Digital Asset Summit 2026

DAS LONDON 2026 - DAY 1 RECAP The energy in London is electric. Day 2 kicks off shortly.

Today's collateral markets can't do "a 37-minute loan." Onchain, they can. "For someone that needs to borrow collateral for three hours, today they pay an overnight rate. And tomorrow they could pay a three-hour rate." - @wesarn_real of @digitalasset

Will AI agents do your shopping? @HadickM is "pretty bearish." "A ton of startups, they've got a lot of funding, I have funded some of them… but more on the business side than the consumer side. Consumers like to shop."

"Listen, everyone should be scared shitless… Finance is a trust business." AI means a hack "can happen in a blink of an eye now." - @HadickM of @dragonfly

The demand for tokenized assets isn't coming from where you think. "Tokenized equities have gone from pretty much zero to four billion dollars or more in the last two years. Most of the volume is coming from the Global South, the emerging markets." - Abdul Rafay Gadit of @ZIGFinance

Fidelity's head of tokenization on when bringing assets onchain actually adds value. "If it's just a matter of buying and holding for proof of ownership, you could pretty much do that with a database without having a blockchain." Where it does add value is trading, borrowing and lending, plus real price discovery for private assets that today get "the real valuation... once a year." - Jasmine Jia of @Fidelity

The UK has everything it needs to lead in digital assets, but "potential isn't inevitability." "The clear and present danger is if we don't, then the UK, despite all of these advantages and unique elements, will potentially be a flyover jurisdiction." - @LordChrisHolmes

DeFi eating the world is a good tweet, but most portfolios aren't positioned for it. "Most capital allocators are still massively overweight centralized intermediaries that are just secularly going to be losing market share to decentralized competitors." - @brian_smith_0 of @JitoFDN

"Crypto has an insatiable appetite for nonlinear payouts." @a16z's @robbiepetersen_ on why options could be the next iteration after meme coins and perps, and why no one has cracked Robinhood's retail options playbook onchain yet.

"Buybacks are inherently wasteful." Dromos Labs President Chris Boulos on why tokens with no real claim forced the industry to invent one, and why that may be good for the token but bad for the business.

Julian Zawistowski opines on what is preventing treasuries from venturing into other opportunities: "They believe in the upside of holding ETH alone." @julianzawist of @GolemFoundation

DAS London has aura

Dialectic's Alessandro Buser: Any residual trust in a DeFi protocol should sit behind time locks — something Drift didn't have, so compromised signing keys meant an instant malicious upgrade. Most blue-chip protocols delay changes so allocators and security researchers can stop a bad update before it hits production. @BuserAlessandro of @Dialectic_Group

Gareth Davies MP, Shadow Financial Secretary, said the Bank of England governor was pretty skeptical and reluctant on stablecoins. "I thought that was overly cautious and verging on anti-competitive." @GarethDavies_MP

Dialectic's Alessandro Buser: DeFi losses this year were 1.34% of TVL — and only 0.19% of TVL went to smart-contract bugs (19 bps), mostly one Balancer exploit, the lowest in six years. That's well below 2021–22, and his conclusion is that well-architected DeFi is safer than it has ever been. @FarmerAlbus of @Dialectic_Group

Gareth Davies MP, Shadow Financial Secretary, said the UK must make its debt and currency more competitive. "This is a key area for growth for the UK economy." @GarethDavies_MP

Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital said even if you're megabullish on AI, you should have blockchain exposure. "Bitcoin has on average almost doubled every year for 13 years." @dan_pantera of @PanteraCapital

Korea is about to open a regulated tokenization market. Nodit's Jae Kim: On Feb. 4, 2027, an amended security law allows a blockchain-based ledger to serve as an official register for securities, and tokenized securities get a regulatory framework for issuance and trading. Institutions are preparing for a market that opens in about three months — even as the Digital Asset Basic Act and a won-denominated stablecoin are still pending. @0xjhk of @NoditPlatform

A stablecoin is useful when people can transact it, trust it, and hold it as a store of value. Circle's Kash Razzaghi: Last quarter @circle announced $14 trillion of USDC transfers. There's roughly $72–73 billion of USDC in circulation today, held by businesses and people around the world — and every dollar is turned over 190 times. That's product-market fit for a better version of money. @KashRazzaghi

DriveWealth is a US clearing and custody broker — a B2B2C company providing brokerage infrastructure for partners around the world. President Aaron Sokasian: Over 100 partners across five continents and 30 countries, three to six million trades a day, and on any given day they're close to 50% of all fractional trades on the US markets. They were the vanguard of fractional trading, which opened the door for a global audience to transact and hold US securities. @DriveWealth