Thanks for sharing @BigStrawbs70

Do you worry with the ETF's though, that if things ever got real, that governments or the managers themselves could just take or at best keep your investment?

Fund managers do this often in tough times, refusing to redeem investments due to their own liquidity problems. There will be records of your ETF holdings with multiple entities and in turn probably a few ways they could lock it all up...

I know it's the same risk as with shares, bonds etc but with BTC there is an actual alternative.

Great question @Karmast

Yep, I 100% agree that in a true crisis, like an extreme global liquidity event, it’s technically possible that ETF issuers or even governments could freeze redemptions, restrict access, or worse. We’ve seen it before with other asset classes when matters got desperate.

That said, I’m not ignoring the core idea of self-custody, I’m just making a trade-off I’m personally comfortable with at this point in time.

A few thoughts behind that:

1. The ETFs in question hold Bitcoin equal to the amount of money placed into them, which is independently audited. So even when things go south, the value I hold in the ETFs should still reflect the value I’d hold in a personal cold wallet. As a wise (Straw)man has said before, one Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin.
2. I’ve accepted the trade-off: With an ETF I lose sovereignty, but I gain simplicity, and I’m not worried about forgetting a seed phrase or my kids struggling to access funds if something happens to me.
3. Somewhat related to the last point: Personally, as Bitcoin has matured, I’ve moved away from seeing it as totally independent of the mainstream financial and banking system, and therefore needing self-custody and the like. Bitcoin, along with its cousins in stable coin land, is becoming more and more integrated into the broader system. Just look at how much of the American debt (aka bonds) these folks hold! This is one of the reasons the US is looking to pass laws on regulating this space in particular.
4. It’s that last point that tipped my views on self-custody. I won’t go into detail without writing several pages, and while we could debate the nuance, it’s fair to say Bitcoin and stable coins (let’s not talk about the others…) are now heavily integrated into mainstream finance; which, IMO, greatly reduces the chances of these being confiscated or otherwise withheld. To do so, runs the risk of a feedback loop crashing the markets even more, especially as stable coins hold/fund more US debt.

So for now, I’m choosing to hold Bitcoin in a way that suits my current risk profile, when I balance the risk of having my funds frozen or confiscated (currently extremely low IMO) against losing the keys (not necessarily high, but definitely higher than the former).

I totally respect the view of anyone who chooses self-custody (and I could well go back to doing that one day) but that’s the point of Bitcoin, right? We can do this in the way that works for us.

Please see above for my general disclaimer on all things Bitcoin.

Thanks @BigStrawbs70 and those are very sound points and good food for thought for me.

Re the Bitcoin price it's interesting to look at Google Trend's chart over the last 12 months - interest in Bitcoin (based on Google searches) has apparently been steadily declining for nearly eight months now:

Looks like it's returned to previous levels of interest. The US election and Trumps interest in bitcoin, as perceived by those interested in bitcoin, probably accounted for the spike in interest 8 months ago.

I guess the key question (at least in my mind), @RogueTrader is: How relevant are the Google search trends to the, let's call it, investment thesis for Bitcoin? If the trends are going up, does that mean the thesis is progressing well? And when they're going down, is the thesis failing?

I lean toward the view that Google Trends analysis means very little. Why? Well, as you highlight, the Google search trends are declining, yet Bitcoin is up ~84% over the past 12 months alone! That suggests there’s still a massive amount of interest.

So while I agree the Google Trends data is noteworthy, it’s fair to say that momentum is very much on the rise, and there isn't a causational relationship between search trends and Bitcoin’s price or long-term interest. We're still so early in this crazy journey.

@BigStrawbs70 said “I lean toward the view that Google Trends analysis means very little. Why? Well, as you highlight, the Google search trends are declining, yet Bitcoin is up ~84% over the past 12 months alone! That suggests there’s still a massive amount of interest.”

I think it’s more relevant to look at what Google Trends was showing  before the last crash (which started in late 2021.) :

and BTC price over the same period:

(The charts don't align perfectly - the date of the highest peak in Google Trends is just before BTC starts to plunge in late May 2021.)

You can see from the above that during the last crash in BTC, which began in late 2021, interest as monitored by Google Trends had already slumped from the peak for a period of about six months. It managed to make a second rally (as we are possibly doing right now - the charts are VERY similar) in spite of the plunge in Google Trends interest.

Now if you compare the charts above to the current charts of BTC and Google Trends, you will find that they are eerily similar, except that it's been about eight months since Google Trends hit peak interest in BTC.

As to current levels of interest, this is one journo’s view:

“I saw the excitement firsthand at a crypto event in Brooklyn last week. The bar was packed. People were animated. It felt like a flashback to 2020 and 2021, when crypto fever gripped everyone from twenty-something retail traders to grandparents. “

https://gizmodo.com/is-crypto-in-a-bubble-again-2000621921

(Bitcoin began its previous crash in Nov 2021, and cascaded down for about a year until it had lost 75% of its value.)

This is a good conversation @RogueTrader

I’d see this more as a correlation rather than causation. That is, any link between Bitcoin price/interest and Google searches is interesting, but in my opinion, does not have any impact on price or interest.

In addition to government and institutional increased purchasing, what does have a causation impact on Bitcoin’s price is the global money supply, when the money printing machines get dialled up to high, Bitcoin's price (so far, anyway) has tended to follow. It is almost guaranteed that the money machines will be plugged back in in the coming time, so we will see if the trend continues.  

Further, I recently came across an interesting article highlighting that BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is now generating more revenue for them than their S&P 500 ETF! That is massive, like big time huge, development as the Bitcoin ETF is only about 18 months old, the S&P fund has been around for years. Although this may also be a correlation type metric, it does suggest interest is only increasing, not only for us retail folks but also at the institutional, government and sovereign wealth fund level: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-drives-more-revenue-than-its-s-p-500-fund

Does all of the above mean there won’t be a large drop in Bitcoin’s price at some stage? Notwithstanding the large gains over the last 12 months (now sitting at around 94%), we’ve also had a ~40% (Jan-Apr) decline during that same timeframe, this is an extremely volatile space and there will be further large drops into the future. I guess I’m just leaning toward the view that Google searches are not a forward-looking indicator on this wild journey.

Anyhow, please note Bitcoin is by far my largest holding, so my comments are full of self-interest.

My gut feel is that price action has been largely driven by institutional flows, not retail. And while the ETF inflows look impressive, I suspect a lot of that is from people who already had a positive view on BTC, but until recently couldn't get exposure through 401ks, Super, etc.

What’s been really telling for me is that I haven’t had a single text or call from a mate asking about Bitcoin. None. And we’re basically at all time highs.

So yeah, retail feels pretty absent so far this cycle. Which, frankly, is encouraging in that the price isnt being supported by retail hype -- in fact, when that comes i'll be more nervous in regard to short term price action!

It’s running again now. $150k seems immment over the rest of the year.