Old money has begun to adopt cryptocurrency already I think, as evidenced by the strong run-up ahead of the Christmas holiday. The fact that crypto has struggled through Christmas is some evidence of this, as the old money players tend to be highly risk averse. With many of them leaving thoughts of markets behind from Christmas through the New Year it makes sense that they would be selling heading into the Christmas holiday, which is precisely what we saw on Thursday and Friday (December 21st & 22nd).
As I mentioned above, the more people entering the space will send prices increasingly higher and as the price of bitcoin rises, the relative value of other assets in relation to bitcoin will fall. There is no way for old money to avoid this, but you can be sure they will still begin to amass fairly large positions in order to hedge their risk in other asset classes.
I would also expect old money players to remain in the more established cryptocurrencies i.e. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin. The gains from Ripple could also be coming from institutional money. It's a bank-to-bank coin after all, so it makes sense that bankers and those tied to them would be interested in Ripple.
The old money players may be risk-averse and slow to change, but they certainly aren't stupid, and despite continued FUD from that group you can be sure they are slowly entering the crypto arena.
Good points; agreed! If anything, it'll just be another avenue for them to keep gaining wealth.