Goldman Sachs and Others Bow Their Heads—Bitcoin Finally Breaks Through Wall Street’s Doors

By Sylvain Saurel

Translated by Chopper, Foresight News

Over the past few days, the axis of the financial world has completely shifted. We have just witnessed the swiftest, most dazzling—and most unapologetic—value realignment in human history.

Wall Street—the impregnable fortress of traditional finance, the ivory tower of fiat currency—has formally raised the white flag.

They are not merely surrendering; they are racing to crown the victor.

For fifteen years, titans of traditional finance dismissed Bitcoin at every turn—as a joke, a Ponzi scheme, a bubble, a tool for illicit transactions, “digital tulips,” and a gimmick cooked up by basement-dwelling cypherpunks. First came ridicule, then suppression—and now? They’re scrambling to hold it.

Let’s examine how institutional dignity collectively collapsed over these past days.

The Fortress Crumbles: The Surrender List

Goldman Sachs: From “Fraud Tool” to Bitcoin ETF

Yes, that Goldman Sachs—the global investment banking behemoth once dubbed by Rolling Stone magazine “the vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”—has now extended its tentacles into the new digital asset domain.

For years, Goldman executives seized every opportunity to mock decentralized currencies. We all remember their disdain on financial news channels—suits impeccably tailored, ties adjusted mid-sentence, confidently assuring the public that Bitcoin possessed “no intrinsic value.” Its CEO even publicly declared Bitcoin a “fraud tool.” This narrative served one purpose: locking wealth inside their closed ecosystem so they could keep collecting tolls.

Now, however, the tone has flipped entirely. Goldman Sachs is launching a Bitcoin ETF. This hypocrisy is both shocking—and utterly predictable. The same institution that warned you to stay away from the “scam” is now charging 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 pull their capital unless granted exposure to the best-performing asset of the decade, those “morals” evaporated overnight. The “scam” was instantly reborn as an “innovative alternative asset.” Goldman didn’t have an epiphany—it felt the pressure.

Morgan Stanley: From Banned Word to Largest-Ever Launch

If Goldman’s reversal reads like farce, Morgan Stanley’s is historical irony incarnate. Not long ago, Morgan Stanley was openly hostile toward digital assets—even reportedly banning use of the term “cryptocurrency” in internal emails. It became Voldemort: “the asset class you must not name.” They treated it like a plague, a virus capable of contaminating their august, heavily regulated mahogany boardrooms.

And yet, just days ago, Morgan Stanley executed the largest ETF launch in its corporate history.

What underlies this record-breaking financial product? Yes—Bitcoin.

The very asset they tried to erase from their corporate lexicon is now the crown jewel of their modern product suite. Advisors who couldn’t even type the word are now calling their wealthiest clients, urging them to allocate 1–5% of their portfolios to “digital gold.” This cognitive dissonance is staggering—but institutional FOMO has overridden every prohibition. They’ve finally realized: you can’t ban the future, but you *can* assign it a ticker symbol and sell it to the masses.

Charles Schwab: Opening Spot Trading to Retail Investors

While investment banks played the ETF game, Charles Schwab went straight to the point—announcing it would open direct spot cryptocurrency trading for its massive client base.

Schwab represents ordinary investors—the stewards of middle-class wealth, retirement accounts, and mainstream investment portfolios. For years, it confined clients to mutual funds, traditional equities, and municipal bonds: safe, predictable domains. Want to buy Bitcoin? You had to leave Schwab, venture into the wild frontier of crypto exchanges, and manage your own private keys.

Times have changed. By enabling spot crypto trading, Schwab effectively concedes: a portfolio without Bitcoin is incomplete. This isn’t just about offering another ETF—it’s about letting millions of everyday investors hold the underlying asset directly through a trusted brokerage account.

The significance of this move for Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption cannot be overstated. It places this decentralized orange coin squarely alongside Apple, Amazon, and the S&P 500 on the average American investor’s dashboard. It eliminates barriers, erases stigma, and opens the floodgates for vast pools of capital—curious, eager, yet previously hesitant.

New York Stock Exchange: Building Infrastructure Full-Throttle

Then there’s the heart of traditional finance: the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). That sacred hall where traders once shouted orders across paper slips is now quietly, efficiently building dedicated crypto infrastructure.

The NYSE isn’t merely facilitating trades—it’s laying pipes. This infrastructure is live, integrated, and “running as smoothly as a cat napping on a warm laptop.” When the foundational system powering global equities decides to pave roads and build bridges for digital assets, the debate is over.

The NYSE doesn’t build infrastructure for passing fads—or Ponzi schemes. It invests millions in technical integration only for things that endure. By integrating crypto assets at the exchange level, the old system has officially connected itself to the new digital paradigm. It acknowledges that future value transfer, settlement, and asset ownership will—at least in part—run on cryptographic networks.

The Economics of Hypocrisy

To understand this massive, rapid transformation, we must look beyond press releases and probe Wall Street’s underlying psychology and economic logic.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Though often misattributed to Gandhi, this adage holds universal truth in the realm of disruptive innovation—and perfectly captures Bitcoin’s arc against traditional finance.

Ignorance & Ridicule (2009–2017)

In the early days, Wall Street simply didn’t care. Bitcoin was just a toy for cypherpunks and libertarians. As it began gaining traction, ridicule set in—disparaged as “Monopoly money.” A network with a fixed supply of 21 million, decentralized, leaderless—daring to challenge the U.S. dollar’s monetary sovereignty? At Davos cocktail parties and Wall Street galas, it was the ultimate punchline.

Attack Phase (2017–2023)

When Bitcoin repeatedly rose from bear-market ashes, laughter turned to fear. It was during this phase that Jamie Dimon threatened to fire any trader caught buying Bitcoin, the SEC launched relentless crackdowns, and media outlets published obituaries declaring “Bitcoin is dead”—hundreds of times.

They attacked it because it threatened their business model. Traditional banks rely on gatekeepers, intermediaries, and fractional-reserve alchemy—none of which Bitcoin needs. It’s peer-to-peer, self-custodied, mathematically transparent. That terrified them.

Surrender Phase (Present Day)

What happens when you spend fifteen years trying to strangle an idea—and it refuses to die? When it grows into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class entirely outside your control?

You surrender.

Wall Street’s pivot wasn’t sparked by sudden enlightenment. They didn’t read the Bitcoin whitepaper last night and suddenly grasp the elegance of Satoshi Nakamoto’s proof-of-work mechanism.

No—they surrendered because Wall Street, at its core, is a fee-extraction machine. For over a decade, a historic wealth transfer occurred entirely outside their ecosystem. Native crypto exchanges captured tens of billions in revenue, while legacy banks stood idle—hamstrung by arrogance and regulatory constraints.

In the end, numbers told the story. The opportunity cost of ignoring Bitcoin became unbearable. They recognized the era’s ultimate truth: if you can’t kill it, join it.

So they decided: if people are going to buy Bitcoin, let them do it via a Goldman Sachs ETF—so Goldman collects 0.25% in management fees; if they’re going to trade, let them do it on Schwab. Wall Street hasn’t embraced Bitcoin’s philosophical core—it’s merely acknowledged its inevitability and moved to claim a piece of the pie.

The Mathematical Inevitability

This sequence of events carries poetic justice.

Traditional finance relies on trust: you must trust central banks not to debase currency, commercial banks not to gamble away your deposits, clearinghouses to settle correctly.

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

Bitcoin relies on mathematics: open-source code, cryptographic hashing, rigid rules enforced by nodes across the network. It cares nothing for your lineage, ZIP code, or asset-management scale. It simply produces a block every ten minutes—tick—and then the next block.

It was precisely this relentless, unwavering consistency that ultimately shattered institutional resistance. Wall Street realized it was fighting gravity. You cannot legislate away mathematics. You cannot spin away absolute digital scarcity.

Fiat systems wobble under astronomical sovereign debt, endless money printing, and geopolitical turmoil—while Bitcoin stands in stark contrast. In a world saturated with financial fiction, it offers a pure, tamper-proof ledger. Smart money saw this clearly: Bitcoin isn’t just a hedge against the old system—it’s a lifeboat.

Everyone Will Bow

Let these past few days be enshrined in financial history as “The Great Surrender.”

It validates early holders: cypherpunks, retail investors, believers who held through 80% drawdowns, those mocked by family at Thanksgiving dinner, visionaries who saw the future before institutions did.

They were right. The suited elites were wrong.

And now, those elites are forced to buy this asset—at prices reflecting their years of ignorance—from the very people they once ridiculed.

Goldman Sachs bowed. Morgan Stanley bowed. Charles Schwab bowed. The New York Stock Exchange bowed.

They had no choice. The 21st-century financial architecture is being rewritten—on decentralized protocols.

The narrative has flipped entirely. Holding Bitcoin is no longer seen as risky. Within traditional finance, the greatest career risk is *not* holding Bitcoin. Institutions realize the train has already left the station—and they’re sprinting full-tilt toward the platform, tossing briefcases onto the departing car, desperate to grab a seat.

We’ve moved past adoption—and entered assimilation. But make no mistake: it’s not Wall Street assimilating Bitcoin. It’s Bitcoin assimilating Wall Street.

The Trojan horse has entered the city. Soldiers are pouring out. Infrastructure is ready. ETFs are live. Spot markets are open. Old-world gatekeepers have lowered their dignity—just to get a slice.

Bitcoin cannot be stopped. It never could be. It is an idea whose time has come—backed by the most powerful computational network in human history.

So welcome to the revolution, Wall Street titans.