Unhistorical and tyrannical conquest? How naysayers are slamming Bitcoin spot ETFs

Author: Tom Mitchelhill, Cointelegraph; Compiled by: Songxue, Golden Finance

While the entire crypto industry is celebrating the long-awaited, landmark approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States, it is not Everyone is pleased with the SEC's decision.

SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, one of the two commissioners who voted against the approval, wrote in a statement on January 10 about the agency’s move to green light Bitcoin-based investment vehicles. is “unsound and ahistorical.”

“I am concerned that these products will flood the market and go directly into the retirement accounts of American families who can least afford to lose their savings to the fraud and manipulation prevalent in the spot Bitcoin market , and will impact ETP,"Crenshaw wrote.

“The global spot market behind Bitcoin ETPs is compromised by fraud and manipulation, and is centralized and lacks adequate regulation.”

Non-Profit Economy The organization Better Markets has also not been shy about criticizing the ETF's decision, sayingthe asset is essentially worthless and has no purpose.

“Today’s action by the SEC does not change this worthless financial product: Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies still have no legitimate purpose; they remain speculators, gamblers, and predators the product of choice for predators and criminals; and continues to be a cesspool of fraud, manipulation and crime," it wrote in a Jan. 10 post to X.

Better Markets CEO Dennis Kelleher wrote to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) five days ago asking the agency to reject Bitcoin ETF applications, claiming that these products "almost certainly will causing huge harm to investors."

Longtime cryptocurrency critic Stephen Diehl also expressed his views on cryptocurrencies within hours of the approval, sayingBitcoin represents “serfdom, stagnation and the tyrannical conquest of the untrustworthy ideas of the Middle Ages”and paid tribute to fiat currency.

Gold advocate and Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff also weighed in, saying the approvals are nothing more than a new set of ways for speculators to bet on Bitcoin.

“Sadly,Bitcoin itself does not have practical real-world uses like gold,” he added.

Even some in the cryptocurrency community are disappointed with the approval, arguing that itgoes against the spirit of Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency researcher and decentralization advocate Chris Blec writes thatintroducing institutional-driven ETFs will be detrimental to the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network in the long term.