Bitcoin: the Wall Street collective surrender

An apology worth a trillion dollars
In October 2017, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stood at a podium in New York and said one thing to the whole world:
“Bitcoin is a scam.”
He even added something even harsher: “Stupider than the tulip bubble. Any trader who trades Bitcoin will be fired.”
Nine years later, in 2026, JPMorgan Chase’s analyst team released a report, written in black and white:
“If investors begin unwinding the defensive positions built for Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin could get more upside support than gold.”
From “a fraud” to “better than gold.” This isn’t one person changing their mind—it’s the entire Wall Street collectively surrendering.
Surrender checklist: one slap after another
Let’s line up Wall Street’s big shots’ “face-change history”:
Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase)
In 2017: “Bitcoin is a scam.”
In 2024: Morgan Stanley launches a spot Bitcoin ETF (MSBT), pulling in hundreds of millions on launch day
In September 2026: Morgan Stanley’s team publicly says Bitcoin may outperform gold
Larry Fink (CEO of BlackRock, head of the world’s largest asset manager)
In 2017: “Bitcoin is a money-laundering index”
In 2024: BlackRock launches iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), becoming the fastest-growing ETF product in history
In September 2026: IBIT holds roughly 784,000 BTC, worth more than $67 billion. BlackRock executives reveal that major clients are using BTC ETFs as collateral to buy homes and cars
James Gorman (former CEO of Morgan Stanley)
In 2018: “Bitcoin isn’t real.”
In 2024: Morgan Stanley allows clients to hold Bitcoin ETFs
In 2026: Morgan Stanley increases its holdings in Bitcoin ETFs by 23%
UBS Group
In 2022: “Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.”
In 2025: UBS launches Bitcoin structured products
In 2026: UBS bullish options positions surge by 24x
Goldman Sachs
In 2018: “Bitcoin is not a legitimate asset”
In 2025: Goldman Sachs becomes the leading market maker for Bitcoin futures
Howard Lutnick (CEO of ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange)
In 2018: “Bitcoin is garbage.”
In 2025: An ICE platform becomes one of the largest crypto trading platforms in the U.S.
This isn’t one person’s change of mind—it’s an industry’s surrender. From CEOs to analysts, from investment banks to asset-management giants, from hedge funds to pension funds—Wall Street’s once-loud anti-Bitcoin voices fell silent one after another, then joined in one after another.
September 21: the acceleration of surrender
If the surrender of the past two years was still “incremental,” then what happened on September 21, 2026 was an “accelerated surrender.”
On this day, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net inflow of $998.95 million in total—its largest single day of capital inflows since October 2025, and the ninth-highest one-day record since ETFs launched in January 2024.
Dissect it further and it’s even more shocking:
BlackRock’s IBIT: pulls in $381 million in a single day
ARK & 21Shares’ ARKB: net inflow of $289 million
Fidelity’s FBTC: net inflow of $239 million
Morgan Stanley MSBT: net inflow of $61.67 million
Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said this was the largest day by assets for U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs since last October.
And just three days earlier, on September 18, these ETFs recorded only $6.2 million in net inflows for the whole week—the lowest weekly net inflow since 141 weeks ago.
From $6.2 million in a week to $1 billion in a day. Three days.
That’s the acceleration of surrender.
The moment to get out of the jam: why surrender now?
Why now? Why not six months ago, a year ago?
Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart provided a precise number: the average cost basis of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF investors is about $81,722.
On September 22, 2026, Bitcoin quotes at $86,000.
This means that, for the first time since January 2026, the average ETF holder has returned to being in profit.
Hawkeye Digital president David Wachsman explained a market psychology phenomenon: when investors have been underwater for a long time, a price rebound back to the cost basis often easily triggers “sell orders to break even”—everyone finally isn’t losing money anymore, so they run.
But this time, there wasn’t one.
After Bitcoin broke above the cost line at $81,722, it didn’t trigger selling pressure—instead it sparked nearly $1 billion in net inflow in a single day.
What does that mean?
This shows Wall Street isn’t doing “get out of the jam and run.” It’s doing “get out of the jam and add to the position.”
They’re not admitting they were wrong—they’re doubling down on the act of admitting they were wrong.
The real reason behind the surrender
Why did Wall Street surrender? Not because of faith, not because of idealism—because of a cold, hard-nosed business logic:
If clients want to buy, you can’t refuse to sell.
BlackRock’s Fink told the truth in an interview in 2025:
“I still don’t think Bitcoin has any intrinsic value. But my clients ask me about Bitcoin products every day. If I don’t offer it, they’ll go buy it from someone else.”
Translated, it means: Wall Street doesn’t care whether Bitcoin is a “fraud.” They care about market share. When clients vote with their feet, a CEO’s personal opinion is worth nothing.
And clients are voting with their feet.
OTC (over-the-counter) market trading volume rose 35% year over year in 2026 Q2, with about 60% coming from Asian buyers
Addresses holding between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC are showing an accumulation trend with a score close to a perfect rating in the $80,000–$90,000 range
Long-term holders control 83% of the circulating supply, reaching an all-time high
Open interest in Bitcoin futures rises to more than $57 billion, the highest level since May
Big money isn’t hesitating—it’s accelerating.
Bitwise CIO’s declaration: the crypto winter is over
On September 22, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan issued an assessment that could be called a “declaration”:
“A crypto winter that has lasted nearly a year has ended. This could become the strongest and longest-lasting bull cycle in crypto history.”
Hougan’s core argument isn’t price—it’s a deeper observation: the divergence between price and fundamentals.
Over the past stretch of time, while crypto asset prices have fallen, the industry’s fundamentals have improved structurally: more blockchain transaction activity, greater participation from large institutions like BlackRock, and a pattern of “cyclical declines in price paired with structural improvement in fundamentals” has already formed.
He expects crypto asset prices to further catch up to changes in fundamentals later this year.
More importantly, Hougan pointed out a change in the direction of capital flows: investors are rotating back from AI stocks into crypto.
“The earlier AI boom had almost sucked up all the attention in the market. Any momentum-chasing investors put their focus on AI. Now that the AI trade has started to stabilize a bit, we’re seeing funds flow back into the crypto market again.”
Bitcoin has gained about 44% over the past month, clearly outperforming gold and U.S. stocks. This isn’t a rebound—it’s a pivot.
The last stubborn mouth
Among all the big shots on Wall Street, there’s one person who deserves to be singled out.
Warren Buffett, the head of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful investors in human history.
In 2018, Buffett said Bitcoin was “roughly the square of rat poison.” In 2022, he added, “Even if you gave me all the Bitcoins, I wouldn’t accept them, because I don’t know what I’d do with them.”
To this day, Buffett hasn’t changed his view. Berkshire has no Bitcoin product, no ETF, no structured derivatives.
But note one fact:
Berkshire’s stock price has risen about 20% over the past year. BlackRock’s IBIT has risen more than 100% over the same period.
The market has already voted with its feet. Buffett doesn’t have to buy Bitcoin, but he can’t stop his clients from buying it, his competitors from selling it, or his analysts from studying it.
When even the last stubborn mouth goes silent, the surrender is complete.
The meaning of surrender
Wall Street’s collective surrender isn’t Bitcoin’s victory.
It’s a victory of fact over fiction.
Back in 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote in the white paper “a fully peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” nobody on Wall Street was watching.
In 2013, when Bitcoin first surged above $1,000, Wall Street was mocking it.
In 2017, when Bitcoin surged to $20,000, Wall Street was warning.
In 2021, when Bitcoin surged to $69,000, Wall Street was hesitating.
In 2025, when Bitcoin surged to $126,000, Wall Street lined up.
In 2026, when Bitcoin was around $86,000, Wall Street surrendered.
From mocking to warning to hesitating to lining up to surrendering—it took 17 years.
Seventeen years ago, one person mined the genesis block with a laptop. Seventeen years later, the world’s largest financial empires lined up to admit it—we were wrong.
This isn’t a story about money. It’s a story about truth.
When something is true, it doesn’t need anyone to defend it. It just needs to stay alive.
And Bitcoin has already lived for 17 years.
Epilogue
On September 21, Bitcoin ETF inflows were nearly $1 billion.
That same day, the topic discussed at the morning meeting by analysts at one of Wall Street’s oldest investment banks—Morgan Stanley, with more than 230 years of history—was: Has Bitcoin already surpassed gold to become a better store of value?
230 years ago, when this bank was founded, gold was the only hard currency.
230 years later, they’re debating whether a digital asset defined by code, with no physical form, born only 17 years ago, is “harder” than gold.
The answer is already written in the $998.95 million of capital flows.
Wall Street took 17 years to get to this point. But once it starts moving, it won’t turn back.
Surrender is never the end. Surrender is the beginning of a new war.
Data as of September 23, 2026. Bitcoin quotes around $85,900, with an approximately 44% cumulative gain over the past month. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded cumulative net inflows of $56.16 billion, with total assets of about $110.14 billion.