Topic: ETF Will Kill Bitcoin For Good” Investors Express Skepticism (Read 481 times)

I absolutely agree. With ETFs, it's not going to really benefit day to day bitcoin users at all. The thing is that these ETFs are attempting to target whale investors as well as institutions who want to invest in bitcoin, without having to hold bitcoin themselves.

The fact that someone who is investing in an ETF is not able to hold any bitcoins, or anything that is backed by bitcoin sounds like an extremely dangerous idea. It can obviously start manipulation of the market as well even though I do think that's less of a concern with bitcoin as you mentioned due to the more liquid nature of actual bitcoins, compared to chunky gold/silver pieces that needs to be melted into bars.

But all of this means that ETFs shouldn't be hyped up like it is being right now. It defeats the purpose of a decentralized crypto in the first place, as a store of value. With the wbtc created by Bitgo, it defeats the purpose of a decentralized exchange as the funds need to go through a centralized checkpoint before it can be converted from BTC to wBTC. Both of these instruments aren't something that I personally would appreciate or use at any stage, even if ETFs do get approved.

@pooya87. The when can I become rich selling bitcoin type of attitude harmonizes with the description of bitcoin's function as a store of value for wealth. Would you say that the people's willingness to invest im bitcoin does not add any value to it?

Also, holding bitcoin as an investment has already occurred years before the ETF's proposal. How do you reckon does it give freedom if not by selling fiat for holding bitcoin?

it is not the ETF that is doing that, it is people!
the mentality of people is changing. over the years they have gone from "bitcoin is freedom from banks and government" to "when can i become rich selling bitcoin". that is why most people are excited about ETF. and sadly most of them don't even know what ETF is.

I feel bitcoins etf is a good idea as these institutions are buying physical bitcoins, and giving their value based on the prices of bitcoins. Also they'll be under direct supervision of governments which will make them much more secured, and even insured from hacks, which the exchanges are prone to. I believe the key to a bull run is adoption and money pouring in bitcoins, and bitcoins etf can tap on the middle class people income which shall trigger another bull run.

ETF gold is not that different from ETF bitcoin if you think about it. Sure, the most obvious reason for an ETF for gold to exist is the fact that storing gold is cumbersome, specially for big multi millionaire investors.

But now think about it: With an ETF for bitcoin, people that want exposure to bitcoin but don't want to learn and stress about securing it themselves would use the ETF to delegate the task.

Actually it's exactly the same. With both gold and bitcoin the point is to own and secure it yourself, but not everyone thinks the same. Any decent ETF will be backed by the underlying so fractional reserve is not possible. Actually there's higher risk of that with gold than BTC which is strictly limited in amount and cryptographically secured at all times. With gold supply is unknown.

The conclusion is:

1) We cannot avoid governments releasing ETF's
2) If the ETF is decent, it will be bitcoin backed, which means super bullish

All the ETF really does is give some investors the illusion that they are putting there money into bitcoin when they are in fact not this does take away a lot of the investment that would actually be in bitcoin.
I don't agree with what his says keeping the price down forever and all this nonsense as long as it is still possible for people to trade bitcoin freely then the people who know to actually hold there keys will bring the price up regardless of a ETF.

I do not see the difference between gold as an investment, bluechip stocks as an investment and bitcoin as an investment. All 3 each have their own market where their prices can go up and down depending on the market cycle.

Also, can you explain how the ETF removes bitcoin's currency aspect?

It's very similar, but that also applies to plenty of other assets after a bull run. If you look at various tech stocks for example, and then mainly their activity during and after the dot com bubble, you'll see how similar the charts look.

People keep focusing on the SEC for an ETF approval, but with how the demand for Bitcoin is coming mainly from Asia, and how the market in general there is further in development than the western market, there are chances that we'll be seeing an Asian ETF well before we finally see the SEC make up its mind. People need to figure out that there is more in the world than just the US.

Bakkt is great tool to measure institutional interest in the underlying asset, so let's wait for their market to go live first. If the demand is there, they'll bite. If there is little to no demand we'll know as well.

That's where I think the comparisons to gold are coming from. People are looking for any reason to justify a rise in price. If they looked a little further, they'd see that plenty of assets declined in price when their first ETF was launched. Gold is a cherry-picked example.

It really all depends on whether Bitcoin is in a bull market when it gets launched. No bull market to be seen here....

PEEP

no don't care

Such is the same with near every development. People's view of what will happen is easily swayed by what they wish to happen. That being said, I do believe ETFs will be a positive thing, they're just one more piece of the puzzle. Manipulation happens anyway and the whales and financial industries will get their hands on bitcoin if they want to. We may as well allow bitcoin to reach a greater audience and exposure in the process.

one interesting thing that i have noticed about those who speculate a rise of bitcoin because of ETF and are seemingly so excited about it is that they are all saying it out of emotions not out of speculation. in other words majority of them want the price rise and since it doesn't, they think ETF is the solution for that so they ignore everything else and only focus on the possible positive side of it alone.

"Buy the dip" is what that chart is telling me.

With or without an ETF, Bitcoin will be priced in six digits by 2020 - 2021 because of simple economics. Less supply, more demand, and the honey badger don't care.

Agree that commentators who say ETFs are the catalyst for institutional investment and, therefore, Bitcoin price increases in orders of magnitude, are all on the same misguided bandwagon who have completely ignored/overlooked the very principle of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer currency that proposed for the first time ever, money that we could exert our sole control over.

It's incredible how people still prefer having someone(s) else to take care of their money when clearly, no state, bank, or custodian has ever been infallible.

I disagree that this will kill Bitcoin, though. It'll kill the investors in those instruments, eventually, but they're all on that bandwagon.

Japan is like the iconic country that actually sees bitcoin as a currency (aka a legal way of payment as they put it). and i am not talking about governments and what they see in bitcoin, but instead about what bitcoin really is.
you can't use that chart because bitcoin and gold have nothing in common to begin with and also because the scale of that chart is manipulated. bitcoin's chart is for less than 10 years while gold is for more than 50! besides bitcoin isn't rising because of some ETF, but it is rising because it is a global decentralized payment system that nobody can censor.


the problem with seeing bitcoin as an investment not a currency is that it becomes worthless if you do that! in other words if you remove the currency aspect then you are left with some numbers in a database which you are trading virtually.
when you think about ETF and gold you can clearly see the benefit of it. because without things such as ETF if you wanted to buy gold as an investment you had to also dedicate a space in your garage for storing this gold! now with ETF you are buying gold without needing to store it. but it is not the same with bitcoin! you can store $0.01 or $100 million on a piece of paper alike. so you don't need ETF and that can only bring the manipulation part of it in the market instead. not to mention that many of the proposals don't even have to be backed by actual bitcoins!

gold with its ETFS and derivatives is a big, but insane market, with recently more than 380 "paper" ounces for one metal ounce.

does not know if this is sustainable on the long term.

however short term, it allows to control tightly the price of underlying asset.

But I reckon bitcoin is almost not treated as a currency but more as an investment in a digital gold type of asset. Agreed that it might bring more manipulation but it is already manipulated nevertheless.

ETFs and other derivatives brought gold to be a $7 trillion market, why do you reckon will it not bring the same to bitcoin?

For a lot of people, what seems to matter is whether an instrument is "backed" by an underlying asset, vs. debt or equity notes or fractional reserve based notes. Even though commodity backing is trust-based, the peg will generally function correctly as long as traders who want to take physical delivery can do so. This is how the gold market works. It's also how Tether works. It leaves room for manipulation via leverage. For example, shorting with non-BTC collateral. Or also things like asset commingling, which can dilute supply if investors begin treating physically delivered futures as equivalent to real bitcoins.

Its being a while since I read about controversy surrounding this ETF of a thing and the house is surely divided along two sides. While some are of the opinion that the best thing that could hapen to crypto especially bitcoin is thee approval of ETFs now I am reading here that the worst thing that we could hope for is the ETFs. While both sides could be right in their respective arguments, I am also of the opinion that its not something that can be stopped because eventually, the determinant of whether its going to either bring the woe to the market or not depends on SEC.

But what we can do is to stop further support to it which comes in the minute form such as creating threads about it, reporting news about it, announcing the filing or rejection about it or even participating in polls about ETF.

I think most people don't consider bitcoin a currency, but some sort of asset, I think in japan is seen as a property. The point is, governments are going whatever they want about it.

If it's of any use, there is this chart comparative with bitcoin and gold when it introduced the ETF, it seems similar:




The ETF should be bullish because it's supposedly bitcoin settled, so they must buy BTC to meet contract obligations, whereas the futures contracts aren't backed by BTC so it was bearish.