onchain

When crypto first came around, banks, asset managers and big institutions wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Funny how things change. Some of the biggest names in traditional finance are now actively bringing financial assets onchain. They’re building products, exploring new ways to distribute them and putting serious money behind the infrastructure. Yet retail sentiment seems to be going in the opposite direction & I don’t blame people for that. We’ve had years of shitcoins, rugs, scams and people getting burned. For a lot of people, crypto has become synonymous with buying some random token and hoping it does a 100x. But I think that’s where we’re getting things mixed up. Crypto is a lot bigger than the token market. In fact, I’d argue some of the most interesting things happening right now have very little to do with what most people are trading. Look at what institutions are actually doing. They’re looking at blockchain as a better way to move, manage, distribute and settle financial assets. Our current financial system is full of unnecessary friction. Settlement takes days, markets close, ownership records are scattered across different systems and there’s an entire chain of intermediaries involved in moving money and assets around. Now look at what happens when you start putting these things onchain. You can have assets settling faster, markets operating around the clock, fractional ownership and financial products that can interact with other applications and services. That’s the bit that gets me excited. We’re talking about bringing stocks, bonds, treasuries, money market funds, private credit, real estate, commodities and plenty more onchain. Not because everything needs a token slapped on it, but because there are genuine advantages to changing how these assets are represented and distributed. And we’re already seeing some pretty big names get involved. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and plenty of others aren’t spending time and resources on this for the sake of a crypto narrative. There’s a business case here. I also think people underestimate just how important the access side of this could become. For decades, access to certain financial products has largely depended on where you live, how much money you have and which institutions you’re connected to. A lot of opportunities have simply been out of reach for ordinary investors. Onchain finance has the potential to open some of those doors. We’re still early. Liquidity needs improving, regulation needs to catch up and there are plenty of products that still have a long way to go. I’m not pretending we’re already at the finish line. But I do find it interesting that while so many people are losing interest in crypto, some of the biggest financial businesses in the world are moving closer to it. I don’t think the next big wave is going to be driven purely by people buying altcoins. I think it’ll come from people accessing financial assets, using them across different platforms and interacting with markets that don’t need to close at certain times on certain days. That’s the side of crypto I care about.

Educate the masses on tokenization.

Had this ready to go this morning and then @FTDA_US decided to add another $100 million on the @StellarOrg network. They now have over $1 billion of value on the @StellarOrg blockchain.