📊 Wall Street Takes Notice
From fringe experiment to retirement accounts in under five years.
Start the interactive lesson →
Then the big money arrived
For its first decade, Bitcoin was mostly a fringe experiment.
Then some of the world's largest companies and investors started buying.
The first corporate treasury
In August 2020, MicroStrategy became the first major public company to adopt bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset — later rebranding around the strategy as "Strategy."
By 2025, it was the largest corporate holder of bitcoin in the world.
A public company putting its cash reserves into bitcoin was, at the time, close to unthinkable.
A mixed early signal
In February 2021, Tesla purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin for its balance sheet and briefly accepted it as payment.
It then sold the majority of its holdings in 2022.
A useful reminder: institutional adoption hasn't been a straight line for every company involved.
The trend spreads
By 2025, more than 70 public companies worldwide had adopted some version of a Bitcoin treasury strategy, following the model Strategy pioneered.
What started as one company's unusual decision became a recognisable category.
Bitcoin reaches retirement accounts
On January 10, 2024, the SEC approved the first U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs.
That let everyday investors gain bitcoin exposure through ordinary brokerage and retirement accounts — without managing any keys themselves.
Convenient, and worth naming plainly: an ETF share is not bitcoin. It's a claim on a custodian who holds it. Mt. Gox is the reason that distinction matters.
Why it matters
This reflects Bitcoin's core monetary properties — scarcity, portability, verifiability — being recognised by increasingly risk-averse, sophisticated players.
Institutions typically move slowly and demand real infrastructure and regulatory clarity before committing capital.
Their entry is a signal, not a guarantee of future performance.
Try it: Adoption timeline
Five milestones. Put them in the order they happened.
MicroStrategy, Tesla, El Salvador, spot ETFs, and 70+ public companies. Put them in order and watch under five years pass between "fringe experiment" and "in your brokerage account" — including the one that went partly into reverse. Open the Adoption Timeline tool →
Quick check: What did MicroStrategy (later 'Strategy') pioneer starting in 2020?
- The first Bitcoin ETF
- Adopting bitcoin as a primary corporate treasury reserve asset ✓
- The first corporate Bitcoin mining operation
Not an investment on the side — the reserve asset itself, in place of cash.
Quick check: What did the January 2024 SEC approval make possible?
- Everyday investors gaining bitcoin exposure through ordinary brokerage and retirement accounts ✓
- Banks issuing their own bitcoin
- Bitcoin becoming legal tender in the U.S.
Access through the accounts people already had — no keys, no exchange signup, and no self-custody either.
Next up
Companies were one thing.
Governments were next.