunch of foolish speculators are making a big deal out of ETFs, doesn't mean you need to blow things out of all proportion as well.



"Never" is a long time in technology.  I wouldn't be so sure about that.  Also, I suspect the unnecessary fervour with which people wish to see "mass adoption" is largely another symptom of speculators' greed.  Bitcoin doesn't need mass adoption to serve a purpose.  If it gives financial autonomy and freedom to those who wish to use it, then it has already found its purpose.  There's no rush to reach the masses, who largely don't understand it yet anyway.  And I suspect they probably won't understand it until they've lost the "war on cash".  Once CBDCs are everywhere, people will gradually start to comprehend the real importance of all this.

Cryptos are not technically Ponzi schemes, they are pyramid schemes that reward investors who get in early at the expense of investors who get in later.

Pyramid schemes, in various forms, have been around for thousands of years. In every society there was money and investment, there was some sort of pyramid scheme available to investors.

So as a product, cryptos don't need to be a practical means of value transfer in order to serve a purpose to the human race.



I have over 30 years experience in ultra-high-scale mission critical systems. My initial take on blockchain, as a technology, is that it could never scale even remotely close to what would be necessary to provide a mainstream payment system. As in, it could never get to even one thousandth of the scale and efficiency necessary to handle even world-wide credit card payments, let alone usurp other forms of payment like cash.

But being the old tech guy that I am, I was willing to be proven wrong because I know I don't always have all of the answers. I've repeatedly asked the question, and thus far nobody has been able to tell me what blockchain is being used for right now, in the real world for anything besides cryptocurrencies.

All of this tells me that my initial take on the blockchain architecture is right: it won't scale. It won't even get within four orders of magnitude of what is necessary to be a real currency.

I created a system that does scale to the level necessary to take over worldwide payments, and it's a paradigm that is simpler and more private that blockchain. The paradigm is so efficient that it allows anybody to create a currency and start using it in a few minutes, and I can give away the service for free.

But as you might guess, it's not decentralized, and it's not blockchain. That's the hard tradeoff until they repeal the laws of physics.

Most people here have thrown in the towel.  Bitcoin is not now, and will never be a currency!!!!! 

Then what are you paying $42,000.00 US dollars for exactly?  A way for wealthy individuals and institutions to sucker the masses into a ponzi scheme. Run the price up so we FOMO in and them sell their shares and transfer billions of dollars of wealth from the dumb money to the insiders?

Why would you continue to support a ponzi scheme when you know that is what it is?

The other option is to fight for what Bitcoin was meant to be. 
 
If the core principles of Bitcoin are adhered to Bitcoin can give the people back control of their money and the entire political and banking system.
If you allow the banks to control Bitcoin then you are allowing the wealthy to run your world using the fiat monetary system they have created and control.

The fact is that Bitcoin has been almost nothing but a speculation instrument for the last 10 years of it's existence, and it will never be anything else.

Blockchain is a needlessly complex technical architecture that will never allow Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency to get even remotely close to scaling to the level necessary to rival other forms of payment. It's not even within 1000x the speed and price it needs to be to rival even credit card payments alone, and that's after 10+ years and billions of dollars of trying.

And 98% of crypto holders aren't going to care about any of this--they just want the price of Bitcoin to go up (in US dollars) so their investment does better, so they can convert it to US dollars at some point and buy stuff.

There's nothing "decentralized" about storing your private key in some app, which is sitting in some relational database at some start-up company like Binance or Coinbase, who follow all the government's KYC rules and connect your wallet to your entire life story.

Whatever the mythos was when Bitcoin was started over 10 years ago was, it's pretty much dead now.

The good news, however, is that cryptos have created something new and interesting: pure meme investments. There's nothing wrong with this, and indeed, investors have put billions of dollars behind these investments, so clearly there is a demand.

But it's time to get real about what cryptos really are...

The ledger is public but transactions are pseudo-anonymous. So you can see view the flow of coins from one address to the other, but would not know who is sending what. With certain practices, like not reusing addresses, not sending out of cold storage, using a mixer etc, you can increase the level of privacy.

These are the levels of privacy I am referring to.

I don't remember anyone in the Bitcoin community ever saying that Bitcoin ETFs are "good for Bitcoin".
Most of the Bitcoin supporters wanted  ETF approvals because they expected a big price pump, not because they thought that ETFs are good for Bitcoin. I think that ETFs are neutral towards Bitcoin. They aren't good, but they aren't bad, so there's no need to overthink this.
The discussion about ETFs helping mass BTC adoption or stopping mass BTC adoption will continue forever.
There was the same discussion about BTC futures trading and we saw that BTC futures trading didn't stop the BTC price to reach a big ATH back in 2021.
You can hate financial derivatives, but you can't stop the traders and investors from using them.

People will only see the short-term gain for themselves and not for the whole project. It's everyone for themselves now that bitcoin has hit mainstream and everyone and their mothers are wanting to get a piece of the action.

Huge financial institutions having the legal green light to meddle with bitcoin and crypto directly is something that has been wanted by the majority of the community since it was teased a few years ago. Now that it's here, I'm sure people will come to terms that it will not give in any unbelievable returns any time soon but rather make the space highly regulated that it will eventually turn into the playground for the rich and powerful and not your average Joes.

At the least though, bitcoin ETFs became somewhat a benchmark of bitcoin's legitimacy in the eyes of doubters and non-believers, but at this point do we really need that anyway?

Everything has pros and cons, many people celebrate the approval of bitcoin ETFs because bitcoin will get more attention from people and the demand for bitcoin will increase from there. But there's nothing wrong with many people being concerned that bitcoin will become more centralized with bitcoin ETFs, but again, everything has its pros and cons. You cannot ask for 100% perfection. Just as many people demand the highest level of privacy, they also want bitcoin to become a currency and be globally popular. Isn't that contradictory?

It is true that "Not your keys, not your bitcoins" and it is risky if you spent money and in return, you don't own the private key and don't own your bitcoins. It is actually not your bitcoins even you already spent money with a deal to purchase bitcoin.

It is risky practice to invest in Bitcoin through Bitcoin Spot ETFs but something to know. As a small investor, you won't be able to buy Bitcoin Spot ETF shares directly and will also have to use middleman companies. It increases the risk.

If people felt safe with custodial wallets, centralized exchanges, they can trust Bitcoin Spot ETFs even it's risky. There are many options and they are responsible for picking risky ones.

In another view, Bitcoin Spot ETFs will have to use money from investors to buy bitcoins before they can issue their Bitcoin Spot ETF shares. The point is new capital, that is big, will appear in Bitcoin market. Those companies can buy bitcoin from OTC market or Spot market but soon they will have to buy it directly on Spot market because available bitcoin on OTC market are not enough for their big capital and demand.

The vast majority of people I know also don't understand absolutely anything about bitcoin, we need to do the work of converting people to really understand bitcoin, it's a shame that the vast majority only come for greed in times of ATH.

Anyway, our generation is not yet ready for mass adoption, I believe that only our children and grandchildren will be able to understand bitcoin as they will be born into a world where it already exists.

Bitcoin failed as a currency because it can't process a lot of transactions per second and the precise is too volatile for economic planning. But instead Bitcoin thrived as an investment, and already on this forum most users are interested in its price growing rather than using it as a currency. The anti-fiat and anti-bank rhetoric is mostly just empty talk for hyping up the market.

I agree with it but it is really how it works, it is legal to do it.
Just like what happened in Gold when there was the first ETF. It is like you are owning a fake Bitcoin, not actual Bitcoin, you just had a paper or a data that is stored in the database that telling you own x amount of Bitcoin.

As everyone understands here, Bitcoin is a public ledger.  Privacy is not one of it's core tenants. As a matter of fact, one of the arguments we use to defend Bitcoin as a tool for criminals is that all transactions are recorded on a public ledger so it would be stupid for criminals to use it to commit a crime.

Bitcoin was created to be a currency that is decentralized and peer to peer with limited supply.  It is decentralized so that no one organization can create more of it.  In order for it to be decentralized it must be peer-to-peer.

Not one application created for bitcoin except Core is truly peer-to-peer.  In order for a transaction to be truly peer-to-peer both parties must be using their own node. If they are not then a third party node is in use and a third party is involved in the transaction. Satoshi made this very clear. That is why the node was designed to work on a standard PC.

ETFs are the ultimate third party.  Banks will custody it, KYC you and hypothecate Bitcoin just like they hypothecate other currencies.

 

Trust me, users here understand Bitcoin and are strict supporters of its privacy and decentralization. Just look up topics on freedom and privacy and you'll get so many instances of it.

We can't fight against ETFs and also understand that it is the only access some institutions have to Bitcoin.

As a second point, multiple posting on the forum is not allowed. Best to edit your new post into the first one.

If you want a decentralized currency that is peer-to-peer then how is that good for Bitcoin. It only servers to give banks more control of peoples money.

If you look at Bitcoin as an investment, which is what the banks want, then an increase in price will benefit Bitcoin holders.  Who holds the largest percentage of Bitcoin? Large institutions and wealthy individuals? A run up in price will make the rich richer and our greed will give them complete control of the one thing that could have transferred the wealth back to the people who create it.

The issue here is that individuals work and large institutions(banks) control the representation of that work(money).  The people who work should be paid with a currency that is controlled by them and can not be inflated(stolen/taxed) without their permission.

Don't lose sight of what Bitcoin was meant to do!!!!!

This forum is what I would consider to be the home of the Bitcoin core.  This should be the place where Bitcoin's core tenants are fought for.  But instead, Bitcoin is being sold down the river as fast here as it is in the general public.

Most people I talk to don't understand the basics of Bitcoin but people on this forum, as a general rule, should be fighting for Bitcoin.  

If Bitcoin is not a decentralized currency then what is it?

I don't buy ETF because I'm a normal person who doesn't report buys to the government, but if you're a large company, ETFs might be your only option to get Bitcoin exposure.

If you criticize ETFs, how are you going to stop them from buying? They're a market participant like many other people and have the right to trade like anybody else.
The more they suck from the market the less bitcoin there's left for the rest to trade which means supply squeeze- I'd say that's good for bitcoin holders.

alot of people fear the ETF and people(jamie dimon) lobbying regulators(sec) will want to now control the open spot market and peoples access to real natural bitcoin

much like how wheat was natural, was not patent-able, and was openly farmed, harvested and produced by family farms. until it was commoditised
GMO: "not your seed, not your wheat"

ill post this instead of retyping

Bitcoin was not intended to stop money printing or solve the broken centralized financial system. Fiat would always exist and be in use, Bitcoin gives you the option to not be part of that system.

I will opine that the more bitcoins we have in control of centralized agencies, the harder it will get to avoid using those services, making the cost of privacy go higher, maybe to criminal levels?

The increased visibility will only serve to benefit the banks controlling access to Bitcoin and making money on each transaction.

Bitcoin needs to be decentralized and peer-to-peer otherwise it does not serve its intended purpose.

The value of Bitcoin comes from the perception that it could be used as a currency or products and services being priced in Bitcoin.

The Banks are quietly and not so secretly putting controls in place so that it is not a threat to their control and they can profit from it like they do any other security.
 

I do realize that.

But sadly most people are unable to acquire bitcoin - too poor, too uninformed/disinformed and so on. And also sadly, even here, where some of us may know this or that, the vast majority is in for the money, not for the tech, not even for the freedom it was supposed to bring.

I think that Hal was one of the first ones realizing that Bitcoin can easily become a reserve currency instead of a currency for the mases.


So let's see:
* banks are evil - we know that
* ETFs give money to banks and wall street, but also make Bitcoin scarcer for future buyers - we expect that, but wait, this might also make us rich and also might stabilize the price. Interestingly this didn't concern you.
* ETFs will keep a huge amount of bitcoins under centralized storage, while some companies will buy IOUs for getting richer. Should I care about them, as long as I can buy actual Bitcoin and keep in my own wallet?!!

Of course the intention for bitcoin ETF is not on the bitcoin network itself, but for other reputable organizations to make use of bitcoin market price to make sell or estimate the rate, worth or value of their assets invested on commodities under a centralized institutions, that's just a simple idea behind the whole show, but to us as bitcoiners, we are seing it as an added advantage to help get more recognition, value bitcoin and also win the interest of as many to that were already against bitcoin adoption such as the government, so this actually increasing the applications of bitcoin under it's use case.

One of the reasons that bitcoin was created was to be an alternative to banks and the traditional financial system that only devalues fiat currency.

But what I see today are many people celebrating that bitcoin is being traded through the traditional market...

It's really contradictory, right? Are the fundamentals worthless to the majority?

This exactly the response that the banks are looking for.

The problem Bitcoin was intended to solve:

When a centralized authority can print money as needed it can tax its citizens without representation.

Bitcoin has a limited supply so that if it were adopted as a currency it could stop this practice.  If Bitcoin is not used as a currency then it is simply an investment.  This would be a sub optimal use of Bitcoin.  Now add total bank control of that investment opportunity and you have completely eliminated Bitcoin's intended purpose.

Banks have turned bitcoin into a profit making vehicle for banks and eliminated the intended benefit of Bitcoin for the users.

Bitcoin is not an investment vehicle.  If it is not a currency, what value does it have?

It takes a lot of energy to mine/create a bitcoin.  What is the underlying value?

Banks understand this and most people do not.  They have turned a potential threat to their control into a profit making opportunity and the people who it was meant to help don't realize it.

Recently SEC chairman Gary Gensler took a swipe at some people calling the ETF historic. He reminded them that the approval of these eleven spot ETFs is a win for centralisation which is a clear deviation from how Bitcoin was designed to function. This is an indication that they might have some hidden agenda behind this approval. After the fall of FTX, many people understood the importance of keeping your keys which led to massive transfer of funds to to non-custodial wallets. Nobody can stop these centralized investors from putting money into the Bitcoin space, so we just have to wait to see the long-run outcome of all the hype surrounding the ETF. But we will not stop announcing that not your keys, not your coins, however, people are free to choose between freedom and bondage.

A good and simple tool can always be used for its intended purpose and for other things too.

We will emphasize here "not your keys, not your coins".
Others will prefer going through Wall Street companies because that's how they know to invest into this. It's suboptimal, but it's not prohibited. It will be interesting to watch what happens when first of these will get a hack or something, but on the other hand, don't we already have a long history of exchange hacks and people keeping their coins at exchanges? So.. let's just stay real, OK?

Remember "Not your keys, not your coins"?  Bitcoin was intended as a decentralized digital currency.

Futures ETFs and spot ETFs are as far from Bitcoin's intended purpose as you can get and they serve to make banks more money while giving them more control.

Does anyone else see what is happening here?  The silence is deafening!