Crypto originated with the goal of enabling people to send, hold, and manage money without banks, yet the industry's trajectory has increasingly favored the institutions it aimed to bypass. Fifteen years later, major banks are building on blockchain infrastructure to serve their own institutional clients, effectively co-opting the technology. JPMorgan, for example, now settles payments using its own deposit token on a public blockchain, demonstrating how traditional finance has integrated crypto tools rather than been replaced by them. This shift marks a reversal of crypto's founding ambition to decentralize finance and eliminate intermediaries. Instead of dismantling Wall Street, blockchain adoption has given established financial firms new efficiencies and settlement mechanisms. The development raises questions about whether crypto's original decentralized ethos can coexist with growing institutional control, or whether traditional finance is steadily absorbing the movement that once positioned itself as its rival.
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