Opinion: Nic Puckrin, CEO of Coin Bureau
The large-scale decentralization experiments that began with the creation of Bitcoin are gradually tamed. It was built in the very architecture that was built to be collared, tagged, resurfaced and routed.
The Wall Street rapper and government rulebook transforms the peer-to-peer (P2P) currency network into a product line. That red female speed should make those who still care about their original spirits feel uneasy and should not be ignored anymore.
For years, the facility has laughed at Bitcoin… Now it lists it.
The shift is purely for economic benefits. Cypherpunk Money (and its ETHO) has been converted into the world’s largest manager pricing machine, including Spot Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFS) and other traditional finance (Tradfi) pipelines.
Consider US Bitcoin ETFs. They absorbed about $9 billion and proved that passive rappers (not wallets) can drive growth. In the short term it looks like a validation, but in reality it is more closely similar in the long term.
Wrappers, gatekeepers, chokepoints
Buying a share of the trust does not acquire the assets of the carrier. Shareholders do not hold any keys and therefore do not hold any claims. These claims are served by a set of small custodians and market makers, where operational options become effectively policy for millions of investors.
After that, when a single company is at the heart of most of the sector’s spot ETF custody, the network’s practical censorship resistance is functionally outsourced to one compliance program. Look to centralized exchanges (CEXS) like Coinbase. Coinbase functions as a custodian for over 80% of Crypto ETF publishers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g35ewcewum
This is an open and centralized way in which price discoveries move from self-supporting markets to closed auctions. In the US, Spot-Bitcoin ETFS has now led a large number of spot trading on active days.
The impact of governance moves from users to lawyers through a prospectus, but the risk moves from many small operational domains (such as wallets and nodes) to fewer larger domains.
It doesn’t start with motivation or ominous intentions, but only convenience mathematics, as it gets worse over time. Consider Europe, where the crypto assets (MICA) regulated market was clearly sold. And in many ways – but Stablecoin Regime exposes the troubling truth about cross-border reversibility and regulatory arbitration.
Identifiably brand tokens can cross jurisdictions with uneven reserve standards, and stories that preach “safety” can hide new, intensive reliance on policymakers to correct gaps after the scale arrives.
Related: The strategy adds $18 million to the 5th anniversary of the BTC strategy
ETF defenders argue that while this is how all asset classes mature, Bitcoin is in its own class. This is a payment network with financial characteristics.
It’s not just a line item, but the more demands are mediated through products that explicitly prevent independence, the more Bitcoin stops focus checking and instead becomes its appendix. This trend challenges Bitcoin’s independent roots, and “up in numbers” never becomes enough trade to “lose rights.”
Make the ETF a bridge rather than a cage
Don’t be afraid. A better pass is available.
Imagine the same billions of dollars rushing to the rapper. This time only combined with the independent norm. If the broker is on-ramping directly into the wallet, the agency holds native assets, publishes detailed absorption certificates (PORs), and the plan administrator issues a multi-sig distribution by default.
That’s not a big idea. What this accomplishes is that maturity, consistent with the original spirit of Bitcoin, scales without the need to surrender.
Currently, Bitcoin is translated for Wall Street in a way that maximizes returns, while minimizing friction with outdated gatekeepers that are no longer needed.
When a single ETF complex rules the flow, a single custodian holds all the keys, a single regulator rewrites the term mid-cycle, and the dispersing fades to dust. What remains in those ashes is a service-level agreement that effectively makes Bitcoin and everything it has been created to achieve domestically.
Mandate is simple. Treat ETFs as bridges rather than cages. Flows should only be celebrated with headlines and word of mouth if they fund infrastructure that expands P2P liquidity and independence. Disclosures that quantify the risk of custody concentration and censorship are given by default.
The current job is to slip through the Tradfi’s domestication leash, carefully (and permanently) freeing Bitcoin from the inner concentration of the very institutions that are about to overrun. It’s time to really decentralize Bitcoin.
Opinion: Nic Puckrin, CEO of Coin Bureau.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not intended to be considered legal or investment advice, and should not be done. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or express Cointregraph’s views and opinions.