Has adoption become absorption?

How often do you wonder about crypto's outsider status? Remember the dangerous days? Permissionless. Decentralized. A way to opt out. But now Big Finance has issued their ETFs, correlation between BTC and S&P performance looks to be increasing … I’m torn. On one hand, adoption is validation. On the other hand, it feels like the original enemy institutions have co-opted liquidity, flow, and perhaps destiny?

Is this what progress looks like; has the fringe become mainstream, or has the fringe morphed into something else?