Macauley Peterson

Citi has raised its base-case projection for stablecoin issuance to $1.9 trillion by 2030, up from $1.6 trillion earlier this year, with a $4 trillion bull case and a $0.9 trillion bear case.



On Day 3 of DAS London, Sophia Bantanidis, a research analyst on Citi’s Future of Finance team, presented the findings of the bank’s “Stablecoins 2030: Web3 to Wall Street” <a href="https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/GPS_Report_Stablecoins_2030.pdf">report</a>, calling the stablecoin boom “blockchain’s ChatGPT moment for institutional adoption.”



Bantanidis pointed to “a huge surge of announcements from digitally native firms integrating stablecoins into commerce, payments and real-world applications,” noting big e-commerce names are “partnering with the wallet providers to accept crypto and stablecoins.”



Stablecoin issuers could become a top Treasury holder —potentially more than any single jurisdiction today, the report says — with $1 trillion+ in T-bills by 2030, amassing political capital in the process.



Bantanidis also cited “regulatory tailwinds” — including the GENIUS Act — and “offshore international demand for holding USD,” as primary drivers of stablecoin growth.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-109130" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-50.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Ethereum holds roughly $177b of the <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins">$306 billion total</a> stablecoin supply | Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/team/charts/3228">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>







Beyond growth in supply, Citi’s updated outlook projects even more eye-popping numbers for transaction volume. Since stablecoins “can circulate with really high velocity,” Bantanidis said the base case implies roughly $100 trillion in annual stablecoin transaction volume by 2030, or even double in the bull scenario.



But there’s a caveat, she told the London audience: “Stablecoins are not going to be the only game in town.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">&quot;The takeaway from both reports is that stablecoins are not going to be the only game in town,&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/Citi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Citi</a>&#39;s Sophia Bantanidis says <a href="https://t.co/CoAnVDoIce">pic.twitter.com/CoAnVDoIce</a>&mdash; Digital Asset Summit 2025 (@blockworksDAS) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS/status/1978407929263923239?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“We envision a multi-format, monetary ecosystem,” Bantanidis said, predicting that “bank tokens…will outpace stablecoins in transaction volume by 2030.”



The report models $100–$140 trillion in annual bank-token turnover at modest penetration of large-value payment rails.



On adoption, corporate treasurers “can optimize liquidity management globally” via programmability, embedded compliance and conditional settlement — but many “are likely going to prefer bank tokens and tokenized deposits because of their risk appetite [and] regulatory considerations,” Bantanidis said.



Geopolitically, Citi believes dollar-backed stablecoins could extend USD dominance, with Hong Kong and the UAE among jurisdictions likely to embrace local-currency rails but, Bantanidis cautioned, “there are multiple regulatory loopholes that still need to be filled.” Risks include interoperability and fragmentation, the quality of the reserve assets, transparency and auditability.



Despite lingering uncertainties, one thing is clear, Bantanidis said: “Stablecoins are shifting from a niche decentralized finance experiment into a viable rail for moving money.”



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Banking

Citi posits bank tokens may be more popular than stablecoins

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">subscribe</a>.



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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:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Enjoyed this conversation to kick off Day 2. &quot;With tokens, everything can become money, and it can be yield-bearing money. Why do we have $20 billion a year in collateral in the financial system tied up earning absolutely nothing?&quot; <a href="https://t.co/U3bqLsy9p4">https://t.co/U3bqLsy9p4</a>&mdash; Ben Strack 🟪 (@strack_ben) <a href="https://twitter.com/strack_ben/status/1978022303595118905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 14, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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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. — <a href="http://rwa.xyz">RWA.xyz</a> 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 <a href="https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/Press-Release-Vanguard-Advances-Blockchain-Technology-Pilot-061120.html">testing the tech</a> five-plus years ago in an effort to streamline asset-backed securities markets.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So tokenization’s growth potential is by no means a new conversation. You know that as a Forward Guidance reader.&nbsp;



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.&nbsp;



“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.&nbsp;



He didn’t stop there, and I think his words kind of sum up where the industry is heading.&nbsp;



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.&nbsp;



“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.



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DAS Day 2: Tokenization’s ‘Trojan horse’ moment

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-drop">subscribe</a>.



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At Blockworks’ <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/das-london-day-1">Digital Asset Summit</a> (DAS) this week, Mastercard’s crypto SVP Christian Rau and WalletConnect CEO Jess Houlgrave agreed that crypto still has to improve its user experience before the next wave of adoption can occur.



“For me, the bar in terms of user experience is really a tokenized debit card on my iPhone,” Rau <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01d-eDb0rfY">told</a> Blockworks’ Bennett Holloway. “The industry needs to mature and go in this direction.”



Houlgrave added that “we need an awful lot of investment” into crypto UX to make such improvements happen.



Rau shares my stance on the future of true crypto “mass adoption,” which is that most everyday people are never going to get behind the way the tech works and feels today.&nbsp;



He thinks maybe only 3-5% of people are willing to have a “crypto-first mindset” to deal with things like bridging assets or other crypto friction points that can spark confusion or incur wait times or extra fees depending on what’s being used.&nbsp;



For him, we’re still in the “mp3” phase of crypto UX — a place where technical glitches happen more than they should, in the time before the iPod really changed things for music. To an extent, I think he’s right.&nbsp;



“The user experience needs to be more at the center of discussion, and I feel that this is really what the industry is also recognizing,” Rau said.&nbsp;



But crypto UX has already improved massively since the 2021 bull cycle. We’ve seen MetaMask, once the clunkiest of wallets, take UX seriously. We’ve seen single sign-on wallet tech emerge as an easy way to quickly log in and create a custodied wallet using just an email address or a social media account.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Day 1 <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@blockworksDAS</a> 🌐 “Payments aren’t just one-off transactions. They include subscriptions, recurring payments, and more &#8211; and we need to perfect that experience before TradFi and onchain truly converge.” WalletConnect CEO <a href="https://twitter.com/jesshoulgrave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jesshoulgrave</a> on her panel with <a href="https://twitter.com/Mastercard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Mastercard</a>. <a href="https://t.co/UDZhMACLhV">pic.twitter.com/UDZhMACLhV</a>&mdash; WalletConnect (@WalletConnect) <a href="https://twitter.com/WalletConnect/status/1977754028952928521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



There are also places where I’d disagree with Rau. Because he’s an exec at Mastercard, he does have faith in the current payment rails that exist.&nbsp;



“If we embed this almost as a new engine into traditional financial services that work very very well, I think that can be a very potent mix,” he said of blockchain tech.



I just wouldn’t go that far in saying that TradFi systems work “very very well.”



Domestic wire transfers typically take less than one business day, while international wires can take up to five business days. These also won’t happen on holidays, and even during the week, some banks may stop taking transfers a few hours before they close.



Existing TradFi rails cost consumers more fees than they should, and they take longer than they should. This is partly due to regulation, but it’s also partly due to the existence of middlemen who slow things down.



Crypto can fix this — though I’m concerned that TradFi’s big push into stablecoin payments could ultimately result in crypto for the masses becoming more of the same.&nbsp;



Some crypto natives might like to harp on about how fees are essential for propping up validators. Sure, that’s true. But there are a whole lot of TradFi players looking to get in on crypto payments as middlemen who may charge their own extra set of fees on top.&nbsp;



I’m a bit worried, long-term, that this new era of TradFi coming into crypto will result in many of the same problems consumers already face in traditional banking.&nbsp;



Instead of TradFi leaving their old ways behind, they may bring their problems to us.



Or, those fees could balance out if they offer yield to users.



But as Houlgrave said during the panel, the crypto industry seems to be really good at solving one problem, only to create a few more for itself.



If the fees just get too damn high in whatever new system is coming our way, it’ll be up to the 3% to remind everyone that peer-to-peer payments exist — and they can be faster.



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Mastercard crypto SVP unpacks industry’s mass adoption problem

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



This version of DAS London felt extra timely as stablecoins proliferate, tokenization developments multiply, DATs keep buying their desired tokens and more US crypto ETFs wait in the wings.&nbsp;



Not to mention the latest crypto turbulence, which spurred a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-liquidations-drive-historic-market-turbulence">historic level of liquidations</a> Friday — making this gathering feel even more fitting, in a way.&nbsp;



Christopher Holmes, a member of the House of Lords, alluded to that “crash” Monday morning, asking the crowd: “How’s everybody’s blood pressure?”



Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan was later asked how much Friday’s activity damaged this crypto cycle. He was resolute in his answer: “Not at all.”



His firm’s main customers are professional investors — family offices, financial advisers and institutions — that he says are driving this cycle by growing their crypto allocations from, let’s say, 0% to 3%. That’s mostly into bitcoin, which remains up ~23% year to date and roughly 6x what it was just three years ago.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1440" height="874" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-108967" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1440 1440w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=423 423w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=430 430w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=361 361w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-39.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1440px) 100vw, 1440px" /></figure>



“The people driving the market can’t pronounce solana,” Hougan added.



Stablecoins — with a market value just shy of $300 billion — were another big talking point.&nbsp;



Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos, for example, criticized exchanges <a href="https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/1963375254526709879">upping their max leverage</a> offerings to traders. He warned that the industry best not rely too much on centralized exchanges to acquire users.&nbsp;



“[With] stablecoins in their own right, as a tokenization product, we don’t need to innovate more than that for this industry to be 10x larger and transform businesses,” Santos argued.



Apeiron Investment Group founder Christian Angermayer also addressed stablecoins:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">&quot;I think the US [will] go as far in the next three years to try to convince numerous of these countries to just completely abolish their currency and completely dollarize&quot; <a href="https://t.co/iTdV0eTEVh">pic.twitter.com/iTdV0eTEVh</a>&mdash; Digital Asset Summit 2025 (@blockworksDAS) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS/status/1977697640759325143?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Panelists touched on regulation too.&nbsp;



UK Parliament member Nigel Farage, who seeks to become Britain’s next prime minister, said the vast majority of his colleagues can’t <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nigel-farage-deregulation-bitcoin">hold a crypto convo</a>.&nbsp;



&#8220;You might as well be speaking Swahili to them,” he told Blockworks co-founder Michael Ippolito.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">If <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Nigel_Farage</a> wins the general election, &quot;we will bring crypto in from the cold&quot; <a href="https://t.co/udoA6grCf1">pic.twitter.com/udoA6grCf1</a>&mdash; Digital Asset Summit 2025 (@blockworksDAS) <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksDAS/status/1977700466487124347?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 13, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Speaking of regulation, Jito Labs chief legal officer Rebecca Rettig said on the DAS stage she doesn’t expect US market structure legislation to pass this year. She’s eyeing 2026.



“The best thing would be if we stop having regulatory panels two to three years from now, because the lawyers can just be back-office people like we’re supposed to be,” she said to laughter.&nbsp;



Rettig added: “The biggest question is, and will remain to be, what do we do about DeFi?” Regulators want to, after all, hold people/front-ends accountable in that realm; that could slow down market structure clarity.&nbsp;



“It is almost like you’re explaining robots to people or what the future looks like,” she noted. “It’s very hard for financial regulators to believe that things that look so similar to what they know from centralized legislation can actually happen without any human intervention.”



It was DeFi platforms like Aave that operated <a href="https://x.com/heyibinance/status/1976976922283221445">smoother than various centralized players</a> during what many called the latest “stress test,” Rettig said.



Let’s wrap up this Day 1 recap with a bigger-picture quote from DeFi Development Corp. CEO Joseph Onorati. It’s a theme that seems to sum up most DAS events.&nbsp;



He said he didn’t view his move to running a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/equity-fueled-firms-volatility-sol">Nasdaq-listed</a> Solana treasury company as a transition from DeFi to TradFi. Rather, it was just “a natural progression” given regulatory changes, which he said will allow these two systems to keep merging.



“In 20 years…hopefully [finance is] more decentralized than centralized,” Onorati noted. “But there’s just going to be one system in the long run.”



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Soundbites and sentiment from DAS London Day 1

At DAS London, Eigen Labs’ J.T. Rose argued that crypto’s next leg won’t be DeFi but “verifiable AI” — agentic systems whose off-chain work can be proven on-chain.&nbsp;



Rose cast Eigen’s stack as a cloud-like trio of services (data, compute, inference) backed by crypto-economic security and proofs, letting developers keep public-cloud flexibility while adding verifiability before funds move or state updates land on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.



Three promising use cases are coming to the fore, according to Rose:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Autonomous trading agents that must prove they followed risk rules;</li>



<li>Agent-to-agent (A2A) payments where work receipts trigger settlement and;</li>



<li>Gaming with attestable outcomes.</li>
</ul>



“The single most important limitation we see for [<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/artificial-intelligence">Artificial Intelligence</a>] founders over the next decade is trust,” Rose said. “Without a mechanism to make AI verifiable up and down the stack — from inference and benchmarking to training and identity — we’ll never hit escape velocity for the agentic era.”



The common thread is programmability meets provability — “programmability like a cloud, assurances like a blockchain,” as Rose framed it — a response to today’s trade-off between tightly constrained on-chain execution and opaque off-chain compute.



David Sneider, co-founder of Lit Protocol, largely shares the destination, focusing on the properties which can instill trust in AI agents, like “guardrails and policies,” synonyms to promote correct execution.



“[As] with anything with security, there&#8217;s multiple components in terms of different types of attacks and how you guard against them,” Sneider told Blockworks, arguing that runtime enforcement — not just after-the-fact proofs — is what turns agents from demos into dependable infrastructure.



In Lit Protocol’s design, Sneider said, a user might tell an agent, “Send an email or buy a bitcoin,” in which case “it communicates with Lit, which validates against the policies&#8230;and only if the policy passes, the secret management network then executes.” By “secret management network,” Sneider is referring to Lit’s TEE-secured, MPC-based key infrastructure.



Taken together, Lit handles the “Can the agent act on my behalf?” question. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/google-cloud-eigencloud-payments">EigenCloud and Google’s AP2</a> handle “Can I trust the result of this offchain computation?”



Or, to simplify the full trust stack:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>An agent asks: Am I allowed to do this? (Lit)</li>



<li>Execution proves: Did I do what I said? (EigenCloud/AP2)</li>
</ul>



Rose outlined a range of alternatives on the verifiability spectrum, such as TEEs, crypto-economic slashing and zk proofs. Lit can emit success/failure signals and policy-compliance proofs for each execution, but they’re often kept internal. The roadmap is to surface those attestations “in privacy-preserving ways into shared registries like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-foundation-team-ai-integration">ERC-8004</a> and inter-agent communication protocols like A2A,” so a compliant agent doesn’t need to be re-audited in every venue.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1600" height="889" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-108957" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-38.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Restaked ether has held steady between 2-3 million ETH, mostly with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a> | Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/ethereum?dashboard=313">Blockworks Research</a> (Entity labels sourced from <a href="https://dune.com/">Dune&#8217;s</a> staking flows table.)



Both founders converge on Ethereum as the neutral trust anchor and on a near-term consumer arc.



Soon, “everybody is going to have essentially a quant in their pocket to manage their funds,” Sneider said. It’s an idea that “seems pretty coherent and is starting to come together.”



If all the pieces land — guardrails that travel and compute that can prove itself — both founders see a path from prototypes to production. As Rose put it: “The next growth driver for crypto won’t be DeFi — it’s verifiable AI, and it’ll happen on Ethereum.”



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

Verifiable AI took center stage at DAS London with EigenCloud

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions,&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



You’ve probably heard about Blockworks’ <a href="https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york/home">Digital Asset Summit</a> by now. Well, it kicks off tomorrow. It seems to be a good time for a conference, given the mix of optimism and uncertainty — in crypto and the broader economy. That hopeful-volatile blend should spur more interesting discussion.



So we have some dichotomies to work through. Like BlackRock adding bitcoin exposure to its alternatives-focused model portfolios as bitcoin ETFs have endured $5 billion of net outflows in recent weeks.&nbsp;



Or a president who wants to build “the crypto capital of the world” while simultaneously implementing policies that are sending <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/investors-bitcoin-narrative-confusion">the stock market</a> (and BTC price) lower. Not to mention the whole <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-memecoins-rock-solana">Trump memecoin</a> launch that made eyes roll around the industry.&nbsp;



Bo Hines, Executive Director of the White House’s Presidents Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, can hopefully share insight when he hits the DAS stage tomorrow. US Rep. Tom Emmer will speak 24 hours later on what it’ll take to get crypto legislation across the finish line this year.&nbsp;



The institutional presence at DAS will be ample. A step like walking back <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hester-peirce-reveals-sab-121-rescission">the SEC’s SAB 121</a> is already set to pave the way for banks and brokers to custody spot crypto — and legislation (on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senate-advances-stablecoin-bill">stablecoins</a> and market structure) is apparently on its way.&nbsp;



Command + F the event agenda…type in “inst” and you’ll get plenty of hits:



LMAX Group CEO David Mercer is set to sort through headwinds and tailwinds in the new era for institutional crypto. Eric Peters, who leads Coinbase Asset Management and One River Asset Management, will detail which institutions are actually buying this cycle.&nbsp;



Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart will guide a discussion on the next wave of institutional crypto products. Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul and Visa’s Catherine Gu are headliners on the “Institutionalization of Crypto” session.



BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has called tokenization “the next generation for markets.” The panel I’m moderating Thursday is likely to feature a debate on which assets are worth bringing onchain, and broader TradFi adoption there.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

BlackRock

DAS to spotlight institutional era of crypto

Michael McSweeney

The institutions are here!&nbsp;



It’s long been seasonal fashion within the crypto industry to declare, with great aplomb, that the institutions — the investors, the banks, the family offices, the money —&nbsp;are coming. I remember when Barry Silbert <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/secondmarket-ceo-wall-street-put-203000747.html">declared</a> this forthcoming arrival all the way back in 2013, when he and his team first debuted the Bitcoin Investment Trust.&nbsp;



Wandering the sidelines of Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit in London this week, what once seemed an ephemeral milestone appeared to be indisputably true: The institutions are here.



Maybe they’ve been here a while, or perhaps they’ve just entered through a side door. Bitcoin ETFs arguably deserve the bulk of the credit. So, too, does the leapfrogging price of bitcoin (today’s volatility notwithstanding). Or Larry Fink, the BlackRock CEO and the premier spokesperson for crypto in an institutional age, may be the one to thank.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Certainly the conversations on stage in London this week speak to this reality. From enterprise hardware to market structure, the discussions have taken an institutional presence as a given.&nbsp;



When exactly did they show up? What are they here for? As my colleague David Canellis noted in his wrap-up of DAS London’s first day, these are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/digital-asset-summit-day-one-yield">difficult questions to answer</a>. And there may not be just one reason: Exposure to new asset classes, new technologies or perhaps simply a new way to make money could all be factors.&nbsp;



DAS London is, perhaps, a meeting-point between the institutions and the startups who hope to attract their business, their investments, or at the very least, their time.&nbsp;



To put a finer point on it, it’s clear that the institutions have gotten the message that crypto is open for business. Their business, specifically.&nbsp;



That’s great. But now what?



What happens from this point on will be less flashy, perhaps less headline-y than early industry phases. I’m talking about the grind, the unsexy, the day-to-day work. Attracting institutions to one’s custody platform or trading platform is one thing. What’s next once they’ve settled in?



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-bitcoin-etf-success">I underestimated the market pile-on</a> spurred by the launch of the current crop of bitcoin ETFs. I believed growth would be slow at first. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-snapshot-record-inflows">I was wrong</a>.&nbsp;



Beyond bitcoin ETFs, though, I wonder how slow-going the spread of institutional activity will be within crypto. It’s hard to see traders at major financial institutions apeing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/slerf-investor-lose-money-crypto">into the latest memecoin</a> or dropping millions of dollars on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cheatsheet-bitcoin-entering-danger-zone">a picture of a dog in a hat</a>.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/defi-needs-institutions-regulation">DeFi needs institutions — and regulation&nbsp;</a>



But the networks themselves —&nbsp;I’m thinking Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana —&nbsp;are booming. It’s easy to imagine that perhaps some of that upward momentum is driven by the major players who, by all appearances, are now in the room and seeking opportunities.&nbsp;



“Infrastructure building” has been a common refrain here in London. Namely, building the rails for institutions to become more comfortable in the somewhat volatile crypto pond. In a way, that’s what the bitcoin ETFs are: infrastructure for institutions to move money into crypto that feels safer and more familiar than a memecoin or NFT.



There’s no short supply of crypto ambition here in London. The good times feel especially good. But history rhymes in this space, and an FTX-scale disaster will happen again.&nbsp;



Will institutions stick it out during the next crypto hurricane? That’s an open question, and I think the investments and development decisions being made today will prove to be deciding factors. Stay tuned.&nbsp;



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and The Block. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.</div>


<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/the-breakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst. </li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forward-guidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supply-shock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

cryptocurrency

The institutions are paying attention. Now comes the hard part.

Liz Coyne

<div id="highlights-block_613fab56321c7" class="highlights">
 
</div>



Digital Asset Summit 2021, New York City — Blockworks&#8217; Digital Asset Summit 2021 is our flagship US-based institutionally focused crypto <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">conference</a> for asset managers and financial services professionals.



Hosted Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 14 &#8211; 15, this in-person event features leaders from the world of finance and digital assets discussing crypto from the perspective of industry practitioners.



While the event is sold out, we are thrilled to be able to bring you all the main stage content via livestream.



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/#form0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Follow this link and log-in to watch now.</a>

Blockworks

Digital Asset Summit 2021 Live from NYC

Michael Ippolito

<div id="highlights-block_60ae87980a957" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Digital Asset Summit is the first crypto conference designed for a financial audience</li>
 <li>Our audience is carefully monitored and made up only of finance and crypto capital markets professionals</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Crypto is transitioning to an institutional asset class at an unprecedented rate.



News continues to pour in every day as banks, trillion dollar asset managers, financial institutions and even governments move to accept and integrate bitcoin.



As an entirely new cohort of professional investors and institutions struggle to learn about crypto, the question remains: what are the best resources?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">An institutional conference for finance professionals</h3>



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Digital Asset Summit</a> is the first crypto conference designed for a financial audience.



At Blockworks’ two-day, flagship event based in of New York City, there will be no talk of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharding.asp#:~:text=Sharding%20is%20a%20database%20partitioning,process%20more%20transactions%20per%20second.&amp;text=Sharding%20can%20help%20reduce%20the,blockchain%20network%20into%20separate%20shards." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sharding</a>, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zksnark.asp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">zk snarks</a> or a candy-coated vision of what blockchain can be.



Instead, you will hear from real practitioners, investors and professionals who traffic in these markets every day.



Every topic is carefully constructed to answer the question: how will we build new capital markets to support a new asset class?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Who should attend?</h3>



The DAS audience is extremely targeted and capped at 750 attendees.&nbsp;The attendees fall into three buckets:



<ol class="wp-block-list"><li>Asset Managers (Family Offices, Macro Hedge Funds, Long Only, Crypto Native Funds)</li><li>Financial Institutions (Investment Banks, Insurance Companies, Payment Processors)</li><li>Crypto Infrastructure (Prime Brokerage, Lending, Trading Services, Liquidity Providers)</li></ol>



If you want to meet retail, this conference isn’t for you. Our audience is carefully monitored and made up only of finance and crypto capital markets professionals.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What will the conference cover?</h3>



Below is a sample of the type of content you can expect to be on the DAS agenda:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>Perspectives from the Buy-Side: Inside a Bull Run</li><li>Institutional Market Access and the Rise of Prime Brokerage</li><li>The Future of Financial Services and Digital Assets</li><li>The State of Crypto Market Structure: Liquidity, Arbitrage and Security</li><li>Institutional Lending and Yield Generation</li></ul>



At Blockworks, our mission is to bridge the gap between finance and crypto.&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DAS</a> is one of the most important things we do to get the right people in the room and move the conversation forward.



<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/events/digital-asset-summit-2021-2/#pricing2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Buy a ticket</a> today and get the early-bird discount. Prices increase on June 4th.