I see it as a net positive, but not absolute positive for the Bitcoin ecosystem. While I (and I suspect most folks here at Stacker news) would advocate that people self-custody their coins, not everyone agrees with me and that is alright. Bitcoin is big enough for folks with differences of opinions, especially since those folks are personally responsible and have to bear the costs for their mistakes without a bailout.

If nothing else, Fidelity's BTC trading can be a stepping stone to people learning more about Bitcoin that they just purchased, so they can decide to eventually self custody. But the simple fact to bringing Bitcoin into the mainstream where less tech-saavy folks can easily interact with it with a name that they likely trust more than Coinbase, Swan, Binance, or other niche-crypto names seems like a win to me. I would love it if the next step for Fidelity to integrate lightning so that their users can have a Savings/Investment account at Layer 1 and a Checking account at Layer 2...but that's probably a pipe dream.