Struggling to come up with anything new to say about ETFs, but the first response to your OP covers the main meat. Institutions aren't sitting around waiting to get into Bitcoin, they already did. OTC has always been enough to sate institutional appetites, and even without ETFs, there are numerous ways to bet on Bitcoin without owning any (that satisfies what institutionals want anyway).
They wanted to bet on price, not own any. ETFs may have been the easiest route but the emergence of CME CBoE etc proved that the demand wasn't as the door-pounding ravenous hunger that we were told to expect.
Why should this be any different?
That's the point, if there are tens of billions of dollars in the bitcoin world by these giant companies, then we shouldn't be shocked that ETF is not the only thing that matters. I am not saying that ETF would not mean anything, but do not consider that as the only thing that matters neither.
I believe that we are going to be fine and we shouldn't really be worried about it. I know that it hurt a lot of people to see ETF did not get accepted right away, but that's how it works and we should be accepting the reality instead of just moan about it. If we keep dwelling on it, then we are going to miss out, look at those big companies that put billions into bitcoin, they are not moaning and complaining, they are taking an action, so should we.