Point of correction they don't own any Bitcoin
Just some shares in Grayscale.
Owning or buying an ETF doesn't mean a person own a Bitcoin.
https://www.coinjar.com/uk/learn/buy-bitcoin-vs-buy-bitcoin-etf

For more info on what I mean you can check the above.

This is a very important point. Too much news is coming out of companies "investing" in Bitcoin, not acquiring and owning.

No, owning a share in Grayscale’s mini trust doesn’t mean you actually own Bitcoin. You’re just investing in Bitcoin’s value. If you really own it, you’d have the key or at least the ability to withdraw it.

Here’s how it works with Grayscale: you send them fiat, they buy Bitcoin, and when you want to sell, they give you fiat back. So where’s the Bitcoin in that? As long as you don’t actually have it or hold ownership of it, you don’t own any Bitcoin.

Okay, both of your perspectives still make sense with different methods of buying and storing. Is there anything wrong with that? Of course not, although the ideal of owning bitcoin is when you withdraw it to a wallet and have full control with your own keys, whereas going through a third party means 50:50 you still have strong rights to claim ownership. There is no debate as long as the third party is bound by the rules and every time you withdraw bitcoin from Grayscale and it works then everything is considered legal.

I thought they actually bought Bitcoin and held it in their wallet, but after reading the quoted sentence they only own shares of an ETF issued by Grayscale. That's not Bitcoin at all - it's just an ETF product - so more accurately they are just a University that invests in ETFs. You should be able to distinguish between ETFs and Bitcoin, even though ETFs represent Bitcoin, they are not Bitcoin. Never confuse ETFs with Bitcoin.

When we invest in bitcoin through Grayscale or another ETF like Blackrock, it means we are investing in bitcoin and we are bitcoin investors but we do not have full control over our bitcoin. So in this case Emory is an investor in bitcoin and they are the first school to invest in bitcoin.


We don't need to be too strict when we say that only people who own bitcoin and have full control over it by storing it in a non-custodial wallet are bitcoin investors, and people who invest in bitcoin through ETFs or store bitcoin using third-party services are not investors. They are all bitcoin investors and all own bitcoins, but the difference is whether they have full control/not full control over their bitcoins.

They indirectly investing in Bitcoin if someone wants to push this as an article related to Bitcoin. I think OP just want to do a clickbait since it's a catchy headline and we always want to see whoever invests in Bitcoin. Whether they're big, small, a government, a bank, etc. and now, with this headline as a university. But, it's disappointing that it's certainly that they aren't really invested in Bitcoin. Anyway, they're a university and they'll choose to invest to something they know more or has an idea of what they're getting in. That's a lot of shares though.

I'm not comfortable saying that since it can mislead people to believe they own Bitcoin somehow. I think this is similar to how people invest in gold ETF, nearly all of them don't assume that they can cash that out and bring their gold back home because they don't really buy one. At the very least that's my experience with traditional finance in my area. Not to mention buying Bitcoin is way easier compared to buying stock or gold, etc. I don't know, if somebody likes Bitcoin and understands the principle behind it I don't think not fully owning them is a good idea. Just 2 my cents.

I get what you mean but if we take that harsh stance and discourage loved ones from investing in bitcoin or advise people not to invest in bitcoin if they don't store bitcoin themselves. Do you think more people will invest in bitcoin and will bitcoin become as popular as it is today? I bet if there were no bitcoin ETFs, we wouldn't have as many people interested and invested in bitcoin as we do today.

As you can see, the amount of money flowing into the market through ETFs is huge, and even the amount of bitcoins bought by ETFs exceeds the amount of BTC mined every day. That shows that the demand for bitcoin is huge but most people do not want to invest in it directly but want to invest through ETFs because it makes them feel safer in their mind.
We can't expect everyone to be like us and confident enough to store their own bitcoins. By the way, I don't think buying bitcoin and storing bitcoin will be easier than gold or stocks, this is the bias of bitcoin investors.
Put yourself in the shoes of people who have never invested in bitcoin and don't even have basic knowledge of technology, they even have difficulty using the internet, you will see their answer is completely opposite to yours. And unfortunately, such people still make up the majority of the world's population.

Sometimes, if you try to think about how the whole Decentralisation protocol of bitcoin is something that's against what the government wants, it can seem to be a little messy. And that's because if the government literally hates bitcoin why do they seem to hodl it secretly. Seeing this made me think of how the US government literally gave bitcoin a pull back during the period of the HBO drama by Making news of them attempting to move some coins.

Firms like these and universities actually have the opportunity to invest in bitcoin mainly if the government wants them to. The idea is bitcoin is the biggest and top crypto currency in the whole ecosystem. It's no big news that the world is gradually taking a digital turn already meaning bitcoin will become more important as time goes by.