Bitcoin Turns 18: From Rebel Asset to Mainstream Power?

Bitcoin turns 18 today, marking the date when Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper to a cryptography mailing list and effectively kicked off an experiment meant to reduce reliance on trusted intermediaries. The network’s origin story is etched in its earliest blocks, including a message referencing the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of confidence in traditional finance. But if Bitcoin was designed to stand apart from opaque institutions, its teenage years have been shaped by exactly the kind of institutional shocks it sought to escape: exchange failures, regulatory crackdowns, scaling fights, and growing—though still largely theoretical—security concerns such as…