Bitcoin and ether rose sharply in August, reviving frozen sentiment in the crypto market. The rebound is seen less as a sign that crypto has delivered on its original ideal of decentralisation than as evidence that the technology is being absorbed into traditional financial infrastructure.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain outlet, reported on Sept. 1 that bitcoin rose 26 percent in August and ether gained 34 percent. The market has regained momentum after a slump, but price gains alone do not make it easy to say the crypto industry has achieved all the goals it originally set out.

◆ "We have already passed the point of no return"

In recent months, the industry has faced a series of setbacks, including mining firms shifting their focus to artificial intelligence and concerns emerging over cold wallet security. Layoffs and business closures also followed. BitMEX, an exchange that has operated for 11 years, will shut down on Sept. 23. BitMEX helped drive early growth in the crypto derivatives market by popularising perpetual futures and products offering 100 times leverage.

Stephan Lutz (스테판 루츠), former chief executive of BitMEX, said the exchange's exit does not mean the technology has failed. He said competitors quickly adopted the technology BitMEX pioneered, shifting the market from a race to build new infrastructure to a battle for market share. With crypto technology now deeply embedded in traditional finance, he said it has entered a stage that is difficult to reverse. "We have already passed the point of no return," he said.

Utkarsh Ahuja (우트카르시 아후자), founder of Moon Future Capital, also said it is hard to view the past 10 years as wasted for the crypto industry. He cited crypto's impact on payment infrastructure, payment processing, asset settlement and tokenisation. He said stablecoins could have long-term effects as they are incorporated into financial payment infrastructure, and that it has become possible to tokenise virtually all types of assets. He also stressed that crypto technology is spreading beyond finance into other industries such as energy, healthcare and AI.

Decentralised finance, or DeFi, is also seen as moving beyond a simple experiment and becoming closer to financial infrastructure. Wanja Oberhof (반야 오버호프), CEO of Subsquid Labs, said DeFi created a financial system in which users can verify transaction ledgers themselves instead of trusting what an operator says. He said payments can be made in minutes rather than days, markets operate 24 hours a day, and lending protocols can transparently handle funds worth billions of dollars. He acknowledged that the DeFi industry presented overly optimistic timelines for technology development and did not respond enough in improving the user experience. He said the technology's true achievements will emerge when it blends naturally into everyday products to the point that users do not have to be aware of it.

Institutional adoption of blockchain technology is expanding. Tokenised funds, stablecoins, and blockchain-based payments and settlement are no longer limited to ideas within the crypto industry. Still, crypto being absorbed into the existing financial system, rather than replacing it, differs from what early supporters expected. Regulation is also accelerating its incorporation into the mainstream. The European Union has implemented the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, or MiCA, and moves in the United States to build an institutional framework for crypto, rather than treating it only as a target of regulation, are continuing. This has raised the market's legitimacy, but the early radical mood has weakened, according to one view.

◆ 1 in 5 users... but a lasting paradox

Not all of the future that crypto promised has been realised. Dentacoin did not transform the dental industry, and bitcoin did not stop all wars. Ethereum has also yet to become the basic infrastructure of global finance.

The user base has expanded sharply. The Pew Research Center said 19 percent of U.S. adults as of 2026 reported they had invested in, traded or used cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether. That is about 1 in 5 U.S. adults.

But crypto has not become easier because more people use it. Having to rely on multiple networks and wallets, exchanges, bridges and deposit and withdrawal routes has increased complexity. A paradox also emerged in that crypto, which aimed to move assets across borders, is affected by each country's regulatory system. Self-custody is also cited as a key paradox. As bitcoin's value rises, the risk and burden of keeping private keys also grows. As hacking and security threats targeting cold wallets continue, products such as exchange-traded funds that use centralised custody services are also emerging as a more practical approach for the public.

Ultimately, what the bitcoin rally shows is not that crypto has delivered on all of its original promises. Many early companies and projects have disappeared, and the ideal of finance free from the control of states and central institutions has faded. Instead, technologies such as stablecoins, tokenisation, and blockchain payments and settlement are becoming part of traditional finance. Crypto is expanding its influence by being incorporated into the financial system's infrastructure rather than by replacing finance.