Zeros

Who's Holding Your Bitcoin? The Coinbase Custody Question and the Rise of Paper Bitcoin When the SEC began approving spot Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024, millions of digital currency enthusiasts cheered. Finally, mainstream investors could gain exposure to Bitcoin through familiar brokerage accounts . But buried in the fine print of many of these funds was a detail that has quietly unsettled a corner of the Bitcoin community: Coinbase , the publicly traded digital asset exchange, was named custodian for a significant portion of these ETFs. And with that appointment came a term worth unpacking — Paper Bitcoin . If you've spent any time in digital currency forums lately, you've probably seen the phrase tossed around with varying degrees of alarm. The concept is slippery, and depending on who's using it, Paper Bitcoin can mean slightly different things. At its most straightforward, it refers to Bitcoin that exists as a financial instrument — a claim, a share,...