From Curiosity to Conviction: Bitcoin’s Journey to Strategic Allocation

In September 2017, I wrote an Aura Group board memo titled Project Craze (the name kind of speaks for itself!), proposing that Aura begin exploring opportunities within the Bitcoin ecosystem. Bitcoin was trading at around US$4,500 back then, up from just US$1,000 earlier that year. The total crypto market cap had just breached US$150 billion, and wallet usage had grown from 10 million to 17 million in the span of eight months. Even then, I wasn’t focused on price action—explicitly not caring whether Bitcoin was US$1,000 or US$10 million. What fascinated me was the architecture of a monetary system that was global, open-source, and credibly finite. I saw something more than an asset—I saw the infrastructure of a new financial layer forming.

Fast forward to today. Bitcoin is trading around US$118,000, a more than 25-fold increase from where it was when I first wrote about it. Ethereum, a protocol I noted as a likely "next wave" in 2017, has grown from under US$300 to over US$3,600, surging more than 50% just in July. The total crypto market cap has crossed US$4 trillion, and we now have over 560 million crypto users globally, a staggering 30x growth in user adoption. What was once dismissed as an internet experiment is now being discussed in sovereign wealth circles and boardrooms alike.

What’s perhaps most unexpected about this cycle is the political tailwind.  U.S. President Donald Trump—once sceptical of crypto—is now a vocal supporter. Under his influence, and with broad bipartisan support, the U.S. passed the GENIUS Act, bringing clarity to stablecoin issuance, and created a framework for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The implications are enormous. We now have a global superpower that not only tolerates but is actively accumulating BTC as a geopolitical asset. This “Trump pump” may sound like meme-fodder, but the regulatory certainty it ushered in has unlocked institutional capital at a pace we’ve never seen before.

This clarity has helped push U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs to over US$50 billion in cumulative inflows in 2025 alone, with daily volumes outpacing gold ETFs at times. Institutional ownership, while still underpenetrated, is rising. Hedge funds, endowments, and family offices are now allocating—not speculating. These are not retail flows chasing momentum; they’re basis trades, structured exposures, and long-duration capital coming in through regulated rails.

And then there’s MicroStrategy, the company that rewrote the playbook. By turning itself into a publicly traded BTC treasury vehicle, MSTR has redefined how corporates can participate in the asset class. With nearly 600,000 BTC on its balance sheet, its model has become a template. We’re seeing SPACs, tech firms, and even mid-cap industrials replicate the approach—raising equity to build long BTC exposure through listed entities. It’s a new form of financial engineering: “Bitcoin as a capital markets wrapper.”

While narratives shift and headlines fluctuate, the fundamentals continue to mature. Ethereum has become the underlying infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, permissionless lending, and dollar-backed stablecoins. The stablecoin market alone is now worth US$265 billion, and the real growth is happening off the radar—in emerging markets, payment networks, and B2B use cases.

I’ve long believed that crypto wouldn’t kill banks, but that it would expose the inefficiencies of legacy systems. And in doing so, it would force better infrastructure. That is exactly what we are seeing: Bitcoin as store of value, Ethereum as financial middleware, stablecoins as fiat rails.

Of course, none of this progress negates the volatility or the complexity. But the difference now is that the institutions are here. The regulation is catching up. The liquidity is real. What was once a bet on technology is now a bet on adoption—and we’re firmly on the right side of that curve.

If you’re wondering whether Bitcoin and Ethereum have a role in your portfolio, I’ll simply say this: the same reasons I flagged this asset class in 2017—finite supply, neutral settlement layer, rapid institutional buildout—are even more true today. But now, the tools for access and risk management are finally here.

Whilst my original idea of pioneering ETFs was probably too ahead of its time (the regulators wouldn’t let it happen), it led to a bet on BetterX, which helps businesses—including financial advisers and smaller institutions—integrate digital assets into their offerings in a compliant, modular way. BetterX’s moonshot is AUDX, a fully backed Australian-dollar stablecoin designed to bridge traditional finance with the blockchain economy. AUDX aims to become the trusted, regulated digital cash layer for Australia and the region—an on-ramp for tokenized assets, programmable payments, and real-world financial infrastructure built on-chain.

If you are still sceptical I urge you to open your mind. Because this next chapter isn’t about hype—it’s about infrastructure, geopolitics, and the re-architecture of money itself.