DAS Day 2: Tokenization’s ‘Trojan horse’ moment
The goal, per Santiago Santos, is to make crypto a relatable piece of tech for people who may not even understand it
Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos | DAS London 2025 by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Stablecoins and tokenization (shocker!) remained a big theme at DAS London’s Day 2. Upon the umpteenth mention of these segments, Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos got real with the industry members watching.
But first, Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden kicked off the main stage festivities by calling tokenization crypto’s killer app. This clip comes from later in the chat:
The market value of stablecoins — tokenization’s “top of the funnel” — has grown to nearly $300 billion. There’s about $33 billion worth of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) — i.e. private credit, money market funds, equities, etc. — RWA.xyz data shows.
Even many crypto skeptics understand the benefits of blockchain technology. Index fund giant Vanguard, which doesn’t allow bitcoin ETFs to trade on its platform, was testing the tech five-plus years ago in an effort to streamline asset-backed securities markets.
So tokenization’s growth potential is by no means a new conversation. You know that as a Forward Guidance reader.
That might explain what Santos said during an afternoon chat I was moderating: “I’m tired of sitting behind a screen or coming to these panels and pontificating about this [gosh darn!] technology. It’s good, we use it, but someone has to deploy it at scale.”
We shouldn’t need another decade before mass adoption takes hold, Santos argued. He told me there’s a three-to-five year “execution window” before tokenization becomes “table stakes” — and no excuse if the industry can’t make it happen.
“The tech is ready, the regulation is there and so let’s accelerate that, let’s actually muscle our way to go-to-market and development,” Santos said.
He didn’t stop there, and I think his words kind of sum up where the industry is heading.
The goal, Santos explained, is making crypto a relatable piece of tech for people who may not even understand it. In other words, the infrastructure should be invisible to them — and yet they’ll feel the impact. All’s to say: The industry should focus less on the “casino” side of crypto and instead fully seek to deliver real value to end users.
“Building distribution is very hard; convincing people to set up a wallet is hard,” the Inversion founder went on. “I think now we’ve got to invert the playbook. Let’s acquire real business and let’s just kind of Trojan horse our way into mainstream adoption.”
That’s what you might call real talk.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
