Meltem Demirors Says Banks Won as Bitcoin ETFs Pull Crypto Into Wall Street’s Orbit

The Institutional Paradox

Meltem Demirors, founder and general partner of early-stage fund Crucible, argues that institutional access hasn’t made bitcoin more useful. Instead, it has triggered an identity crisis, absorbing crypto into the very financial system it was built to disrupt. Speaking during a recent interview on Fox Business, Demirors specifically identified spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as a decision that supports her argument.

“My view is [that] crypto has an identity crisis. Shoving bitcoin into ETF did nothing to make bitcoin more useful. I spent 11 years of my life extremely excited about the opportunity to use bitcoin and crypto to change the financial system. Ultimately, the banks won,” Demirors said in the interview.

Built on cyberpunk ideals, bitcoin was envisioned as a decentralized and peer-to-peer electronic cash system that bypasses central banks and operates outside traditional financial structures. However, in the last few years, the focus has pivoted toward building infrastructure to support institutional ETFs and onboarding Wall Street capital. This is in addition to its use as an investment or speculative asset.

A significant facet of Demirors’ current thesis is that crypto is shifting from being purely an alternative financial network to serving as foundational infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI). This shifts crypto’s identity from a “sovereign currency alternative” to a B2B tech utility layer, fundamentally changing who uses it and why.

Bitcoin’s perceived pivot has increasingly alienated early supporters of the cryptocurrency, with some, like Mark Cuban, dumping most of his coins. Others are now touting coins like Zcash as digital assets that still adhere to crypto’s founding principles.

However, pragmatists have pushed back on Demirors’ assertions, insisting that the integration of crypto not only into traditional financial systems but also into political campaigns and regulatory frameworks is a necessary maturation. For this faction, survival and scale require playing by the rules of traditional finance and state infrastructure. Others, like social media user Shekina Job, believe the current setup is exactly what crypto needs.

“ Crypto doesn’t need an identity crisis. It needs optionality, self-custody for purists and ETFs for everyday investors. That balance is bullish for America,” Job said in an X post.

Yet, for purists, this institutional embrace is seen as a dilution of crypto’s core principles. They argue that when major asset managers dictate the direction of the market, the technology loses its anti-establishment edge, becoming just another risk-on asset class tightly correlated with tech stocks and macro liquidity cycles.

While others believe that ETFs have made bitcoin more accessible, they agree with Demirors’ main argument. One social media user said bitcoin’s lack of utility makes it just a speculative asset.

“ETFs won the access battle, but she’s right that utility stalled — price action without usability is just speculation with extra steps,” the user said.

While Western markets debate whether bitcoin will remain a radical financial alternative or merely morph into a back-end software layer for Wall Street enterprise, the Global South has bypassed the theory entirely. Across developing economies, bitcoin and stablecoins are already serving as critical economic lifelines for millions of ordinary citizens. Far from the speculative mania and institutional hype that surrounded the 2024 ETF launches, decentralized digital assets are quietly functioning as hard stores of value against rampant inflation and providing seamless infrastructure for friction-free cross-border remittances.