Spot Bitcoin ETFs solved access, but custody, advisors and plumbing still lag, panelists say

Spot bitcoin ETFs cleared crypto's long-standing access hurdle by placing bitcoin inside brokerage and advisor accounts already used for stocks and bonds. Two and a half years in, panelists at CoinDesk's Consensus Miami conference agreed that part had worked. However, they said custody concentration, modest advisor uptake and back-office plumbing all remain unresolved.

Christopher Russell, head of strategic planning and analysis at Calamos Investments, framed the access win in numbers. "The ETF solved one big problem, which was access," he said. The roughly dozen US spot bitcoin ETFs now hold around $107 billion in combined assets, with about $20 billion in institutional hedge funds, $12.5 billion allocated by registered investment advisors, and 60% sitting in direct retail accounts.

Out of $146 trillion in advisor-managed AUM, that $12.5 billion advisor allocation "seems like a big number, but it's a really small number," Russell said. He pointed to what he called the 1% problem: "They can take a 1% position in a 50-60 vol asset, but they don't want to spend 50% of their client meetings explaining why a 1% position went down 50%."

Jean-Marie Mognetti, CEO and co-founder of CoinShares, pressed on the structural side. "Right now they are all using one custodian, which is Coinbase, creating a massive concentration risk in the market," he said. "From a protection and diversification point of view, it's a zero. If you were in any hedge fund, you would want to get a number of prime brokers to diversify your risk."

Mognetti’s warning lands in a market that is no longer uniformly single-custodian, but where Coinbase remains a central piece of ETF infrastructure. Fidelity’s FBTC uses Fidelity Digital Assets, VanEck’s HODL launched with Gemini and later added Coinbase, BlackRock’s IBIT added Anchorage Digital Bank alongside Coinbase, and Morgan Stanley’s proposed bitcoin ETF names Coinbase Custody and BNY as bitcoin custodians.

Aaron Dimitri, general counsel for digital assets at Flow Traders, said ETFs have shifted bitcoin from pure buy-and-hold exposure into broader portfolio construction. “You’re not just buying and holding an asset, hoping it appreciates over time,” he said. “You’re able to build in yield products, different structured vehicles.” For institutions, Dimitri said, ETFs do not remove bitcoin’s volatility, but they make the exposure easier to package and manage. “If you’re going to go on a roller coaster, you might as well make sure that the lap belt locks down before the ride takes off,” he said.

Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, pushed back on treating volatility as a problem to be engineered away. "Volatility is a feature, not a bug," he said, citing bitcoin and ether both up 20% since the start of the war in Iran. If an asset is volatile but not closely correlated with stocks and bonds, "you sprinkle a little in and you're going to improve Sharpe ratio efficiency," Hyman said. "But you got to be ready to tell the story." He also argued that futures-based products retain a role: ProShares' BITO, launched in October 2021, holds about $2 billion in assets but still trades at 35% of the daily volume of BlackRock's IBIT, the dominant spot product.