Written by: Sylvain Saurel

Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

In the past few days, the axis of the financial world has completely shifted. We have just witnessed one of the fastest, most dazzling, and most unapologetic shifts in values in human history.

Wall Street, that sturdy fortress of traditional finance and the ivory tower of fiat currency, has officially raised the white flag.

They are not just surrendering; they are clamoring to crown the victors.

For fifteen years, the giants of traditional finance have told everyone that Bitcoin is a joke, a Ponzi scheme, a bubble, an illegal trading tool, a digital tulip, a gimmick created by a group of basement-dwelling cypherpunks. They first mocked, then suppressed, and now? They are crazily wanting to hold it.

Let's take a look at how institutional dignity has collectively collapsed in these few days.

The Fortress Crumbles: The Surrender List

Goldman Sachs: From "Fraud Tool" to Bitcoin ETF

Yes, it's that Goldman Sachs. The behemoth of global investment banking, referred to by Rolling Stone magazine as "the vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity," has now extended its tentacles into the new digital asset realm.

For years, Goldman executives seized every opportunity to mock decentralized currency. We all remember the disdain on financial channels, suited executives adjusting their ties as they swore to the public: Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Its CEO publicly declared that Bitcoin is a "fraud tool." The purpose of this narrative was to lock wealth inside their closed circles, continuing to collect tolls.

But now, the tone has completely changed; Goldman is launching a Bitcoin ETF. This hypocrisy is both shocking and not surprising. The institutions that once warned you to stay away from "scams" are now collecting management fees to help you hold it.

Why the sudden change of heart? Because Wall Street has no eternal morals, only eternal interests. When high-net-worth clients threatened to move their funds and demanded allocation to the best-performing asset of the decade, the so-called morals vanished overnight. "Scams" transformed into "innovative alternative assets." Goldman did not have an epiphany; it felt the pressure.

Morgan Stanley: Forbidden Terms Become the Largest IPO in History

If Goldman Sachs's reversal is a comedy, Morgan Stanley serves as a model of historical irony. Just not long ago, Morgan Stanley was extremely hostile to digital assets, and it was rumored that the internal company emails banned the use of the term "cryptocurrency." It became Voldemort, an asset class that could not be named. They viewed it as a plague, a virus that could contaminate their noble, heavily regulated mahogany conference rooms.

And now, just in the past few days, Morgan Stanley has welcomed the largest ETF launch in the company's history.

What is the underlying asset of this record-breaking financial product? Yes, it is Bitcoin.

This asset they once tried to erase from the company dictionary has now become the jewel of their modern product line. Advisors who once couldn't even utter the word are now calling every wealthy client, persuading them to allocate 1% to 5% of their portfolios to "digital gold." This cognitive dissonance is astonishing, but the institutional FOMO overrides all prohibitions. They have finally realized: you cannot ban the future, but you can assign it a stock code and sell it to the public.

Charles Schwab: Opening the Door to Retail Spot Trading

While investment banks play the ETF game, Charles Schwab has taken a more direct approach: deciding to open cryptocurrency spot trading directly to its massive client base.

Charles Schwab represents ordinary investors, the gatekeepers of middle-class wealth, retirement accounts, and retail portfolios. For years, they kept clients within safe, predictable areas like mutual funds, traditional stocks, and municipal bonds. Want to buy Bitcoin? You had to leave Schwab, venture into the wild crypto exchanges, and manage private keys yourself.

The times have changed. By accessing spot crypto trading, Charles Schwab is effectively acknowledging that no investment portfolio is complete without Bitcoin. This isn't just about providing an ETF, but enabling millions of ordinary investors to directly hold the underlying asset through trusted brokerage accounts.

This move cannot be overstated in terms of its significance for Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption. It places the decentralized orange coin right beside Apple, Amazon, and the S&P 500 on the dashboard of ordinary American investors. It removes barriers, erases stigma, and opens the floodgates for the vast amounts of capital that have been hesitant, desiring to enter but indecisive.

New York Stock Exchange: Fully Building Infrastructure

Then there is the heart of traditional finance: the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The once sacred hall where traders shouted at pieces of paper is now quietly and efficiently constructing dedicated crypto infrastructure.

The NYSE is not just facilitating trades; it is laying down pipelines. This infrastructure is online, integrated, and "running as smoothly as a cat lying on a warm laptop." When the underlying system of global stocks decides to pave roads and bridge gaps for digital assets, the debate is over.

The NYSE would not build infrastructure for a fleeting trend, nor would it invest millions for a Ponzi scheme. They only build systems for eternal things. By integrating crypto assets at the exchange level, the old system has officially connected itself with the new digital paradigm. They acknowledge that future value transfer, settlement, and asset ownership will at least partially operate on crypto networks.

Hypocritical Economics

To understand this massive and rapid shift, we must look beyond the surface announcements to the underlying psychology and economic logic of Wall Street.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win."

This quote is often misattributed to Gandhi, but it holds universal truth in the realm of disruptive innovation, perfectly fitting the confrontation between Bitcoin and traditional finance.

The Period of Ignoring and Mocking (2009—2017)

In the early days, Wall Street was indifferent. Bitcoin was just a toy for cypherpunks and libertarians. As it began to emerge, the mockery commenced, belittled as "Monopoly money." A network with a fixed total supply of 21 million, decentralized, and leaderless, actually wanted to challenge the dollar's sovereign currency? At Davos and Wall Street parties, this was the top joke.

The Period of Attack (2017—2023)

As Bitcoin was reborn repeatedly in bear markets, the laughter turned into fear. It was during this phase that the likes of Jamie Dimon threatened to fire any trader daring to buy Bitcoin, the SEC launched relentless crackdowns, and the media repeatedly proclaimed "Bitcoin is dead" hundreds of times.

They attacked it because it posed a threat to their business model. Traditional banks rely on gatekeepers, intermediaries, and fractional reserve alchemy, while Bitcoin requires none of these. It is peer-to-peer, self-custodied, and mathematically transparent. This frightened them.

The Period of Surrender (Current Stage)

What happens when you spend 15 years trying to kill an idea, but it won’t die; when it grows into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class completely beyond your control?

You have to surrender.

The shift on Wall Street did not stem from a sudden awakening of thought. They did not read the Bitcoin white paper last night and suddenly understand the brilliance of Satoshi's proof-of-work mechanism.

No, they surrendered because Wall Street is essentially a fee-extracting machine. For over a decade, a historic transfer of wealth has taken place completely outside their ecosystem. Native cryptocurrency exchanges have earned tens of billions in revenue, while legacy banks, hamstrung by arrogance and regulatory constraints, could only stand by.

Ultimately, the numbers say it all. The opportunity cost of ignoring Bitcoin is too high to bear. They have come to realize the ultimate truth of this era: If you cannot kill it, then join it.

They decided: since people want to buy Bitcoin, they might as well buy it through Goldman ETF, allowing Goldman to collect a 0.25% management fee; since they want to trade, they might as well trade at Charles Schwab. Wall Street did not embrace the spiritual core of Bitcoin; they merely acknowledged its inevitability and attempted to carve out a piece of the pie.

The Inevitability of Mathematics

This series of events is filled with poetic justice.

Traditional finance relies on trust: you have to trust that central banks won't devalue the currency, trust that commercial banks won't gamble away your deposits, trust that clearinghouses will settle normally.

And history has repeatedly shown, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the malignant inflation of the 2020s, that this trust is often abused.

Bitcoin relies on mathematics. It depends on open-source code, cryptographic hashes, and rigid rules enforced by nodes throughout the network. It does not care about your lineage, postal code, or management scale. It simply produces a block every 10 minutes, tick-tock, then the next block.

It is this ruthless, unyielding consistency that ultimately crushed institutional resistance. Wall Street realized they were trying to fight gravity. You cannot legislate mathematics out of existence, nor can you use PR to dissolve absolute digital scarcity.

The fiat monetary system teeters under astronomical sovereign debt, endless money printing, and geopolitical turmoil, while Bitcoin is the polar opposite. In a world filled with financial fiction, it is a pure, unmanipulable ledger. Smart money ultimately realized this: Bitcoin is not a hedge against the old system; it is a lifeboat.

Everyone Will Eventually Bow

Let the recent days be inscribed in the annals of financial history, termed "The Great Surrender."

This is a validation for early holders: cypherpunks, retail investors, the believers who held on through an 80% crash, those laughed at by family on Thanksgiving, the visionaries who saw the future before the institutions.

They were right; the suited big shots were wrong.

And now, these big shots are forced to buy this asset from those they once ridiculed, at prices that reflect their years of ignorance.

Goldman bowed, Morgan Stanley bowed, Charles Schwab bowed, the New York Stock Exchange bowed.

They have no choice; the financial architecture of the 21st century is being rewritten on the basis of decentralized protocols.

The narrative has completely flipped. Owning Bitcoin is no longer seen as a risk. In traditional finance, the biggest career risk is actually not allocating Bitcoin. Institutions are aware that the train has left the station; they are rushing to the platform, throwing briefcases onto the train, fearing they will miss the seat.

We have moved past the adoption phase and entered the assimilation phase. But make no mistake: it is not Wall Street that has assimilated Bitcoin; it is Bitcoin that has assimilated Wall Street.

The Trojan horse has entered the city, soldiers are pouring out. The infrastructure is ready, ETFs are being listed for trading, the spot markets are open, and the gatekeepers of the old era are dropping their dignity, just to grab a piece of the action.

Bitcoin cannot be stopped; it was never meant to be stopped. This is an idea born out of necessity, supported by the most powerful computational network in human history.

So, welcome to this revolution, Wall Street giants.