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With respect to any fork, airdrop or similar event, the Sponsor shall, in its sole discretion, determine what action the Trust shall take. In the event of a fork, the Sponsor will, as permitted by the terms of the Trust Agreement, determine which network it believes is generally accepted as the Bitcoin network and should therefore be considered the appropriate network, and the associated asset as bitcoin, for the Trust’s purposes. The Sponsor may decide to cause the Trust to sell any Incidental Rights or IR Virtual Currency for cash (including, as determined by the Sponsor, in the case of a fork, the asset that is not generally accepted as bitcoin, or in the case of an airdrop, the airdropped asset) and distribute the cash proceeds or distribute them in-kind to DTC, and registered holders of Shares are entitled to receive such distributions in proportion to the number of shares owned. However, the Sponsor may instead determine, in its sole discretion, to permanently and irrevocably abandon such Incidental Rights or IR Virtual Currency for no consideration. In the case of abandonment of Incidental Rights or IR Virtual Currency, the Trust would not receive any direct or indirect consideration for the Incidental Rights or IR Virtual Currency and thus the value of the Shares will not reflect the value of the Incidental Rights or IR Virtual Currency.
There isn't a smoking gun. This block of text doesn't signal to me anything malicious. It seems obvious that you would want to outline what you have the right to do in the even that there is a fork. They are reserving the right to make the call.
I don't have a problem. I wanna hear what others think. We are all speculating on the future. I asking people that think they will fork or support a fork of bitcoin why wouldn't they just apply for a eth ETF? What is the game theory here?
One way to look at it is that they wouldn't waste their time with eth. Eth is gonna be legally considered a security so they went with BTC. Another is that BTC is clearly superior in the eyes of Blackrock. Another is that they want to destroy bitcoin by forking it, but why would they do this? Maybe they want to control bitcoin and they don't need to do much at all to control eth so why waste their time. It is already controlled. The way I see it, any way you slice it this is bad for eth and good for bitcoin. It may mean a new battle but the battles will come.
I think this scenario is unlikely, but I think I understand why they explicitly added that wording. I don't think they have any interest in forking themselves, but if there is a major event where Bitcoin does fork and a majority of node operators and miners switch to the fork Blackrock needs some legal authority to participate in the vote.
However, I don't think this means they will fork Bitcoin with a PoS version (Why not just advocate for Eth at that point?) because at the end of the day Blackrock is launching this ETF due to demand from their OWN CLIENTS.
Do we honestly believe that say, 20 years from now when people are using these instruments as exposure to their 401k and Blackrock suddenly decides to fork their holdings into a new shitcoin people will just be OK with their portfolio tanking harder than they have ever seen before? Because that is exactly what would happen and Blackrock knows it. A fork is a completely different asset. Not only that, but I am sure despite how big Blackrock is there is plenty of legal trouble they can still be accountable for.
I think if anything just like you and me did, they will eventually come to a more clear understanding of Bitcoin and instead encourage greener Bitcoin mining initiatives. I don't know why people assume that isn't on the table. We really like to think of all the toxic scenarios too much.
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Yes. Exactly.
I like that bitcoiners plan for the worst but it can lead to stupid anti-logical thinking. Bitcoin isn't fragile but bitcoiners can be.
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You nailed it and said it much more clear than I can but that is exactly it. Sometimes the hyper paranoia and just all of it results in people forgetting the facts of the situation. Once you realize the unstoppable nature of Bitcoin, so many of the political subjects surrounding it just become pure noise.
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