Should We Worry About Institutions and Intermediaries Holding Bitcoin? Yes

bitcoin is a cultural movement. bitcoin is for people. bitcoin is about principles.

…or at least, this is the proposition that CoinShares Chief Strategy Officer, Meltem Demirors, put forward in a recent Twitter thread. In it she poses the question, “how do we allow for more [Bitcoin] participation through intermediaries without losing the message?”

Not Your Keys, Not Your Bitcoin

Demirors points out the dichotomy between the bitcoin community’s ideals and the reality of much of the industry.

As a community, we value qualities like choice and access, self-sovereignty, privacy and consent, and we seek to remove rent-seeking. However, in reality, the majority of value in the industry that we have built is being captured by intermediaries.

1/ in the crypto community, we love to talk about things like
– choice and access
– self-sovereignty
– privacy and consent
– removing rent-seeking

but when we take a hard look at what we’ve built… the majority of value in our…