Historically, institutions have hesitated to move on-chain due to regulatory risks. However, with bitcoin ETF AUM inflows on track to surpass the gold ETFs’ AUM within a year, finance and tech companies exploring the technology and offering crypto products, and corporates adding digital assets to their balance sheets, institutional interest in crypto has never been higher. That said, the coexistence of off-chain and on-chain capital thus far has mainly involved using on-chain capital to capture off-chain yield (e.g., Tether purchasing billions of dollars in U.S. treasuries). With regulatory clarity, we are now in the early stages of off-chain capital moving on-chain. Post-election developments, like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton expanding their tokenized money funds to new chains, exemplify the substantial capital ready to enter DeFi and are likely just the tip of the iceberg. And beyond tokenization, Stripe recently acquired stablecoin startup Bridge, McDonald’s partnered with NFT project Doodles, and PayPal is using Ethereum and Solana to settle contracts. This streamlines asset management, enhances market efficiency and liquidity, improves financial inclusion, and ultimately accelerates economic growth. Regulatory clarity will add an accelerant to this already-burgeoning activity.
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