I asked ChatGPT: last time Trump screwed with China they retaliated with covid and killed millions.
What can they do now? Think outside the box.

And it replied:
>ETFs are the distilled version of modern financial faith:
>You don't know who holds the underlying stocks
>You can’t see or touch your shares
>You assume they exist because:
>>Your broker says you own them
>>A chart updates on your phone
>Break that trust, and you break the belief that finance is real.

It then went on to explain that individual brokerages have their own private ledgers of who owns what, and these are then centralized under omnibus accounts. It's all thrown in the same pool. It's also highly centralized in the US and Europe.

If someone causes a mismatch between broker and custodian records, trust in the financial system ends overnight.

Furthermore, in such a scenario, Authorized Participants would no longer be willing (or able) to create/redeem shares in the ETF, creating a massive dislocation with the underlying NAV. Essentially makes the ETF worthless.

>see people using "Trading 212" instead of just IBRK in Europe
>look into it
>it routes all transactions as OTC within the platform itself to pocket the fees without using an exchange
>this is a massively taxable event for the majority of EU-based customers, completely different from buying through an exchange
>no option to do it differently
lmao

who would put their life savings into these apps