The Great Bitcoin Reckoning: Wall Street Is Finally Waking Up

Anthony Pompliano, founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management, told CNBC that a “reckoning” is underway between the traditional financial system and the crypto industry as Wall Street investors increasingly embrace Bitcoin while the crypto-native community adapts to institutional realities. 

Speaking in an interview uploaded to YouTube a few hours ago, Pompliano painted a picture of a maturing Bitcoin ecosystem where volatility is shrinking, institutional capital is flowing in, and the lines between finance and crypto are beginning to blur.

Wall Street Learns to Live With Bitcoin

According to Pompliano, “Wall Street folks are realizing that Bitcoin is real and it’s going to be here to stay,” while the crypto world is confronting the fact that Wall Street “plays a very different game.” 

Traditional financial players, he said, are not interested in assets that surge 100x and then crash 80% every few years — they seek predictability and stability.

Pompliano added that BTC’s lower risk profile compared to a decade ago has made it increasingly attractive to institutional investors. “The volatility coming down is opening up the total addressable market of Bitcoin,” he said, noting that reduced price swings are enabling larger pools of capital to enter the market.

Stablecoins Emerge as the True Payment Rails

When asked about Cathie Wood’s claim that stablecoins may capture Bitcoin’s role in global payments, Pompliano agreed — and went further. “I think it’s already taking that,” he said, arguing that Bitcoin’s design as a long-term store of value makes it ill-suited for everyday transactions.

“The hard part about using Bitcoin for transactions is if you think it’s going to appreciate, you don’t want to spend it,” he explained. “Instead, you spend something that you think is going to depreciate — the U.S. dollar.” 

Stablecoins, therefore, are not replacing Bitcoin but repackaging the dollar “on new rails,” which he said ultimately strengthens demand for U.S. currency.

BTC’s IPO Moment

Pompliano likened the current phase of BTC’s evolution to an “IPO moment.” He said early holders are now distributing their coins to a wider market, while institutional investors continue to buy — a dynamic he described as a sign of health and persistence.

Also read: Bitcoin’s “IPO Moment”: Why Bitwise Says the Days of 1% Allocations Are Over

“There has been billions and billions of dollars of sales of Bitcoin coming from those early holders, yet the Bitcoin price is still at $100,000,” Pompliano noted. 

BTC price (Source: CoinGecko)

“There is this persistent bid coming from the traditional financial system saying we want to buy Bitcoin.”

Crypto Will Disappear — Into Finance

Pompliano also predicted that the term “crypto” itself will fade over the next decade as the technology becomes fully integrated into mainstream finance. 

“Crypto is going to be dead in a decade,” he said — not because it will vanish, but because it will become synonymous with finance itself.

“BlackRock could be described as a crypto company,” Pompliano said, citing the asset manager’s Bitcoin product as its most profitable offering. He added that firms like BlackRock are “trying to figure out how do we play here — do we tokenize our funds, or invest in the space?”

In his view, this convergence represents the natural maturation of both industries: “We used to talk about ‘internet finance’ — now it’s just finance. The same thing will happen with crypto.”

The Next Evolution: AI and Digitization

Pompliano also discussed his company’s new product, Sylvia, which uses AI to connect users’ bank, brokerage, crypto, and real estate accounts to provide automated financial insights. He sees it as part of a broader wave of digital transformation reshaping both personal finance and capital markets.

“Bitcoin is attacking store of value. Stablecoins are attacking medium of exchange. Tokenization is going to attack the stock market,” he said. “We had an analog financial system, then an electronic one — now we’re moving into the digital era.”