At the poker table of Wall Street, a bloodless takeover has just occurred.

In just 10 days, four financial giants controlling over $20 trillion acted in unison, their moves as coordinated as if they had rehearsed.

Vanguard—the $11 trillion asset management giant that once openly dissed cryptocurrencies as a “speculative game”—suddenly opened crypto ETF trading access to its 50 million clients. While still claiming “this is just a defensive strategy,” they’ve already opened the door.

JPMorgan was even bolder. They directly filed for leveraged structured notes linked to Bitcoin ETFs. In simple terms, this lets investors bet on Bitcoin’s future price; in theory, there’s no cap on the upside, but the risk is total loss of principal.

Goldman Sachs spent $2 billion to acquire ETF issuer Innovator Capital—not just buying a shell, but securing a direct freeway to retail investors’ wallets.

Bank of America isn’t lagging behind either. Starting January next year, its 15,000 wealth advisors can proactively recommend clients allocate up to 4% of their assets to Bitcoin. Note: “proactively recommend.”

The timing is uncanny. Just as retail investors panic-sold a record $3.47 billion from Bitcoin ETFs in November, these giants had already paved the way to take over. Chips thrown away by weak hands are being eaten up by the strong.

But that’s just the surface.

The deeper play: they want to tame Bitcoin. Nasdaq is expanding Bitcoin ETF options products by 40 times—the goal is clear: use a massive arsenal of derivatives to suppress Bitcoin’s volatility, turning it into a “well-behaved” traditional asset.

MSCI index rules are about to change, potentially forcing $1.16 billion in mechanical sell-offs. This kind of “stress test” is essentially clearing the field, creating a more comfortable entry environment for institutional money.

Bitcoin hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been absorbed by Wall Street.

The rebellious flame ignited by Satoshi Nakamoto is now being refined into a standardized product that fits traditional financial rules. In the future, Bitcoin will look more and more like a new asset class governed by Wall Street’s pricing logic.

This isn’t failure—it’s another form of victory—or, perhaps, compromise.