Are we celebrating Bitcoin's defeat while calling it victory?

Saw an interesting discussion about Max Keiser's warning on government seizures and it got me thinking about something that's been bothering me.

Everyone gets excited when big institutions buy Bitcoin, but isn't this exactly what we didn't want? The whole point was to create an alternative to traditional finance, not hand control over to the same players we were trying to escape.

Here's what's happening: Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized, but we're watching it get concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The mining centralization ship has mostly sailed, and now we're seeing supply centralization too. When BlackRock and other massive institutions hold huge amounts of Bitcoin, they essentially control it for regular people who buy their ETFs.

Some people say both things can be true - Bitcoin can remain self-custodial AND institutions can adopt it. But here's my question: if most people are buying Bitcoin through institutions instead of holding their own keys, are we really winning?

It feels like we're so focused on number go up that we've forgotten why Bitcoin existed in the first place. Getting people out of the traditional financial system was supposed to be the goal, not bringing that system into Bitcoin.

The institutions didn't join us - we joined them. They're not adopting Bitcoin's values, they're making Bitcoin adopt their methods.

Maybe I'm being too negative, but when I see people celebrating institutional adoption while those same institutions offer zero education about self-custody, it makes me wonder if we've lost the plot.

What do you think? Can Bitcoin maintain its original purpose while being dominated by traditional finance? Or are we just watching a slow-motion takeover while convincing ourselves it's adoption?