NeuroticFish, you have already read that there are differences between Bakkt which is offers futures contracts, and possible
BTC ETF where investor can buy shares in fund, and that shares are backed with (in case of physically supported ETF) real
BTC.
A future is a contract between two parties to exchange something (a commodity, foreign currency, stock, you just name it) now for delivery and settlement at a pre-determined future date.
It is pointless to make the trite textbook example you may find in every primer (Mr X, who produces corn at his farm, wishes to ensure a certain price for harvest and therefore enters into a futures sale ….): in a future you fix a price now for a specific day in the future, thus eliminating the risk of fluctuations in price.
Clearly, the two parties to the futures contract have opposed views of how the market will move, or - for physical delivery futures only - they just have matching schedules when it comes to sale/purchase and delivery.
Due to its deferred settlement, a future does not request cash - apart from the guarantee margin - to be paid up front.
An ETF is an Exchange Traded Fund, a jumbo portfolio that replicates some asset (index ETF have been first comers, followed by gold, et cetera). The purchaser of shares in an ETF just adds its money to the existing pool with a view to purchase that asset albeit in a mediated form.
Usually ETFs have catered for people wishing to purchase assets whose minimum unit was above their wallets or above their diversification capabilities. That was the case for SPDR S&P ETFs, for instance, the S&P 500 being quite a costly one to replicate on your own.
Due to their standardised nature, ETFs may be bought by retail-retail investors with even a few hundred Dollars/equivalents.
The difference, then, is merely technical: with both you get exposure to the same risk (be it bitcoin or whatever).
Most people agree that ETF will increase the price of
BTC, but also that it all depends on the investors. It is only an opportunity that will be offered to them, the question is whether they will accept it. Although some say the SEC will never approve such ETF, it will probably still happen in the next few years, of course, if interest continues to exist as it exists today.
You can read what theymos&Andreas Antonopolous thinks about this topic :
Agreed, an ETF will almost certainly turn into a disaster at some point. The coins will be stolen, forks will be handled controversially, there will be issues with fungibility (eg. someone will "trace stolen coins" to the ETF's stash), the world will freak out when a bunch of retirees lose their life savings after doing the equivalent of buying BTC at $20k, etc. etc. It'll also get the sort of people who love regulation more into BTC, which is never good.
But investors want it, so it'll probably happen eventually. In particular, I totally condemn trying to get regulators to interfere in the free market more than they already do by blocking any ETF. (When the SEC was last looking into this, I had actually written a long document that I was going to send to them in order to comment on many technical issues with their proposed Bitcoin ETF regulation, but I decided not to send it because I don't want to have even the slightest hand in regulations.)
An ETF probably will increase the price a lot (until the ETF suffers its near-inevitable catastrophe), which has some pros and cons.
Note that an ETF can't affect Bitcoin itself, just the ETF investors and the market. There is no voting of any sort in Bitcoin, so it's not as if holding a lot of BTC gives you any power over Bitcoin, for example. I do agree with Andreas that the creation of a "corpo-Bitcoin" seems probable, perhaps after the ETF loses a ton of BTC and wants to undo it.