A signal even more intriguing than BlackRock’s support for Bitcoin ETFs has emerged—the world’s second-largest asset management firm, Vanguard Group, has officially opened crypto ETF trading permissions to more than 50 million of its accounts.

What’s Vanguard’s standing on Wall Street? The company’s founder, John Bogle, was a lifelong advocate of long-term value investing and low-cost index strategies, and always looked down on the highly volatile crypto assets. Their conservatism is legendary—Vanguard is essentially synonymous with “prudence.”

But starting December 2, this behemoth managing over $11 trillion in assets is allowing clients to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto ETFs and related fund products.

What does this signify? It’s not that Vanguard has suddenly become bullish on cryptocurrencies, but rather that market forces have compelled it to open this door. An institution that never touched crypto being forced to “loosen up” says even more than those that embraced it voluntarily—Wall Street’s last mainstream fortress can no longer hold out.

The driving force is actually quite pragmatic: if they don’t follow suit, clients will flock to already prepared competitors like Fidelity and Charles Schwab. Entering the space passively, rather than actively, is a clearer sign that the trend is now irreversible.

How big could the potential impact be? With 50 million accounts, even if just 1% of assets flow into crypto, that’s still hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term buying. While this capital won’t flood in all at once, the signal is crystal clear—today’s IBIT trading volume surged in response, with market sentiment quietly brewing.

With the world’s top two asset management giants both opening their doors, the traditional financial world’s barriers to understanding crypto assets are crumbling en masse: Bank of America has already advised financial advisors to allocate 1%-4% of client portfolios to crypto; crypto assets are now officially included as “diversification tools,” similar in status to gold ETFs.

The question is no longer “should you allocate to crypto assets,” but “how much and how to allocate”—a matter of technicality. Crypto assets have officially entered the mainstream financial narrative. Is your portfolio keeping up?