I better stop because I am getting quite a bit beyond whatever MSTR is doing or how it is being treated, yet we are getting more and more of a complicated web of BTC financial instruments, and surely ultimately the various financial instruments are getting their fundamental value from the power of BTC to be able to be held privately and to be transmitted without 3rd party intermediaries... and yeah, some of these BIGGER players are holding BTC on behalf of others, yet we likely realize that the rules of bitcoin does not really protect us if we choose to NOT hold our own keys. Maybe some of us small players holding 1 to 5 to 10 to 50 to 100 to 1000 BTC are going to be challenged in regards to our abilities to hold our own keys? and we might already realize that there are already various attempts at attacking our abilities to hold our own keys? surely newbies are going to continue to be tempted by the ease of NOT holding their own keys whether it is MSTR holding the keys or even through index funds too...and the many various financial product ways of getting bitcoin price exposure but not really holding our own keys unless we might be able to enter into products that will allow us to immediately transfer the BTC directly to our own custody.. which seems like a rare product, even though it would be a good one for people empowerment (and BTC empowerment) to have abilities to transfer our BTC price exposure into actual BTC upon very short notice.
Well, I believe that managing bitcoin with your private keys is always going to have an advantage over owning it derivatively.
Even though I agree that direct ownership is better than various kinds of third-party custodian situation or even ways that guys might purchase price exposure rather than actual bitcoin, it still likely takes a whole hell of a lot of time for anyone to wrap their heads around the differences or to appreciate the difference, since sometimes, just getting normies to do anything may well be a step in the right direction and even very difficult for them to actually follow through with so many times normies will become quite impressed with themselves just by proclaiming that they are an investor
(in bitcoin), even if they don't really know what they are investing into.
More than 20 years ago, when I got a job that offered a 401k, I considered that as long as I am investing at least 10% of my income into the 401k then I would be doing enough, and there were even limits regarding what I could invest and surely each employer is going to have different parameters regarding whether and how much they match, so since my employer matched the first 5%, then I would frequently advice my colleagues that they had to at least put in the maximum of the matching in order to get the employer's matching component, then after that the main benefit was merely that it was tax deferred and an already easy system to contribute into without too many hassles.. absent if reaching the max.
Frequently I hypothesize if I would have ever really been motivated to get into bitcoin or even to allocate even a small part into bitcoin during the period that I was still contributing into the 401k.. since it just gets so difficult to add more if you are already feeling like you are investing quite a lot and maybe even a person might have house payment (besides their 401k), so they likely figure that they already engaging in high payments that they consider to be "investments."
One of my fortunes to motivate me to both look into bitcoin and to resonate with bitcoin in late 2013 was that my then job with the 401k was ending, and sure I could have rolled that 401k into something else, yet I was then looking for something to supplement (or substitute) for the 401k for the next 10 years or perhaps a bit longer depending on whatever might happen with me, I figured that I had right around a 10 year or maybe a little longer investment timeline before i might want to start to need to draw upon the money.
So it makes a difference for anyone to figure out what investment options are available to them, and there were so many of my colleagues who either were not even contributing to their 401ks or they were way shy of their even making sure that they consistently got the 5% employer matching, and geez it seems that so many always still had financial problems even with a decently steady paying job, so I frequently considered myself to be way more disciplined from them since I was frequently investing 10% or more into that existing fund.
The easiest for folks is getting allocation to BTC within funds that they already have exposure (such as through their employer's 401k), and surely I know that there are a lot of folks who have work situations that are not offering 401ks, so it could be that in those situations, they could be motivated to set up their own plan using bitcoin, and perhaps direct ownership of bitcoin might make sense.
Another thing is that when we might believe it does not make a whole hell of a lot of difference if we hold the bitcoin directly or holding them on an exchange, so even if people can be convinced to get BTC price exposure and they don't have any easy ETF options, they might buy BTC through an exchange, and it could well take them a while before they are ready, willing and able to take the further learning and even responsibility level of moving those BTC into some kind of a secure self-custody - and even though so many of us regular bitcoiners try to proclaim that self-custody is not very difficult, if we really get down to the nitty gritty, we likely realize that there are quite a few self-custody options, and some are better than others, and if we really want to make the self-custody secure and also so that we don't end up locking ourselves (or our heirs) out of our own corn, then there are a variety of potentially complicated processes that we may well need to jump through and make sure that we have struck reasonable balances, even something as simple as making sure that our back up is not in the same exact spot as our device(s)... like a house burning down situation.
For sure it is not easy-peasy to self-custody.. and yeah even some of us question how Saylor/MSTR is custodying his coins/his company's coins and we also question how the ETF providers are custodying their coins.