Traditional finance and decentralized finance are moving closer together as large financial institutions deepen their involvement in digital assets, according to comments highlighted by ChainCatcher. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said the old trade of being long Bitcoin and short bankers is over, arguing that major institutions are now helping expand access to crypto rather than standing against it. He said two financial institutions with more than $1 trillion in assets under management each approved crypto products this summer despite a bear-market backdrop, a sign that large firms are widening clients' routes into digital assets. Sygnum Chief Investment Officer Fabian Dori said the shift is structural rather than cyclical, with banks moving from resistance to supporting digital assets through custody (safekeeping of digital tokens), tokenization (turning assets into digital tokens) and compliant trading. Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley said client trends over the past two years also show increasing integration between traditional finance and crypto finance. The report said large institutions increasingly prefer partnering with specialist crypto infrastructure providers instead of building their own systems, and cited Swissquote, DBS, BBVA, BNY Mellon, Credit Suisse-related entities, Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab among the financial firms entering the sector in recent years.