With Bitcoin, Citibank would issue DARs which its clients will be able to purchase equipped with insurance, protection, transaction monitoring, and other systems that are required by the financial regulators of the US. By investing in DARs, institutions will be able to hold instruments that represent the value of Bitcoin.
Look at this looking good. If it's happen then sure it will be benefit to crypto currency market. Good move and hope for best.
benefit, how? bitcoin is peer-to-peer. there shouldn't be any need for custodians to hold it on behalf of clients, and for banks to issue notes against it. that's what this is.
don't get me wrong. this stuff is inevitable. but it's not
good. a deposit receipt is a piece of paper. it's not BTC. the benefits of bitcoin are lost when you reintroduce trust to peoples' finances like this.
This seems to be aimed at institutions. Most people in institutions are rather old and not so technologically able to keep coins safe. There will always be a market for custodians to held the coins for them.
If they screw up (in this case Citiybank) then holders will have someone to blame and get their money back, probably with a fee on Citybank because big players can force favorable rules. So the custodian gets paid a decent amount an they have an incentive to do well because otherwise they are fucked.
I don't see anything wrong with this. Let people choose to hold their own coins or pay someone else to do the task for them. As you said the point of bitcoin is to hold it yourself but as you also said we can not avoid this and we shouldn't even bother.