Spot exchange-traded products did what a decade of advocacy could not: they put digital assets into ordinary portfolios through the same plumbing that holds everything else. That is a genuine achievement and it deserves to be counted as one.

It is also worth being honest about what the wrapper delivers. An investor in a spot fund holds a claim on a custodian's balance, priced during exchange hours, settled through the existing system, with no key, no transaction and no ability to do anything with the asset except sell it.

None of that is a flaw in the product. It is the product. The wrapper exists precisely to strip out the operational characteristics that made institutions uncomfortable, and it does so competently.

The mistake is treating fund inflows as evidence that the underlying argument has been won. Custody, settlement finality and permissionless transfer were the argument. Flows into a wrapper that abstracts all three measure something else, and conflating the two flatters everyone involved.

This column reflects the author's views and is labelled Opinion under MyBunnyFarm's editorial policy.