(Bloomberg) -- It was only three years ago that a dispute between an infamous crypto billionaire and a titan of the financial establishment became the center of attention

The dust up between FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Terry Duffy, the boss of the US’s largest futures and options exchange, was emblematic of Wall Street’s skepticism

It was only three years ago that a spat between an infamous crypto billionaire and a titan of the financial establishment was the main topic of conversation at an annual event known as the Davos of the derivatives market.

The dust up between FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Terry Duffy, the boss of the US’s largest futures and options exchange, was emblematic of Wall Street’s skepticism then about a new generation promoting digital assets and the crypto bigwig’s plans to change the way derivatives trade.

But that was then. This year, as executives from the world’s largest exchanges and trading firms prepared to head to the Futures Industry Conference in the crypto hotbed of Florida, President Donald Trump announced he was creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve — a move that’s symbolic, but one that effectively entrenches the legitimacy of digital assets as mainstream financial instruments.

For Wall Street firms that had only dipped their toes in the crypto space, the next four years present an opportunity to make inroads in an industry that’s swiftly gained momentum amid the Trump administration’s. On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that World Liberty Financial Inc., one of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, has discussed doing business with the world’s largest digital-asset exchange, Binance Holdings Ltd.

That shift in sentiment was on full display at the conference, held at The Boca Raton hotel, where traditional finance executives this week rubbed shoulders with those in the crypto industry. One noticeable difference: This time, almost everyone was in suits, or at least a collared shirt; gone were the shorts-and-t-shirt uniforms so ubiquitous among the crypto crowd in times past.

The entertainment also skewed older. The 1970s hitmakers Cheap Trick blasted their tunes for the likes of New York Stock Exchange President Lynn Martin and DRW Holdings founder Don Wilson.

“Crypto is back,” Catherine Clay, head of derivatives at Chicago-based options powerhouse Cboe Global Markets, said in an interview. “We definitely have seen the re-emergence of the crypto theme back at Boca after a few years of it being pretty much absent.”

Trump pledged to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” during his campaign, and since taking office has worked to make good on his promises. He issued an executive order on digital assets and his top securities regulator has started a task force on crypto headed by Hester Peirce, a longtime advocate for the industry.

All of that is giving Wall Street confidence. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities, previously conservative in its approach to digital assets, is now looking to get more involved as a liquidity provider for cryptocurrencies. CME Group Inc. is expanding by launching Solana futures after overtaking Binance as the world’s largest Bitcoin derivatives exchange. Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which had stayed away, sees opportunities to step in and compete with rival CME, according to people familiar with the matter.

Even exchanges abroad are jumping on the bandwagon. At the conference, the Singapore Exchange Ltd., or SGX, announced plans to list Bitcoin perpetual futures in the second half of the year. The company said its first digital asset contract will strictly target institutional clients.

“By the end of the year, there will be a lot more firms charging into crypto,” said Jeanine Hightower-Sellitto, chief commercial and strategy officer at EDX Markets LLC, a digital-asset firm backed by Citadel Securities. “There’s been a substantial shift in the past two and a half month, ever since inauguration day.”

For Wall Street, this year’s event also brought a reckoning: the blockchain that created and electronically-stored cryptocurrencies will be key to the shift to trading US stocks 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“There was a previous year where there was a lot of hype around crypto,” said DRW’s Wilson, who also co-founded crypto firm Digital Asset. “But this year there is a recognition that using blockchain is actually going to be an important part of how we move to 24-7 trading.”

Crypto fell out of favor after Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud following his firm’s collapse in 2022. His FTX exchange had sponsored a late-night cocktail party by the beach in Boca that year, offered branded swag from its mega-booth in the exhibition hall, and hosted a fireside chat with baseball star turned business man Alex Rodriquez. Because he was throwing money around, everyone from US regulators to politicians and even Tom Brady were willing to listen.

Not Duffy. The long-time head of CME, who started his career in the trading pits of Chicago in the 1980s, wasn’t buying Bankman-Fried’s ambitious plans. FTX wanted to handle every aspect of customers’ crypto derivatives needs on its own, using algorithms rather than brokers to help clear trades.

“I listed crypto at CME in 2017, that’s long before I even knew who Sam Bankman-Fried was,”