When Crypto Stopped Being Fringe (And We Stopped Noticing)
Bitcoin is $110,000. Ethereum is back above $4,000. Layer 2 tokens are rallying. The crypto market is up 3% in 24 hours. This is all routine now. Boring, even. And that's precisely when we should pay attention.
There was a moment—maybe five years ago, maybe ten, depending on your arrival to the space—when crypto seemed transgressive. Dangerous. A challenge to the entire monetary order. Headlines shrieked. Regulators frothed. Senators held hearings where they didn't understand what questions to ask. It was exciting in a subversive way.
That era is dead. And nobody held a funeral.
The Institutional Normalization
Spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs have drawn more than $70 billion in inflows since the beginning of 2025. Let that sink in. Not inflows to crypto as a sector. Inflows to registered, exchange-traded products, accessible through any brokerage account, taxable at standard capital gains rates, held by your grandmother's financial advisor.
Bitcoin has risen beyond the $111,000 mark and large gains are recorded in the key assets. BlackRock's IBIT is approaching $100 billion in assets under management. Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade coming in November promises scaling improvements that will attract more institutional capital. This isn't news. This is infrastructure.
The transformation happened so quietly that most market participants didn't register the shift. When Bitcoin dipped to $104,000 on October 10 after the tariff shock—a $21 billion liquidation in leveraged positions—the reaction wasn't "crypto is dying again." It was "crypto overextended, let's find support." Damage assessment. Risk management. Institutional thinking.
Compare this to March 2020, when Bitcoin crashed 50% in two days and everyone declared blockchain dead forever. The emotional temperature was completely different. Now? Dips are buying opportunities for patient capital. Crypto has become boring enough to be trusted.
What The ETF Expansion Really Means
Asset managers 21Shares, Bitwise, and WisdomTree launched physically backed Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs on the London Stock Exchange this week, joining BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETP. These are London Stock Exchange listings. Tax-efficient wrappers. ISAs and SIPPs for UK investors. This is mainstreaming at the infrastructure level.
The downstream effect isn't flashy. It doesn't make headlines that drive clicks. But it's seismic: crypto is no longer something you have to go find. It's not a separate asset class that requires special knowledge or a separate brokerage account or a hardware wallet or an email to a friend in tech. It's just there, in the same product universe as gilts and index funds and dividend-paying stocks.
Institutional investors don't take risks with infrastructure. They take risks with returns. When a major asset manager builds out crypto infrastructure, they're not doing it as a novelty or a PR play. They're doing it because the flows demand it and the regulatory path has clarified enough that the legal risk is manageable. That's a statement about maturation, not speculative enthusiasm.
The Real Tension
But here's where it gets interesting. Retail trading of crypto derivatives remains prohibited as the FCA finalizes broader crypto market regulations set to take effect by 2026. So we have a situation: institutional access is expanding, regulatory frameworks are being formalized, capital is flowing in. But retail speculation is being actively suppressed by regulators.
This is the opposite of the 2017 or 2021 dynamics, where retail FOMO drove prices and institutional players were skeptical. Now the vector is reversed. Institutions have regulatory permission. Retail doesn't. If this pattern holds, we get a fundamentally different kind of market: one driven by capital allocators with fiduciary responsibilities, not by subreddits and Twitter discourse.
That doesn't mean less volatility. It means different volatility. Driven by macro flows, correlation with equities and bonds, Fed policy, and geopolitical positioning. Bitcoin won't act like a pure risk asset anymore—it'll act like a financial asset, which it increasingly is.
The Macroeconomic Backdrop
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran advocated for a half percentage point interest rate cut when the Fed meets later this month, while Fed Governor Christopher Waller backed another quarter-point reduction. The Fed is splintering. The lone dissenter from the recent September decision was the newly appointed Fed Governor, Stephan Miran, who was in favor of a more aggressive 0.50% reduction.
Central bank disunity is a symptom. It suggests the Fed itself is uncertain about the path forward—torn between labor market fragility (job gains have slowed; the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% in August) and persistent inflation (still running above the 2% target). Q2 GDP came in at 3.8% quarter over quarter, boosted by healthy consumption, so the economy isn't collapsing. But the trend line is unmistakable: growth is moderating, labor demand is softening, and policymakers are in what amounts to a triage situation.
In this environment, crypto becomes valuable as a monetary hedge—not because it's transgressive, but because it represents an alternative store of value outside the traditional system. When the Fed is debating whether to cut 25 or 50 basis points, and you're a large institution thinking about currency depreciation and inflation, Bitcoin at $110,000 is rational. Not exciting. Not ideological. Rational.
The Crypto-Macro Nexus
The crypto market is in recovery mode as Bitcoin climbed back above $110,000, rising over 2.8%, and Ethereum crossed $4,000, buoyed by improving sentiment over global trade. President Donald Trump signaled a softer stance on tariffs. That soft Trump stance on tariffs directly triggered a crypto rally. Not because traders read crypto blogs. Because the Fed model improved, which fed into risk-on sentiment across all asset classes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are expected to meet in Malaysia this week to defuse tensions that previously triggered a historic US$21 billion liquidation across the crypto market earlier this month. This is the current state of play: crypto price action is tethered to trade negotiations. To Fed policy. To employment numbers and inflation data. The same data that moves equities and bonds.
Crypto isn't a separate market anymore. It's a financial asset that moves within the larger system of global capital flows, macroeconomic signals, and institutional positioning. That's the real story of October 2025. Not the price. The meaning underneath the price.
What Comes Next
The path is laid. Regulatory clarity is arriving—not perfect clarity, but enough. Institutional frameworks are being built. Capital is flowing in through formal channels. Retail is being cordoned off from the derivative side but retains access to spot exposure.
What this produces is a financial asset class, mature and integrated into the broader system. Less prone to the absurd thousand-percent rallies of yore. More prone to grinding, multi-year wealth accumulation driven by macro policy and capital flows. Less culture war. More portfolio theory.
Some will mourn the loss of crypto's transgressive edge. Fair enough. But what's emerging—a real, boring, institutionalized store of value with regulatory approval and $70 billion in annual institutional inflows—is actually more powerful than what came before. It's durable. It's real.
That's worth paying attention to, even if it's no longer exciting.