I think it's naive to think that stokebrokers have not been paying attention for the last few years.

The narrative around bitcoin is changing. It can be seen more of an investment now than a bet.

Up until now I think bitcoin has been an "as yet proven, volatile, geeky, alternate, viral internet currency with network effects."

And the conservative are left wondering if it's a fad or a bubble.

Now it's just an emerging asset class with unique fundamentals that could have real utility within the financial services community itself... eg to settle trades.

The "unique fundamental" is a built in pseudonomous chargeback-less, ACH-less, nearly instantaneous global transaction system that has proven extremely difficult to cheat. This fundamental alone gives BTC tremendous value.

How do we quantitatively tell when they started paying attention?