I never understood what's the advantage of buying shares in a trust over buying the underlying commodity itself.
Well i'm just a private individual not a VC though.
I'm also just a private individual. That's why I don't have a massive, impenetrable vault in my basement for storing my gold, instead I just buy gold ETFs. Similarly, although I have the technical experience to safely store my bitcoins, most people do not. These people will certainly not buy actual bitcoins, but they may be willing to invest in a bitcoin ETF where they don't have to worry about that. That's the advantage.