As previously reported by Bitcoin News, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has just rejected at least eight proposals for Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), but there is one investor who doesn’t see this as a bad thing.
In a recently released video, Bitcoin advocate and tech entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos sees Bitcoin ETFs as both an inevitable and potentially destabilizing influence on the cryptocurrency market when they finally get approval.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a Greek-British bitcoin advocate. He is a host on the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast and a teaching fellow for the M.Sc. Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia. His concerns are best illustrated by this comment made on the video.
“ETFs fundamentally violate the underlying principle of peer-to-peer money, where each user is not operating through a custodian, but has direct control of their money because they have direct control of their keys.”
Antonopoulos seemingly examines ETFs differently from the majority of market investors who see approval as a kickstart to a sluggish year which will bring in institutional investors and revitalise Bitcoin. His view is that the market will be manipulated by major market makers as seen in commodity markets, and the investors will lose the right to be heard, arguing:
“We already saw that level of influence during the August 1st fork, user activated software forks, Bitcoin Cash, the scaling debate… Large custodial exchanges had a very strong voice in the ecosystem. They were able to decide if they were going to support or not on behalf of 10 million customers… an ETF will do that and it will do that on an even bigger scale”
Another issue that concerns Antonopoulos is privacy and transparency, suggesting that an ETF may react to regulatory pressure and refuse to adopt privacy measures and create another corporate Bitcoin market. This is a similar view to that held by former Wall Street exec Caitlin Long, who sees a corporate Bitcoin through Wall Street’s entrance into the crypto arena bringing the potential of bad practice to the industry.
Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin Tweeted out his critique of those focusing too much on ETF approval, pointing out the accessibility of purchasing cryptocurrency should be focused on to promote ”actual adoption.”
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