By Isaac • August 16, 2026 11:26 am •
Bitcoin did not put the banks out of business.
It did something more consequential: it forced them to choose whether they wanted to keep fighting digital assets or start selling them.
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The answer is now visible across custody desks, brokerage platforms, tokenization projects and regulated trading products. Traditional finance is moving deeper into crypto.
Banks are absorbing the parts customers want and connecting them to infrastructure the old system already controls.
That does not mean the original Bitcoin argument failed. It means the argument changed the industry it was aimed at.
CoinDesk’s current reporting captures the turn through interviews with executives on both sides of the old divide. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said two financial institutions
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