I think the securitization of Bitcoin is bad news all around. It doesn't eliminate the purpose of Bitcoin, but it distracts from it. The protocol/network keeps chugging along no matter what. You won't see me treating ETF shares as sound money. It's paper based on trust.

But the problem is that society bows so heavily to authority. People will trust (and some Bitcoin folks around here already do trust) that "paper backing" is as good as real bitcoins. But this is inevitable. It's really not much different than counterfeiting coins in the traditional sense. Most people simply trust legal face value.

Re: the currency vs. investment dilemma: I think Bitcoin was created to be sound money. Money is only an investment insofar as Gresham's law ("bad money drives out good"). As long as our economies are dominated by freely printed and debased currencies, people will invest in BTC. There's no way around that.

So I guess we should expect these slimy derivative products to come to market as well. All we can do is preach the difference between real BTC and paper BTC.