The digital currency, which emerged six years ago from the computer of a programmer calling himself Satoshi Nakamoto, is entering a new age, one where its future will be guided mainly by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s premier investment bank, and a growing flock of lawyers.

This week’s conference nicely illustrated Bitcoin’s efforts to emerge from the shadows. For starters, the panel in question was entitled “Beyond Mt. Gox and Silk Road,” referring to the signature scandals that have largely defined the world of cryptocurrencies in the public’s eye. The former was a Bitcoin exchange that went bust, mainly as a result of incompetence, losing some $450 million. The latter was a dark drug racket that foolishly relied on Bitcoin’s apparent anonymity to cover up its users’ identities.

Some panels looked at the mechanics behind Bitcoin, but the most widely attended sessions were about regulation. These had titles like “Emerging Issues in Regulatory Compliance and Law Enforcement Efforts,” “Banking MSBs: A Compliance Officer’s Perspective” and “How to Stop Bitcoin Theft.” If there is to be a grand future for Bitcoin, it will not be as a reserve currency to replace the dollar or yen or as a subfusc network for anarchists, libertarians or mobsters. Rather, it will be as a tool for the financial services industry.

“All of us are invested in the price of Bitcoin going up, and you can forget about the price going up and you can forget about mainstream adoption unless regulators get involved,” said Ted Rogers, chief strategy officer at Xapo, a start-up that combines “the convenience of an everyday Bitcoin wallet with the security of a deep cold storage vault.”

Mr. Rogers – also a trained lawyer – is betting his career on Bitcoin crossing into the mainstream, “because net-net, a regulated Bitcoin that helps everybody is better than one that operates in the shadows.”