“Three trillion is like a MAG 7 stock, 20 trillion is an asset class,” said Anthony Scaramucci, founder and CEO of Skybridge Capital. “So if you tell me Bitcoin can come to $ 500,000, people will write stories that Bitcoin is an asset class.”

The provocative benchmark from Scaramucci set the tone of a lively conversation at Coindesk’s Consensus 2025 conference, where he joined Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisDomtree; Pasqual St-Jean, President and CEO of 3iq; and Andy Baehr from Coindesk -Indexes to discuss if crypto, especially Bitcoin BTC$103,459.16has finally become a bona fide asset class.

While panelists largely agreed that Crypto is coming there, they emphasized that the path to institutional validation requires more than just award assessment.

Bitcoin leads the way

Pasqual St-Jean claimed that Bitcoin has already cleared many of the obstacles that traditional assets must fulfill in order to be considered investments of institutions as gold. “It has cover mechanisms. It has different wraps. It’s a little easier to understand. It’s a digital gold in a digital age,” he added.

This availability, he noted, is in contrast to other types of crypto assets, such as governance and utility -tokens, which remains more difficult for institutional assigners to understand. “When we talk about Tokens management, it is a little harder for institutions to enclose their minds,” he said. “What do I own exactly?”

ETF effect

The panelists pointed to the introduction of Spot Bitcoin ETFs – especially in the United States – as a turning point in Crypto’s journey towards institutional legitimacy.

Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisDomtree, emphasized the irony of how the former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) President Gary Gensler’s enforcement approach inadvertently laid the foundation for a very competitive and mature market.

“Gensler created exactly what he didn’t want in the United States,” Steinberg said. “There are more Bitcoin ETPs than the S&P 500 ETFs. He created a hugely competitive and mature foundation for Bitcoin, which I think is deserved for the asset class.”

St-Jean agreed to call the Etf wrapping a “game change”, especially for Bitcoin. It enabled legal and compliance departments to go back and treat it as a regular investment decision and open the door to more widespread adoption among institutions, he said.

Education and diversification is key

Despite those steps, Andy Baehr warned that Bitcoin’s dominance may hold back the wider crypto ecosystem.

“The Crypto asset class is a bit hamstrung by the fact that there is this huge singular thing that stands there that people need to understand first,” Baehr said. “Still, you miss real blockchain technology, layer 1’s, infrastructure, defi – if you don’t dig deeper.”

He compared the current moment to 1999 when online brokers made tech shares available to a wider investor base. As then, liquidity vehicles such as ETFs could help create allocation engines for the crypto area and transform short -term trade into long -term investment.

Still, the panelists were realistic about growing pain. Steinberg pointed out that many institutions are still early in their due diligence. While some hedge funds have made jumped, most major allocation is still being trained.

The way in front of

Panelists emphasized that the final push towards the acceptance of broad asset class is likely to depend on continued infrastructure development, regulatory clarity and institutional products.

“We had to educate them that the regulator has no right to choose which asset class is investable if the infrastructure problem is solved,” st-Jean said.

Looking forward, he argued that efforts, layers 1 blockchain investments and more diversified index products will be critical. “You just own HTTP,” he said, pulling a parallel to early internet protocols. “Bitcoin they understand, now they start to understand layer 1s.”

Scaramucci on his side remains bullish. “We may not be bullish enough,” he said, quoting the explosion of capital in space, the wave of copycat strategies after the strategy’s lead and Wall Street’s “Selling Machine” is now pushing Bitcoin and Crypto ETFs.

He added that although political risks remain, especially with crypto, which becomes a hot-button question in American politics, the incentives raise up for top species support. “If you get Bitcoin for $ 500,000, people don’t just say it’s an asset class – they’ll treat it like one,” he said.

Whether this price target is reached, the panel agrees: The fund is there, the wrappers are in place and institutions are finally showing up. Crypto’s transformation from curiosity to asset class is no longer a matter of “if” – just “when.”