Bitcoin Whitepaper Turns 18: Wall Street Embraces Crypto Assets, Decentralization's Original Vision Faces a Test

Odaily reports: On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper, proposing a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that requires no participation from banks or central institutions. Over the past 18 years, Bitcoin has evolved from a fringe experiment on the early dark web and forums into an asset class recognized by Wall Street and institutional investors. As recently as last October, $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated in a single day, and the 2022 crypto winter wiped out more than $2 trillion in digital asset market value. On the 18th anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper's release, Bitcoin's price is hovering near $80,000, facing its worst month since June.Today, BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF has reached approximately $66 billion in assets, multiple public companies have added Bitcoin to their balance sheets, and traditional financial institutions are actively building out stablecoins, asset tokenization, and blockchain-based financial infrastructure. Yet this development brings a certain irony: Bitcoin was originally designed to challenge the centralized financial system, but is now increasingly being embraced by traditional financial institutions. (Bloomberg)