The recent announcement of the technical route choice by the global cross-border payment network SWIFT is causing a rare upheaval in the encryption world.

This traditional giant, which serves over 11,000 financial institutions worldwide, has ultimately locked the underlying technology for its 2025 cross-border payment experiment on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Linea. Following this, a collective entry of 30 international banks has occurred—traditional financial capital is beginning to penetrate the public chain ecosystem on an unprecedented scale.

**Capital Frenzy and Invisible Red Lines**

On-chain data shows that a mysterious address recently acquired 450,000 ETH, worth over $1.2 billion at current prices. The approval of the 10-coin ETF launched by Bitwise means that traditional funding channels are fully opened. Historical experience tells us that a policy vacuum period is often the eve of a breakout in crypto assets.

But the other side of the coin is more worth being vigilant about. Nine major institutions have cumulatively held ETH worth $18 billion, a figure that is approaching 10% of the total supply of Ethereum. According to the consensus of the encryption community, when institutional holdings exceed 20%, the decentralized network will face structural risks.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik recently expressed strong concerns publicly, which is rare for him. He pointed out that core developers are losing their voice in decision-making, and the technical direction is starting to lean towards capital interests. There is a proposal to compress the block time to 150 milliseconds—once this parameter is approved, it will be almost impossible for ordinary nodes to complete synchronization and verification.

**Three Forks**

The current situation presents investors with three possibilities:

Firstly, the Layer2 ecosystem may experience explosive growth. After Linea received endorsement from SWIFT, the influx of compliant funds is almost a certainty. The entry of banks will accelerate the compliance process of the entire industry, and the chaotic policy period will instead highlight the hedging attributes of crypto assets.

Secondly, the concept of decentralization faces a life-and-death test. When Wall Street capital dominates the network, can the tech community stay true to its original intention? This is not only a philosophical question but is also directly related to the boundaries of network security.

Thirdly, the position of XRP in the cross-border payment narrative is being redefined. SWIFT's choice of the Ethereum ecosystem over the Ripple solution somewhat proclaims the reshaping of the landscape of cross-border payments in recent years.

**Which side is the station on?**

Now you need to make a choice: follow the institutions to reap the rewards, but bear the risk of being buried; adhere to the belief in decentralization, but possibly miss this round of market; or find some balance - while observing the institutional holding ratio, take practical actions to support network decentralization, such as running your own node.

The key upcoming milestones include: continuously tracking institutional holding data, paying attention to the final proposal for the Ethereum technical upgrade in December, and observing the trend in the number of ordinary nodes.

The collision between traditional finance and the encryption world will ultimately evolve into either integration or confrontation, which may depend on the choices of each participant.