VANGUARD'S ETF PIVOT JUST UNLOCKED A $9 TRILLION BITCOIN FLOOD
When sentiment is down in Bitcoin like it is right now, even the best news can slip by unnoticed.
But this past week may go down as the most important of 2025.
What we witnessed was the complete capitulation of some of Bitcoin’s harshest critics.
A bending of the knee from the titans of Wall Street.
Vanguard, the fortress that built passive investing, spent years telling its clients Bitcoin was “speculative,” “volatile,” and unfit for a long-term portfolio.
And yet this week, 50 million Vanguard customers woke up to find Bitcoin ETFs quietly unlocked inside their brokerage accounts.
Then came Bank of America.
A firm that once told advisers not to even say the word Bitcoin unless a client said it first… is now instructing 15,000 advisers to actively recommend a 1 to 4% allocation.
And to round out the week, Charles Schwab, overseeing more than $12 trillion in assets, announced they will enter the spot crypto trading market, with the clear intent to do what they do best:
slash fees to near zero and take on the entire crypto exchange ecosystem with cheaper, faster, more seamless execution.
Three pillars of legacy finance, capitulating all in a single week.
But with it comes a question the Bitcoin community can no longer ignore.
What world are we moving toward?
There are two visions of the future that this week helped make more clear.
The first is the one Hal Finney predicted over a decade ago: Bitcoin as “high-powered money,” the reserve asset banks use to settle with each other while the average person interacts only with digital Bitcoin IOUs wrapped by familiar institutions.
Or does the sovereign individual vision survive? A world where everyone holds their own keys, runs their own node, and Bitcoin remains a tool of freedom instead of another tool for legacy finance?
Because as Simon Dixon warns, every Bitcoin sitting in a custodial structure strengthens the ability of banks to build layers of paper claims on top of it… recreating the same fractional-reserve world Bitcoin was born to replace.
Which path wins?
Is this institutional embrace the validation of Bitcoin’s destiny, or a sophisticated attempt to cage the beast?
Maybe the future is a hybrid.
Bitcoin becomes institutional at the core, but remains sovereign at the edges.
A three-body problem where both worlds orbit each other in unstable, unpredictable ways… until they collapse into a new equilibrium built on Bitcoin settlement, whether the banks want it or not.
The great capitulation of Wall Street is complete.
Rather than fighting and demeaning Bitcoin, they’re fighting for the fees you pay when you buy Bitcoin.
Now comes the real question:
Will the Bitcoin community bend to Wall Street… or hold the line (and their own keys)?
The battle for your seed phrase, and the future of money, is more apparent than ever.
