Invest or don't invest, it is not important. The more important thing is you don't own any bitcoin or fraction of bitcoin by buying Bitcoin ETF shares.

You can consider yourself as whoever, it's not important, but if you actually own bitcoin (by owning Bitcoin private key), you are good and only need to do remaining steps rightly like how to backup your wallet, and recover it with backups.

You can not trust any company, anyone to keep Bitcoin private keys and stores bitcoins for you. You must do it by yourself, be your self custodian, and have your own bitcoin bank.

It is not a bad decision, and it is better than not buying it that's for sure.

Would i do it? No, that is because i prefer to hold my BTC in my self custodial wallet and i also spend a few BTC sometimes, so i would rather buy BTC than buying shares of a BTC etf. Each to their own, because at the end of the day we would individually choose what works for us.

I'm not sure if an account called 'BTCETFInvesto' that started this thread is somehow trying to promote ETFs.


This would be ideal for someone who has already purchased shares or ETFs and finds bitcoin complicated. But over time, nothing is safer than managing bitcoins with your private keys.

But as Z-tight said, this is at least better than not buying and many times better than many people still being hostile and distrustful of bitcoin, so far.

In my opinion, if OP is new then this is not a bad start and there is nothing to criticize him about. Newbies need more time to learn about bitcoin and once they understand enough, they can convert their ETF into real bitcoin at any time. This is not a big or serious issue and we do not need to be too harsh on those who are new to bitcoin but have already believed and decided to invest in it.

As a bitcoin investor, I do not encourage us to invest and store bitcoin through a third party because that goes against its original criteria. But I have to admit that not everyone knows how to use non-custodial wallets, DEXs...so for those who don't have basic knowledge of technology or are not too confident in their ability to hold it themselves. Buying bitcoin shares through ETFs is a good solution.

I see many people against investing through ETFs but we are not in their shoes and we are not like them. We should not impose our thoughts on them.

My advice is to ignore any so called experts and influencers. They don't know anything. Simply by the power of chance someone ends up being correct when there are thousands of different predictions. It is better to use your head and think about these things. There is only 1 thing in the entire existence of humanity that has a fixed supply, it is Bitcoin. Everything else is fake or diluting itself like stuff with collectibles. In an always inflating word where the money printer almost never stops its future looks bright.

You just repeated what I wrote in the first response..

It comes town to whatever you're most comfortable with.

You own similar financial instruments. You said it yourself that you have money with multiple companies, so it looks like you were asking a rhetorical question. Is an ETF a good way to invest in bitcoin? In your case it certainly is because you trust companies that issue shares, you used to own other financial products, you're new to self custody, you are probably an older guy, able to invest a lot of money but scared of being hacked or losing funds by making stupid mistakes.

For me it's a bad idea, but I used to hold bitcoin back when there were no relatively safe custodial solutions. Right now you can get an insured company with a trillion $ in assets to hold your BTC so, why not?

That's a fair question! I'll attempt to explain why...

I'm totally new to Bitcoin and I've been trying to soak up knowledge from A to Z. As much as Bitcoin was new to me and took me days and days of researching and digging to learn a little about mining and halving and hashing and blockchains and electricity usage and cooling and on and on - then things started making more sense and the puzzle pieces started fitting. Then I turned my attention to how me investing in Bitcoin could be promising for me. That led to learning a little about wallets, hot storage, cold storage, etc. and how a lot of people have lost their passwords or private keys or their computer harddrive, etc. Then I learned about crypto holding firms and exchanges like Mt. Gox that got hacked and people lost the Bitcoin, etc. etc. To be honest, that made me not want to be the custodian of my BTC or deal with a holding firm that could be hacked - so I started looking for a way to invest in Bitcoin but have a trusted financial institution manage the custodian of it for me.

I have accounts with three brokerages (Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo) and two large banks (Wells Fargo and Capital One) and a global investment management company (Vanguard). I feel comfortable with all of them protecting my investments. So, I started digging around and learned that Fidelity and Blackrock, and a couple others, had Bitcoin exchange-traded- funds - so I chose Fidelity's FBTC EFT and as you might have guessed I have already - even with my meager Bitcoin education - taken a pretty sizable position in FBTC using my Fidelity brokerage account. And as you might can tell, I'm really excited about my Bitcoin investment even with it being via an ETF instead of in a wallet...    

The intent of my thread question was to learn what others think of someone new to Bitcoin (like me) investing in Bitcoin by buying shares of a Bitcoin ETF instead of buying BTC directly...
              

Personally, I don't consider buying shares in BTC ETF as a way to invest in Bitcoin. I congratulate you for finally deciding to invest in Bitcoin, but I can't congratulate you on your decision to invest in an ETF because I don't see it as any different from investing in banks.

However, if you're the type who doesn't like the hassle of learning the most basic security rules and doesn't care whether you actually own your assets, that's your decision, and you bear responsibility for your choice.