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 what can be described as the most rapid, dazzling, and undisguised value shift in human history.

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

They didn't just surrender; they rushed to crown the victors.

For fifteen years, traditional financial giants have told everyone that Bitcoin is a joke, a Ponzi scheme, a bubble, an illegal trading instrument, a digital tulip, a gimmick created by a bunch of basement-dwelling cypherpunks. They first mocked it, then suppressed it, and now? They're frantically trying to hold onto it.

Let's see how the dignity of these institutions has collectively collapsed in the past few days.

Fortress Collapse: Surrender List

Goldman Sachs: From "Scam Tool" to Bitcoin ETF

That's right, it's Goldman Sachs. The global investment banking behemoth, once jokingly referred to by Rolling Stone as "a vampire squid wrapped around a human's face," is now extending its tentacles into the new realm of digital assets.

For years, Goldman Sachs executives have seized every opportunity to ridicule decentralized currencies. We all remember those disdainful remarks on financial news channels, suited executives adjusting their ties as they confidently told the public: Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Its CEO once publicly declared that Bitcoin is a "fraudulent tool." The purpose of this narrative is to lock wealth within their closed circle so they can continue to collect tolls.

But now, the tune has completely changed; Goldman Sachs is launching a Bitcoin ETF. This hypocrisy is both shocking and predictable. The institution that once warned you to stay away from "scams" is now collecting management fees to hold it for you.

Why the sudden change of heart? Because Wall Street has no eternal morality, only eternal interests. When high-net-worth clients threatened to withdraw their funds and strongly demanded allocation to the best-performing assets of the decade, so-called morality vanished overnight. The "scam" transformed into an "innovative alternative asset." Goldman Sachs didn't have an epiphany; rather, it felt the pressure.

Morgan Stanley: Banned words become the largest IPO in history

If Goldman Sachs' turnaround was a comedy, Morgan Stanley's is a prime example of historical irony. Not long ago, Morgan Stanley was extremely hostile to digital assets, even reportedly banning the term "cryptocurrency" in internal emails. It became Voldemort, an asset class whose name couldn't be spoken. They viewed it as a plague, a virus that would contaminate their prestigious, heavily regulated mahogany conference rooms.

And now, just in the last few days, Morgan Stanley has launched the largest ETF in the company's history.

What is the underlying asset of this record-breaking financial product? That's right, it's Bitcoin.

This asset, which they once tried to erase from their corporate lexicon, has now become a jewel in their modern product lines. Advisors who once couldn't even utter the term are now calling their wealthiest clients, urging them to allocate 1% to 5% of their portfolios to "digital gold." This cognitive dissonance is astonishing, but institutional FOMO has overrided all prohibitions. They've finally realized: you can't stop the future, but you can give it a ticker symbol and sell it to the masses.

Charles Schwab: Opening the door to spot trading to retail investors

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

Charles Schwab represents the average investor, acting as gatekeepers for middle-class wealth, retirement accounts, and mass-market portfolios. For years, they've kept their clients within safe, predictable areas like mutual funds, traditional stocks, and municipal bonds. Want to buy Bitcoin? You have to leave Schwab, venture into the wilderness of crypto exchanges, and manage your own private keys.

Times have changed. By integrating spot crypto trading, Charles Schwab is essentially acknowledging that an investment portfolio without Bitcoin is incomplete. This goes beyond simply offering an ETF; it allows millions of ordinary investors to directly hold the underlying asset through a trusted brokerage account.

The significance of this move for the popularization of Bitcoin cannot be overstated. It places this decentralized orange coin directly next to Apple, Amazon, and the S&P 500, on the dashboard of ordinary American investors. It removes barriers, erases stigma, and opens the floodgates to a massive amount of capital that is eager to enter the market but hesitant to do so.

New York Stock Exchange: Fully committed to building infrastructure

Then there's the heart of traditional finance: the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The once-sacred halls where traders yelled at each other on slips of paper are now quietly and efficiently being used to build dedicated crypto infrastructure.

The NYSE isn't just facilitating trades; it's laying the infrastructure. This infrastructure is online, integrated, and "runs as smoothly as a cat on a warm laptop." The debate ended when the underlying systems of global stocks decided to pave the way for digital assets.

The New York Stock Exchange won't build infrastructure for fleeting trends, nor will it invest millions of dollars in technology integration for Ponzi schemes. They only build systems for the enduring. By integrating crypto assets at the exchange level, the old system formally connects itself to the new digital paradigm. They acknowledge that future value transfers, settlements, and asset ownership will at least partially operate on crypto networks.

Hypocritical economics

To understand this massive and rapid transformation, we must go beyond the surface announcements and delve into the underlying psychology and economic logic of Wall Street.

"At first they ignored you, then they mocked you, then they attacked you, and finally you won."

This statement is often mistakenly attributed to Gandhi, but it holds universal truth in the field of disruptive innovation, perfectly aligning with the history of Bitcoin's confrontation with traditional finance.

The period of being ignored and ridiculed (2009-2017)

Initially, Wall Street paid no attention. Bitcoin was merely a toy for cypherpunks and libertarians. As it began to gain traction, ridicule ensued, with Bitcoin being dismissed as a "Monopoly game coin." A decentralized, leaderless network with a fixed total supply of 21 million dared to challenge the US dollar as the sovereign currency? At Davos and Wall Street parties, it was a top joke.

Attack period (2017-2023)

As Bitcoin repeatedly rose from the ashes during bear markets, laughter turned to fear. It was during this period that figures like Dimon threatened to fire any trader who dared to buy Bitcoin, the SEC launched a relentless crackdown, 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 doesn't need any of that. It's peer-to-peer, self-custodied, and mathematically transparent. That terrified them.

Surrender period (current stage)

What happens when you spend 15 years trying to kill an idea, and it just won't die; what happens when it grows into a multi-trillion dollar asset class that's completely out of your control?

You have no choice but to surrender.

Wall Street's shift did not stem from a sudden intellectual awakening. They didn't read the Bitcoin white paper last night and suddenly grasp the intricacies of Satoshi Nakamoto's proof-of-work mechanism.

No, they surrendered because Wall Street is essentially a fee-collecting machine. For the past decade or so, a historic and massive transfer of wealth has occurred entirely outside their ecosystem. Native crypto exchanges have raked in tens of billions, while established banks, hampered by arrogance and regulatory constraints, have been left standing by.

Ultimately, the numbers speak for themselves. The opportunity cost of ignoring Bitcoin is prohibitively high. They've come to realize the ultimate truth of our time: if you can't destroy it, join it.

They decided that since people were going to buy Bitcoin, they should buy it through the Goldman Sachs ETF, allowing Goldman Sachs to collect a 0.25% management fee; and since they were going to trade it, they should trade it through Charles Schwab. Wall Street didn't embrace the core spirit of Bitcoin; it merely acknowledged its inevitability and tried to get a piece of the pie.

The necessity of mathematics

This series of events is full of poetic justice.

Traditional finance relies on trust: you must believe that the central bank will not devalue the currency, that commercial banks will not gamble away your deposits, and that the clearinghouse will settle accounts normally.

History has repeatedly shown that this trust has often been abused, from the 2008 financial crisis to the hyperinflation of the 2020s.

Bitcoin relies on mathematics. It relies on open-source code, cryptographic hashes, and rigid rules enforced by all nodes on the network. It doesn't care about your lineage, zip code, or administrative size. It simply produces a block every 10 minutes, tick, and then the next block.

It was this relentless, unwavering consistency that ultimately shattered the institutions' resistance. Wall Street realized they were trying to defy gravity. You can't abolish mathematics through legislation, nor can you eliminate absolute numerical scarcity through public relations.

The fiat currency system teeters on the brink of collapse amid astronomical sovereign debt, endless money printing, and geopolitical instability, while Bitcoin stands in stark contrast. In a world rife with financial fabrications, it is a pure, unmanipulated ledger. Smart money has finally realized this: Bitcoin is not a hedge against the old system, but a lifeboat.

Everyone will eventually bow their heads.

Let the past few days be recorded in financial history as the "Great Surrender".

This is a recognition of early adopters: cypherpunks, retail investors, believers who held on through an 80% crash, people who were ridiculed by their families on Thanksgiving, and dreamers who saw the future earlier than institutions.

They are right; the suit-wearing big shots are wrong.

Now, these bigwigs are forced to buy the asset from those they once mocked at a price that reflects their years of ignorance.

Goldman Sachs bowed its head, Morgan Stanley bowed its head, Charles Schwab bowed its head, and the New York Stock Exchange bowed its head.

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

The narrative has completely reversed. Holding Bitcoin is no longer seen as a risk. In traditional finance, the biggest professional risk is actually not having a Bitcoin portfolio. Institutions realize the train has left the station, and they are scrambling to the platform, throwing their briefcases on board, afraid they won't have time to secure a seat.

We've moved beyond the adoption phase and entered the assimilation phase. But make no mistake: it wasn't Wall Street that assimilated Bitcoin, but rather Bitcoin that assimilated Wall Street.

The Trojan Horse has entered the city, and soldiers are pouring out. Infrastructure is in place, ETFs are listed, the spot market is open, and the old gatekeepers have abandoned their dignity, all for a share of the profits.

Bitcoin cannot be stopped, it never could be stopped. This is a concept that arose out of necessity, backed by the most powerful computing network in human history.

So, welcome to this revolution, Wall Street giants.