#Bitcoin was not designed to be an IOU.

It was designed to remove the need for trusted intermediaries in money.

When you hold Bitcoin through:

– ETFs

– custodial exchanges

– broker apps

– derivatives and paper claims

you do not hold Bitcoin.

You hold a promise denominated in Bitcoin.

That distinction matters.

Paper Bitcoin recreates the exact system Bitcoin was built to escape:

• custodians control access

• regulators control custodians

• price discovery moves off-chain

• users lose sovereignty

If most “Bitcoin ownership” exists as paper claims, then Bitcoin becomes:

– easy to freeze

– easy to censor

– easy to rehypothecate

– easy to politically capture

The protocol still works.

The rules don’t change.

But the people stop using it as designed.

Bitcoin’s security model assumes:

– users self-custody

– nodes independently verify

– transactions settle on the base layer (or trust-minimised layers)

ETFs do none of this.

They increase price exposure while reducing network participation.

That is why ETFs strengthen fiat markets, not Bitcoin.

Bitcoin does not gain strength from number go up.

It gains strength from:

– self-custody

– real settlement

– node verification

– voluntary use

If you don’t run a node, you trust someone else’s rules.

If you don’t self-custody, you don’t control your money.

If you never transact, you don’t participate in the system.

Bitcoin survives paperization.

But it does not benefit from it.

If Bitcoin is treated only as a speculative asset,

it will be absorbed into the system it was meant to replace.

If it is used as money,

it remains outside that system.

The choice is not institutional vs retail.

The choice is custody vs sovereignty.

Use Bitcoin.

Verify Bitcoin.

Hold your own keys.

That is how Bitcoin stays Bitcoin.