On Wall Street, Jefferies Financial Group is expanding banking services for crypto clients, BlackRock Inc. is backing a stablecoin firm while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is ramping up crypto trading. There's even a former bank executive who switched his LinkedIn profile—to an avatar.

The moves by financial heavyweights—and one banker's profile reinvention—underscore how far Wall Street firms have come in accepting cryptocurrencies. For years, executives at banks and money managers were some of the industry's most vociferous dissenters, until soaring prices and a flood of investor money drove home the point that staying on the sidelines meant missing out.