Banks don’t adopt infrastructure because they believe in it. They adopt it when ignoring it costs more than integrating it. Bitcoin rails are at that threshold.
The optimists call this validation. Fifteen years of argument, confirmed by the people most invested in proving it wrong.
The harder question is what happens after.
Every institution that builds on Bitcoin also builds on top of Bitcoin. Intermediation layers. KYC at the edges. Terms that can be revoked. The protocol doesn’t change. The experience does.
I spent eight years building infrastructure for people who wanted to use Bitcoin directly. No permission required. Institutional layers aren’t neutral infrastructure. They’re positioning.
The protocol that makes Bitcoin valuable only survives if enough people are actually using it. Not routing through it. Using it.
The institutions aren’t wrong to build on it. The question is whether Bitcoin is still Bitcoin once you can only reach it through them.