Some of the loudest crypto skeptics have quietly become its biggest promoters. The journey from calling Bitcoin “an index of money laundering” to launching spot ETFs is a long one — and more than a few famous faces have made it without ever admitting they were wrong.
Take Larry Fink. In 2017, the BlackRock CEO dismissed Bitcoin as a tool for criminals. By 2020 he was acknowledging its potential. By 2023 he was defending BlackRock’s crypto push. Today, BlackRock runs one of the most important Bitcoin ETFs on the market, pulling the asset deeper into regulated finance than ever before. Fink now writes op-eds about how tokenization will transform the financial system.
Jamie Dimon took a different path. The JPMorgan CEO has called Bitcoin a “fraud” and crypto investors “stupid” on multiple occasions. He’s used Congressional hearings to trash the asset class. But JPMorgan has simultaneously built out Onyx, its blockchain division, rolled out JPM Coin, and developed tokenized collateral platforms. Dimon hates Bitcoin. He’s fine with the rails underneath it.
Peter Schiff hasn’t softened at all on Bitcoin itself — he still calls every rally a bubble. But he’s launched tokenized gold products on-chain. The gold bug becomes an accidental crypto participant.
What ties these conversions together? Money. Not ideology. These aren’t people who changed their minds about decentralization. They saw where institutional capital was flowing and decided to build the infrastructure rather than fight it.
The pattern repeats across finance: publicly dismiss crypto, privately build on blockchain. It’s not hypocrisy exactly. It’s just business.
