Oddbean

So this Bitcoin ETF is going to make supper of real Bitcoin very hard in many places. In Slovakia for example they have 40% income tax on "virtual assets" (they still use these statespeak words), but it's 0% for ETFs after holding for one year. And these bitcoiners are always crazy libertarians with guns, they only eat meat and they want you to buy hardware wallets, pay transaction fees to some miners, use addresses and engrave some words into metal plates that they test for apocalypse readiness. Why not capitalize on the fact that this culture is growing, by few clicks in their brokerage account web interface, tax free? Especially if these people believe that state is here to provide "services", and is not fundamentally bad or immoral? I believe Bitcoin provides protection against: monetary inflation, confiscation of property, excessive taxation, capital controls and surveillance. ETF only covers the monetary inflation aspect. But what if you don't need the others? I used to say that you are getting worse product for the same price. But now due to difference in taxation, the ETF Bitcoin is cheaper if you are a normies, you sell and pay taxes (my strategy is not to sell but to short fiat, which is also tax free and you make money on the short as well - I teach it in Crytocurrencies: Hack your way to a better life and course on harnessing the value of Bitcoin without having to sell it: both are in my eshop). So what would you tell these people? Should they buy the ETF instead of real Bitcoin? And why not?

In Cryptocurrencies: Hack your way to a better life I have this helpful table: https://juraj.bednar.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/btc-table-733x1024.png Here’s the whole chapter: https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2023/06/15/how-to-give-bitcoin-back-its-peer-to-peer-character-and-use-it-to-its-full-potential/ Bitcoin ETF is Bankcoin.

The contra-argument is: "you never know how the rules change when things get difficult for the govt to fund things and things will get more difficult in the comming decades unless some miracle happends".

That is a good one, but not the best. Normies believe they will fix everything during the next elections. The problem that the next election is a moving target eludes them, so does the fact that they've been on this theory for decades and it clearly does not work. But the counterargument would be - I want to save 40% on tax today, I know for sure it is here, which is different than what might be in the future. And they're also stealing through monetary inflation. The problem is of course they can steal 100% in the future. You don't really own the ETF, you only rent it until the slave keeper decides otherwise.