On Thursday, November 22, Twitter user, Joshua J. Bouw conducted a survey of sorts, which asked the community whether, bitcoin is gold, cash, or both for now. The twist? CEO and Co-Founder of Blockstream, Adam Back has given his take on Bitcoin and later expanded on why the giant needs to be both, the need for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the risks associated with them.

So Bitcoin ETFs likely would help liquidity but are not without risks, to the properties that drive Bitcoins fundamental open network value. It could be like early internet stock ETF trying to push for walled gardens, permission, internet drivers license and government censors.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) November 22, 2018

According to Back, bitcoin must serve as both cash and gold, that is “sound money and digital cash.” He adds that in order for it to be sound money, it needs to do so “without being bearer […], but unlikely permissionless, bearer, censor-resistant or unseizable/unfreezable.”

While Bitcoin has successfully introduced itself as a real-life use case in many instances, Back notes that the original direction may change given,

“ETFs with [greater than] 75% economic weight is the operators may develop business focused aspirations to reshape Bitcoin optimized for their use case.”

Does this mean there’s some risks involved? As per Back, most definitely.

In particular, he trusts the existence of Bitcoin ETFs are surely to better liquidity concerns that the crypto market is faced with, however, he also believes that there are risks attached, which may directly influence the giant’s properties that give it its value.

Do you think Back is right in arguing that ETFs can potentially disrupt Bitcoin’s valuable properties? Let us know in the comments below.

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