Very interesting to see that most of this companies are using Coinbase exchange as their custodian, except VanEck using Gemini exchange and only Fidelity is using self-custody.
This tells you we still have long road ahead of us until people realize importance of self-custody and holding your own keys.
Shut down, compromise or hack Coinbase and most of this ETF's are gone.
If Coinbase gets hacked, that's probably the only time that they'll be doing something about self-custody, it's actually a smart thing for most of them to use Coinbase though, wouldn't that mean that they're going to be selling their bitcoins much faster than Fidelity since they're the ones that are using self-custody? Or there's something in the works that's making all of this still work the same for all of them to their favor, you know like cash first and then get the bitcoins later because there's delay something like that. I believe that it's not a long road anymore though, as adoption gets more widespread, I think that it gets more people to be aware that we should consider storing bitcoins for ourselves and the information availability and delivery is much faster than ever so I believe that it's slowly going up from here when it comes to self-custody of your crypto.
For me, this is the biggest challenge right now. How do these companies protect their Bitcoins, or me, there's nothing wrong about using another third-party company for their Bitcoin because it's not their field to protect Bitcoins so for me, it's better than doing self custody, these ETF companies must only focus on what they are doing.
I don't believe Coinbase has ever even been hacked. At least I don't ever remember hearing about a Coinbase hack. Coinbase customers have been hacked of course but I don't think the exchange itself has been hacked. While probably every single other exchange has been hacked at some point or even multiple times.
And I'm sure their institutional custody service has plenty more safeguards than their consumer services. I would think the bitcoin being held in Coinbase for these ETFs is quite safe. Of course its always a small worry, but since institutions need an actual custody plan (unlike individuals who can just hold their private keys themselves) I think Coinbase is probably the safest option for them, which is likely why most of them chose Coinbase.
And as for the original comment, I think a lot of Bitcoiners don't understand that most people want convenience, and don't want to have to worry about key management. Especially for people who are buying an ETF which means they are ONLY using Bitcoin as an investment and will never be using that Bitcoin as a currency. The future ecosystem of Bitcoin is going to be a mix of self-banking bitcoiners who control their own money, people trusting institutions to custody their bitcoin just like the use banks for fiat, and just owning bitcoin purely as an investment vehicle through ETFs. While purists may say only the first option is acceptable, and certainly that is the best advice, if you want Bitcoin to be adopted globally you have to accept that there will eventually likely be billions of people in the second two options (along with hopefully billions of people in the first option as well).