Bitcoin in 2026: From Internet Experiment to a Global Financial Asset

Seventeen years after the Bitcoin network began operating, the cryptocurrency has moved far beyond its early technological niche. Bitcoin now trades around $65,000, sits inside major investment products, is held in a United States strategic reserve and operates within increasingly formal regulatory systems — yet its fixed supply, extreme price sensitivity and decentralised structure continue to make it unlike almost every conventional financial asset.

In January 2009, Bitcoin existed almost entirely as an idea shared among a small number of cryptographers and computer enthusiasts.

There was no Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

No major asset manager offered it to clients.

Governments did not hold strategic Bitcoin reserves.

Banks were not required to report Bitcoin exposures.

There was no European regulatory framework specifically governing the wider crypto-asset market.

And one bitcoin had effectively no established global market price.

Seventeen years later, Bitcoin is trading at around $65,000. Its price continues to move constantly, but the scale alone illustrates how dramatically the asset has developed since its creation.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust alone held approximately $48.4 billion in net assets on 7 August 2026. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund reported more than $10 billion in net assets at the end of June.

The United States has established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Hong Kong has authorised spot Bitcoin investment funds.

The European Union operates a harmonised crypto-asset regulatory framework through MiCA.

And international banking regulators have introduced standards governing how banks disclose and manage crypto-asset exposures.

Bitcoin has therefore passed an important threshold.

The question is no longer whether the world will notice it.

It has.

The more interesting question is what Bitcoin is becoming.

It Began as a Proposal to Remove the Middleman

The original Bitcoin paper appeared in 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Its central idea was remarkably specific: create a system allowing electronic payments to move directly between participants without requiring a financial institution to stand between them.

Instead of relying on a bank to maintain the definitive record of ownership, Bitcoin would use a distributed network and cryptographic proof.

Transactions would be recorded in a public chain of blocks.

Participants throughout the network would verify the same transaction history.

The system would prevent the same digital money from being spent twice without requiring one central authority to keep the ledger.

That technical solution eventually produced something much larger than a payment experiment.

It created a digital asset whose ownership could be transferred globally without a central issuer controlling its supply.

That distinction remains the foundation of Bitcoin’s economic identity.

There is no Bitcoin central bank.

No company issues Bitcoin.

There is no board of directors capable of announcing an additional ten million coins.

The rules are enforced collectively by software and network participants.

The 21 Million Limit Changed the Economic Story

One feature became especially important as Bitcoin grew: scarcity.

Bitcoin’s protocol limits the eventual supply to 21 million coins.

New bitcoin is introduced through mining, but the amount issued declines according to a predetermined schedule.

Approximately every 210,000 blocks — roughly once every four years — the subsidy awarded to miners is cut in half.

It began at 50 BTC per block in 2009.

The current block subsidy is 3.125 BTC.

This mechanism is known as the halving.

The significance goes beyond technology.

With gold, additional supply can theoretically be generated if higher prices encourage miners to open more mines.

With oil, producers can attempt to increase extraction.

A company can issue more shares.

A central bank can expand the monetary base.

Bitcoin follows a different rule.

Higher prices do not cause the protocol to produce bitcoin faster.

The issuance schedule remains largely predetermined.

That scarcity has become central to the argument made by investors who regard Bitcoin less as electronic cash and more as a form of digital reserve asset.

Bitcoin Gradually Became ‘Digital Gold’

Bitcoin’s original paper described an electronic cash system.

The investment world increasingly describes it differently.

For many holders, Bitcoin is now treated as a scarce asset rather than an everyday currency.

The comparison with gold comes from several characteristics.

Supply is limited.

Ownership can be transferred.

No individual government controls issuance.

The asset can be held outside the conventional banking system.

And investors can buy it partly because they expect other investors to value its scarcity in the future.

The White House itself used the term “digital gold” when establishing the United States Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in 2025, citing Bitcoin’s fixed supply and security characteristics as part of the policy rationale.

That does not make Bitcoin equivalent to gold.

Gold has thousands of years of monetary history and significant industrial and jewellery demand.

Bitcoin has existed for less than two decades.

But the comparison reveals how radically Bitcoin’s perceived role has changed.

The project began as a method of electronic payment.

Its largest current economic use may increasingly be as a financial asset.

The 2024 ETF Decision Was One of the Great Turning Points

Few developments accelerated Bitcoin’s integration with traditional finance more clearly than the decision of the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 10 January 2024.

The SEC approved the listing and trading of a number of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products.

For the first time, large numbers of investors could gain direct economic exposure to Bitcoin through products trading on regulated American securities exchanges without personally purchasing and storing bitcoin in a crypto wallet.

The distinction was transformative.

Before spot products, an investor wanting direct Bitcoin exposure generally had to understand crypto exchanges, wallets, private keys and custody.

After approval, Bitcoin exposure could sit beside stocks and conventional funds inside ordinary brokerage accounts.

BlackRock entered.

Fidelity entered.

Other major financial institutions entered.

Bitcoin had not changed technically.

Access to it had.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin Fund Shows How Far the Market Has Moved

The scale of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust provides one of the clearest measurements of institutionalisation.

As of 7 August 2026, the fund reported approximately $48.42 billion in net assets.

It had more than 1.3 billion shares outstanding and traded on Nasdaq like other exchange-traded products.

The product holds essentially one underlying investment: Bitcoin.

That means tens of billions of dollars of investor capital can now obtain Bitcoin exposure through infrastructure associated with one of the world’s largest asset managers.

Fidelity offers a similar route through its Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund and explicitly markets the product as a way of gaining Bitcoin exposure without buying the cryptocurrency directly.

This represents something fundamentally different from Bitcoin’s early years.

Traditional finance is no longer standing entirely outside the cryptocurrency market.

Parts of traditional finance have built Bitcoin into their own product architecture.

But 2026 Has Also Reminded Investors That Institutionalisation Does Not Remove Volatility

Wall Street access does not make Bitcoin behave like a government bond.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin trust reported a year-to-date NAV decline of 26.39% as of 6 August 2026.

That is an important counterweight to the institutional adoption story.

Bitcoin can become more regulated.

It can become easier to buy.

Major financial groups can build investment products around it.

Governments can hold it.

None of those developments guarantees price stability.

The market remains driven by supply and demand.

Bitcoin itself generates no corporate earnings.

It pays no contractual interest.

There is no management team producing an annual profit.

Its market value therefore depends heavily on what buyers are willing to pay for the scarcity, utility and future importance they believe Bitcoin represents.

That can change rapidly.

Bitcoin Has Survived Multiple Boom-and-Bust Cycles

Volatility is not new.

Bitcoin’s history has repeatedly followed periods of rapid appreciation with severe corrections.

Enthusiasm attracts capital.

Prices rise.

New investors enter.

Expectations become increasingly ambitious.

Then liquidity, regulation, leverage, macroeconomic conditions or market sentiment change.

Prices fall.

Some participants leave.

Infrastructure continues developing.

Eventually another cycle begins.

This pattern has destroyed repeated claims that Bitcoin’s price would move permanently in only one direction.

It has also destroyed repeated predictions that every major collapse would necessarily make the network disappear.

Bitcoin has so far survived both extreme optimism and extreme pessimism.

That endurance is one reason institutional investors now take it more seriously than they did a decade ago.

The United States Has Taken a Step That Once Seemed Almost Unimaginable

The development of Bitcoin entered another stage on 6 March 2025.

The United States established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by executive order.

Bitcoin already held by the federal government through final asset-forfeiture proceedings was designated for the reserve.

The order states that government Bitcoin placed into the reserve is not to be sold and is to be maintained as a reserve asset, subject to applicable law.

It also directed officials to examine budget-neutral methods through which additional Bitcoin could potentially be acquired without imposing additional costs on taxpayers.

The policy is historically significant regardless of future political debate around it.

Bitcoin began as a system deliberately designed to operate without government-controlled money.

A major government now maintains Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.

That is an extraordinary reversal in institutional perception.

Governments Are No Longer Asking Only Whether Bitcoin Should Be Banned

The regulatory conversation has matured considerably.

Early cryptocurrency debates were often binary.

Should Bitcoin be permitted?

Or should it be prohibited?

The more sophisticated modern question is different:

If Bitcoin and crypto-assets are going to exist, how should the businesses surrounding them be regulated?

That includes exchanges.

Custodians.

Investment products.

Brokers.

Stablecoin issuers.

Financial intermediaries.

Tax reporting.

Anti-money-laundering requirements.

Bank capital rules.

Consumer disclosure.

Market integrity.

The Bitcoin protocol itself may remain decentralised.

The companies through which most ordinary investors access Bitcoin increasingly are not operating outside regulation.

Europe Has Built One of the World’s Most Comprehensive Frameworks

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation — MiCA — represents one of the clearest examples.

MiCA establishes common EU rules covering crypto-assets and related services that were not already covered by existing financial-services legislation.

Its framework includes transparency, disclosure, authorisation and supervision requirements.

ESMA maintains registers of authorised crypto-asset service providers as well as non-compliant entities, with the relevant register updated again in August 2026.

This does not mean Brussels controls Bitcoin.

It does not.

A European regulator cannot order the Bitcoin protocol to issue another million coins or cancel a transaction.

What it can regulate is the infrastructure through which consumers and institutions interact with crypto-assets.

That is increasingly where modern cryptocurrency regulation is concentrated.

Crypto Tax Transparency Has Also Increased

The European Union moved further in 2026 through DAC8.

From 1 January 2026, EU tax-transparency rules expanded to cover crypto-asset transactions.

Crypto-asset service providers now operate within a much more developed framework for reporting and automatic exchange of tax information.

This is another sign of Bitcoin’s transition.

Governments increasingly treat cryptocurrency ownership not as an obscure technological curiosity but as a form of economic activity significant enough to integrate into ordinary tax administration.

Mainstream adoption therefore does not necessarily mean less government involvement.

In many respects, it means more.

Banks Are Being Pulled Into the Framework Too

Global banking regulators have also responded.

The Basel Committee’s revised framework for bank crypto-asset exposures was scheduled for implementation from 1 January 2026, alongside standardised disclosure requirements.

Banks are expected to provide information about their crypto-related activities and the associated capital and liquidity treatment.

This matters because the relationship between Bitcoin and traditional banking is becoming more complicated.

Bitcoin was designed to permit value transfer without banks.

Yet banks, investment managers and financial institutions are increasingly involved in custody, trading, financing and investment products connected to Bitcoin.

The technology may remain decentralised.

The investment ecosystem around it is becoming increasingly institutional.

Asia Is Building Its Own Regulated Bitcoin Market

The trend is not confined to Europe and the United States.

Hong Kong authorised Asia’s first batch of virtual-asset spot ETFs, including products investing directly in Bitcoin, with the first group listing in April 2024.

The Securities and Futures Commission subsequently continued developing its broader regulatory roadmap for virtual assets.

Bitcoin investment products continue trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2026.

This development is important because global adoption is unlikely to follow one uniform model.

The United States has one regulatory structure.

The European Union has MiCA.

Hong Kong is developing another model.

Other countries range from enthusiastic adoption to restrictive policies.

Bitcoin itself crosses borders much more easily than regulation does.

Global Regulation Remains Uneven

Despite substantial progress, cryptocurrency regulation is far from globally harmonised.

A Bank for International Settlements review published in June 2026 noted that, as of August 2025, only 11 jurisdictions examined had finalised comprehensive crypto-asset regulatory frameworks, while implementation remained uneven internationally.

The Financial Stability Board has been attempting to encourage greater consistency through a global framework for regulating and supervising crypto-asset activities.

This fragmentation creates one of Bitcoin’s great regulatory paradoxes.

The asset is global.

The law remains national and regional.

A Bitcoin transaction does not inherently recognise whether it crossed from one legal jurisdiction into another.

The exchanges, custodians, banks and investors involved certainly do.

Why Bitcoin Continues to Attract Buyers

Bitcoin’s investment case rests on several overlapping arguments.

The first is scarcity.

Only 21 million coins can ultimately exist under the current consensus rules.

The second is decentralisation.

No single company or government operates the network.

The third is portability.

Large amounts of value can theoretically be controlled through cryptographic keys rather than physical transportation.

The fourth is divisibility.

One bitcoin can be divided into 100 million satoshis.

The fifth is the network itself.

The longer Bitcoin survives and the more capital, infrastructure, exchanges, custodians, miners, developers and investors build around it, the harder it becomes to treat the system as a temporary experiment.

None of those arguments establishes what one bitcoin should be worth.

They explain why some investors believe it should have value.

Why the 21 Million Figure Has Become So Powerful

The scarcity narrative becomes more interesting when Bitcoin is compared with conventional monetary assets.

Governments can issue additional bonds.

Companies can issue new shares.

Banks can create credit.

Central-bank balance sheets can expand.

Gold mining continues adding new metal to the global stock.

Bitcoin’s monetary issuance follows rules participants can inspect in advance.

That predictability is unusual.

If demand rises while new supply continues declining, basic economics suggests upward price pressure could result.

If demand falls, however, fixed supply does not protect the price.

Scarcity creates value only when people want the scarce asset.

A limited supply of something nobody wants does not automatically produce wealth.

This is why the future of Bitcoin depends at least as much on demand as on mathematics.

The Halving Is Often Misunderstood

Every four years, attention turns towards the Bitcoin halving.

The logic sounds simple.

Miners receive fewer newly created coins.

New supply falls.

Scarcity increases.

Therefore the price should rise.

Real markets are more complicated.

The halving schedule is known years in advance.

Investors can anticipate it.

Mining companies alter their strategies beforehand.

Market prices reflect expectations as well as current supply.

Interest rates, global liquidity, regulation and investor sentiment can overwhelm the effect of changes in new Bitcoin issuance.

The halving remains structurally important because it controls long-term monetary supply.

It should not be interpreted as a machine that automatically produces a higher Bitcoin price every four years.

Mining Is What Gives the Network Its Security

Bitcoin does not use a central authority to determine which transactions are valid.

Mining helps the network establish consensus.

Specialised computers perform computational work.

Transactions are grouped into blocks.

Nodes independently verify whether those blocks satisfy Bitcoin’s rules.

Miners receiving valid blocks can earn transaction fees together with the current block subsidy.

This mechanism is known as proof of work.

Its purpose is to make rewriting the transaction history extraordinarily difficult.

The cost is energy.

Energy Remains One of Bitcoin’s Most Important Debates

Bitcoin mining consumes substantial electricity because proof-of-work security deliberately requires computation.

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance maintains the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index specifically to estimate Bitcoin’s electricity demand, mining efficiency and related environmental characteristics, updating major power and emissions data regularly.

The debate surrounding this energy consumption has several dimensions.

Critics question whether the economic benefits justify the electricity required.

Supporters point towards increasing miner efficiency, flexible demand and the use of different energy sources.

The answer varies geographically because a mining operation using low-carbon electricity has a very different emissions profile from one using carbon-intensive generation.

The relevant environmental question is therefore not only how much electricity Bitcoin uses.

It is where that electricity comes from and what alternative demand could have used it.

Bitcoin Is Not the Same Thing as the Wider Crypto Industry

One of the biggest analytical mistakes is treating every cryptocurrency as though it were Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has no central issuer.

Many crypto tokens do.

Bitcoin has a predetermined issuance structure.

Other projects can operate under very different monetary rules.

Stablecoins generally attempt to maintain a fixed value relative to conventional currencies.

Other blockchains support applications and programmable contracts.

Some crypto-assets represent highly speculative projects with short histories.

Others have failed entirely.

Financial regulators increasingly distinguish among these categories.

The SEC’s 2024 Bitcoin ETP decision explicitly stated that its approval applied to products holding Bitcoin and should not automatically be interpreted as an endorsement or regulatory conclusion about the wider crypto-asset market.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as the industry matures.

Bitcoin’s Greatest Competitor May Be the Financial System It Was Designed to Avoid

There is a fascinating irony in Bitcoin’s development.

It was created partly to allow payments without conventional financial intermediaries.

Yet much of its modern growth is now being driven by financial intermediaries.

BlackRock.

Fidelity.

Brokerage platforms.

Custodians.

Regulated exchanges.

Institutional investors.

The investor who buys a Bitcoin ETP does not need to operate a Bitcoin wallet.

They may never possess a private key.

They may never make an on-chain transaction.

They can participate economically in Bitcoin while remaining entirely inside conventional finance.

This creates two parallel Bitcoin economies.

One is the original peer-to-peer network.

The other is a growing layer of financial products representing economic claims linked to Bitcoin.

Both can continue expanding simultaneously.

Self-Custody Remains Fundamentally Different

For users who hold bitcoin directly, ownership works differently from a bank account.

Control comes from private keys.

A private key provides the cryptographic authority necessary to spend the bitcoin associated with a wallet.

If somebody else obtains that key or recovery phrase, they can potentially control the funds.

If the owner loses access permanently without a backup, there is no central Bitcoin customer-service department capable of resetting the account.

That makes direct Bitcoin ownership both powerful and demanding.

An exchange or ETP transfers much of the custody responsibility to an intermediary.

Self-custody removes that intermediary but transfers responsibility to the owner.

Neither model eliminates risk.

It changes who manages it.

Bitcoin as Money and Bitcoin as an Asset Are Different Questions

Can Bitcoin function as money?

Technically, yes.

It can transfer value between participants.

It can be divided into very small units.

Transactions can occur without a bank acting as intermediary.

Second-layer technologies such as the Lightning Network have been developed to allow faster and cheaper payments outside the main blockchain before settlement ultimately occurs on Bitcoin.

But an asset can perform technically as money without becoming the dominant unit used for everyday pricing.

Most salaries, supermarket purchases, mortgages and corporate accounts around the world remain denominated in dollars, euros, pounds, yen and other sovereign currencies.

Bitcoin’s current financial importance therefore does not require it to replace conventional currency.

It may instead develop primarily as a scarce investment and settlement asset.

The Dollar Does Not Have to Disappear for Bitcoin to Succeed

Some of the earliest Bitcoin narratives imagined a direct competition between cryptocurrency and state money.

Reality has become more nuanced.

Bitcoin can grow while the dollar remains dominant.

Gold exists alongside the dollar.

Equities exist alongside the dollar.

Government bonds exist alongside the dollar.

Investors hold different assets for different reasons.

Bitcoin does not have to become the currency used to purchase groceries to become economically significant.

The rise of exchange-traded Bitcoin products demonstrates precisely that.

Many investors are buying exposure not because they intend to spend bitcoin tomorrow, but because they want Bitcoin represented inside a portfolio.

That represents a very different route to adoption.

Bitcoin Is Becoming Part of Portfolio Theory

Traditional portfolios are often built around combinations of equities, bonds, property, cash and sometimes commodities such as gold.

Digital assets have introduced another potential category.

For institutional investors, the relevant questions are increasingly quantitative.

What percentage should be allocated?

How volatile is Bitcoin?

How does it correlate with equities?

How does it behave during inflation, recession or financial stress?

What custody method should be used?

What regulatory capital applies?

How should the position be taxed?

Those are ordinary institutional-investment questions.

The fact that they are now being asked about Bitcoin represents a major change.

The debate has shifted from whether Bitcoin exists to how it fits within existing financial systems.

2026 Is Showing That Adoption and Price Are Not the Same Thing

Perhaps the most important lesson of the current market is that greater adoption does not guarantee a continuously rising price.

Bitcoin has gained:

major exchange-traded investment products;

multibillion-dollar institutional funds;

a United States strategic reserve;

more formal European regulation;

Asian spot investment products;

and increasingly developed international banking rules.

Yet Bitcoin remains volatile around $65,000, and BlackRock’s Bitcoin product had recorded a substantial year-to-date decline by early August.

That distinction matters enormously.

Adoption describes infrastructure.

Price describes what investors are willing to pay.

The infrastructure can become stronger while the price falls.

That is normal in mature financial markets and increasingly normal in Bitcoin.

The Market May Be Becoming More Mature — Without Becoming Stable

Maturity should not be confused with calmness.

A mature Bitcoin market would mean deeper liquidity.

More regulated access.

Better custody.

More institutional participants.

More sophisticated derivatives.

Clearer tax treatment.

Greater surveillance.

Stronger reporting.

None of those necessarily prevents large price movements.

Indeed, commodities, technology stocks and currencies can remain volatile despite decades of institutional trading.

Bitcoin may therefore mature while continuing to produce substantial cycles.

The question is whether those cycles become progressively less extreme as the market deepens.

That remains uncertain.

What Could Drive the Next Major Move

Bitcoin’s next important phase will probably depend on several forces acting together.

Institutional demand

If asset managers, pension investors, corporations and private wealth allocate more capital to Bitcoin products, demand could increase substantially.

The size already achieved by BlackRock’s fund demonstrates how quickly institutional capital can become material.

Monetary conditions

Bitcoin operates inside the wider financial system even if its network is decentralised.

Interest rates and global liquidity influence investor appetite for risk.

When safe assets offer attractive yields, speculative assets face stronger competition for capital.

When liquidity becomes abundant, investors may become more willing to hold volatile assets.

Regulation

Clearer rules can make institutional participation easier.

Restrictive regulation can reduce access.

The continued implementation of MiCA, international bank standards and jurisdiction-specific crypto rules will therefore influence the structure of the market.

Government policy

The American Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has already demonstrated that governments can become participants rather than merely regulators.

Whether other governments adopt similar policies remains uncertain.

Supply

New Bitcoin issuance will continue declining according to the halving schedule until the 21 million limit is approached.

Technology and security

Bitcoin’s long-term value also depends on confidence that the network continues functioning reliably and securely.

Any asset dependent on software ultimately depends on continuing technical resilience.

Could Bitcoin Reach Much Higher Prices?

It could.

That is a scenario, not a forecast.

Because the maximum supply is fixed, substantial additional demand could theoretically produce very large price increases.

If Bitcoin became an increasingly common reserve asset among institutions, companies, wealthy individuals or governments, the amount of capital competing for available coins could rise substantially.

But the opposite scenario must remain equally clear.

Demand could weaken.

Regulation could become less favourable in important jurisdictions.

A technological problem could damage confidence.

Competing assets could attract capital.

Macroeconomic conditions could reduce investor appetite for risk.

Bitcoin’s price could therefore rise dramatically, remain broadly stable for long periods or fall substantially.

Nobody can reliably specify the future price from the supply limit alone.

The Most Important Development Has Already Happened

The extraordinary part of Bitcoin’s story may not ultimately be whether it reaches $100,000, $200,000 or some other price.

The more fundamental transformation has already occurred.

A monetary experiment published under a pseudonym in 2008 has survived long enough to become part of the global financial system it originally attempted to circumvent.

Regulators supervise businesses built around it.

Wall Street packages it into investment products.

Banks must account for crypto exposure.

European authorities maintain regulatory registers.

Hong Kong lists spot Bitcoin funds.

The United States maintains a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

And tens of billions of dollars sit inside individual institutional Bitcoin products.

That does not prove Bitcoin will continue appreciating.

It proves something different.

Bitcoin has become difficult for global finance to ignore.

Bitcoin Is No Longer an Experiment — but Its Final Role Is Still Undecided

Bitcoin began with a straightforward technical ambition: enable digital value to move without requiring a trusted financial intermediary.

What emerged was something much larger.

A payment network.

A speculative asset.

A scarce digital commodity.

An institutional investment.

A political issue.

A regulatory challenge.

A reserve asset for at least one major government.

And an entirely new category of financial property.

Its development remains unfinished.

Bitcoin has not replaced conventional money.

It has not eliminated banks.

It has not become stable.

It has not removed financial intermediaries.

In fact, some of the world’s largest financial institutions are now helping to accelerate its adoption.

That apparent contradiction may define Bitcoin’s next chapter.

The technology remains decentralised.

Ownership is increasingly institutionalised.

Supply remains mathematically constrained.

Demand remains human and unpredictable.

Governments are regulating it while some are also holding it.

Traditional finance is no longer trying simply to decide whether Bitcoin belongs inside the system.

Parts of traditional finance are now building businesses around it.

At roughly $65,000 in August 2026, Bitcoin’s future price remains impossible to know with confidence.

Its historical development is much clearer.

In seventeen years, Bitcoin has travelled from an obscure cryptographic proposal to an asset held through some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

The next question is no longer whether Bitcoin can survive outside the traditional financial system.

It is what happens now that the traditional financial system has begun bringing Bitcoin inside.