The order of capitulation. 1. Finance people are the first to admit they were wrong about bitcoin. Larry Fink, for example. In finance you have to pivot or be destroyed, no matter how much you've staked your reputation on your calls. 2. Financial journalists will get it next. If an asset outperforms long enough they will drop the snark, because people do read them in part to help make financial decisions. Their own credibility suffers if they reject the market too long. Also, when enough smart people in finance change their minds, the journalists follow. 3. Mainstream journalism will follow much later. Because their main job is not to make readers money, but to tell them what they want to hear. Mainstream journalists construct a system of rightthink that determines social status. It's worth losing money to retain status, and readers gain some satisfaction being told that they are fundamentally good people, whereas those who made money are bad people. (Compare: investing in arms manufacturing during the Iraq war.) Still, journalists will eventually come around on bitcoin, because their reporting brings them close to the ground, and they'll realize there's a story here: "Bitcoin maybe isn't actually pure evil!" 4. Academics will be the last to get it. There's no incentive for any academic to be right about bitcoin. Once the journalists have reduced the reputational risks, we will see some cautious shifts in attitudes. But academics will have fun staying poor (but righteous) for a very long time. tl;dr SKIN IN THE GAME