Venture Capital Founder: 'Wall Street Making Money with ETFs Doesn't Help Bitcoin,' Harsh Criticism

▲ Bitcoin (BTC), Wall Street/AI-generated image

Criticism has emerged that the institutional integration led by Bitcoin (BTC) has not enhanced the actual utility of cryptocurrency. It is pointed out that the success of Wall Street's spot Bitcoin ETFs has obscured the cryptocurrency industry's original goal of financial infrastructure reorganization, and the future battleground is shifting to AI, tokenized commodities, real-world assets, and energy-based financial products.

According to Benzinga on May 25 (local time), Meltem Demirors, founder of venture capital firm Crucible Capital, diagnosed the cryptocurrency industry as being in an “identity crisis” in an interview with Fox Business. She stated, “Crypto has been colonized by existing financial institutions.” Her argument is that Wall Street's adoption of cryptocurrency has moved the industry away from its original goal of rebuilding financial infrastructure.

Demirors criticized that spot Bitcoin ETFs alone cannot prove the utility of cryptocurrency. She said, “BlackRock winning with ETFs and making billions of dollars doesn’t help Bitcoin.” This directly refutes the market narrative that institutional adoption itself guarantees the legitimacy of cryptocurrency.

She pointed out that the cryptocurrency community is spending too much time on ideological debates on social media. Demirors believes that investing in AI infrastructure and creating financial systems connected to actual economic activities are more important. She stated, “The GPU race and building AI is the biggest infrastructure build in human history.” She also explained that crypto-native financial tools could become a channel for companies to access capital faster and cheaper without relying on banks.

The areas Demirors focused on are prediction markets, tokenized commodities, real-world assets (RWA), decentralized exchanges, and computing and energy-based financial products. Benzinga reported that Demirors saw a significant amount of trading volume on new crypto platforms being linked to commodity and infrastructure exposure rather than speculative memecoin trading. This assessment indicates that the growth axis of the cryptocurrency market is shifting from simple price speculation to assets connected to real economic infrastructure.

However, Demirors remained optimistic about the long-term role of cryptocurrency. She believes that blockchain networks can become a new financial layer enabling faster payments, new asset classes, and flexible market structures. Demirors said, “The opportunity is still there. The game has changed because of AI.” The cryptocurrency industry is at a crossroads where it should pivot towards financial infrastructure connecting AI and real-economy-based assets, instead of lingering on the success of Bitcoin ETFs.

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