"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 that bitcoin can get to $500,000, people will be writing stories that bitcoin is an asset class.”

That provocative benchmark from Scaramucci set the tone for a spirited 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 of CoinDesk Indices to discuss whether crypto, particularly bitcoin BTC, has finally become a bona fide asset class.

While panelists largely agreed that crypto is getting there, they emphasized that the path to institutional validation requires more than just price appreciation.

Bitcoin Leads the Way

Pasqual St-Jean argued that bitcoin has already cleared many of the hurdles that traditional assets must meet to be deemed investable by institutions like gold. “It has hedging mechanisms. It has different wrappers. It's a little bit easier to understand. It's a digital gold for a digital age,” he added.

This accessibility, he noted, stands in contrast to other types of crypto assets, such as governance and utility tokens, which remain more difficult for institutional allocators to grasp."When we talk about governance tokens, it's a little harder for institutions to wrap their minds around,” he said. “What exactly am I owning?”

The ETF Effect

The panelists pointed to the introduction of spot bitcoin ETFs — especially in the U.S. — as a turning point in crypto’s journey toward institutional legitimacy.

Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisdomTree highlighted the irony in how former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler’s enforcement-heavy approach inadvertently laid the groundwork for a highly competitive and mature market.

"Gensler created just what he didn't want in the US,” Steinberg said. “There are more bitcoin ETPs than S&P 500 ETFs. He created a tremendously competitive and mature foundation for bitcoin, which I think is deserved for the asset class.”

St-Jean agreed, calling the ETF wrapper a "game changer," particularly for bitcoin. It allowed legal and compliance departments to step back and treat it as a regular investment decision, opening the door to more widespread adoption among institutions, he said.

Education and Diversification Are Key

Despite the strides made, Andy Baehr warned that bitcoin’s dominance may be holding back the broader crypto ecosystem.

"The crypto asset class is a bit hamstrung by the fact that there's this giant singular thing standing there that people have to understand first,” Baehr said. “Yet you miss out on real blockchain technology, Layer 1s, infrastructure, DeFi—if you don't dig deeper.”

He likened the current moment to 1999, when online brokerages made tech stocks accessible to a wider investor base. Like then, liquidity vehicles such as ETFs could help create allocation engines for the crypto space, turning short-term trading into long-term investing.

Still, the panelists were realistic about the growing pains. Steinberg pointed out that many institutions are still early in their due diligence. While some hedge funds have made the leap, most large allocators are still getting educated.

The Road Ahead

Panelists emphasized that the final push toward broad asset-class acceptance will likely depend on continued infrastructure development, regulatory clarity, and institutional products.

"We had to educate them that the regulator doesn't have the right to pick which asset class is investable if the infrastructure problem is solved,” St-Jean said.

Looking forward, he argued that staking products, Layer 1 blockchain investments, and more diversified index products will be critical. "You just own HTTP,” he said, drawing a parallel to early internet protocols. “Bitcoin they understand, now they’re starting to understand Layer 1s.”

Scaramucci, for his part, remains bullish. "We may not actually be bullish enough,” he said, citing the explosion of capital in the space, the wave of copycat strategies following Strategy’s lead, and Wall Street’s “selling machine” now pushing bitcoin and crypto ETFs.

He added that while political risks remain, particularly with crypto becoming a hot-button issue in U.S. politics, the incentives are lining up for bipartisan support. "If you get bitcoin to $500,000, people won’t just say it’s an asset class—they’ll treat it like one,” he said.

Whether or not that price target is reached, the panel agreed: the foundation 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 question of “if”—just “when.”

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