Bitcoin EFTs are bad for Bitcoin as a decentralized digital currency.

[dothebeats]

but to us as bitcoiners, we are seing it as an added advantage to help get more recognition

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.
 

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?

[davis196]

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!

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.

[Upgrade00]

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.

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.

[legiteum]

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!

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...

[we-btc]

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.

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.

[legiteum]

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

[DooMAD]

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.

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.

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.

"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.

[we-btc]

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.

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??

[legiteum]

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.

"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.

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.

[DooMAD]

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

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.

You know what's also a really, really, really long time in technology? 12 years  

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.

[legiteum]

You know what's also a really, really, really long time in technology? 12 years  

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.

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?

[DooMAD]

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?

<insert quote about not being able to put a price on freedom here>

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.

[Darker45]

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.

[legiteum]

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?

<insert quote about not being able to put a price on freedom here>

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.

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?

[franky1]

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

[goldkingcoiner]

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!

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').

[avikz]

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!

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.

[Blitzboy]

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?

[naira]

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!

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.

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.

[DooMAD]

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?

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.