Token Relations

Benjamin Chodroff from @EthereumInsti says the U.S. and Asia are competing over who controls the future of money and finance, and MENA is staying neutral. "In MENA, there’s a credible neutrality, to put it in Ethereum terms: neither Beijing nor Washington."

Global Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered (@StanChart), Geoffrey Kendrick explained why he sees TradFi turning to Ethereum: "The main big picture driver is that TradFi is finally getting interested in blockchain... real-world stuff is finally happening onchain, and most of that sits on Ethereum today." When asked what makes Ethereum so enticing, Kendrick said, "More than half of RWAs and more than half of stablecoins are on Ethereum now... Because Ethereum has been around for more than 10 years and it's had no downtime, it's the trusted layer one. So I expect TradFi to favor that for the next few years." On the gap between ETH's price and network activity, Kendrick pointed to Amazon in 2001, saying, "The Amazon stock went from $113 to $6... But at the same time, all the internal metrics at Amazon were going up, and that's sort of how I've seen Ethereum in the last couple of years." On his RWA forecast, Kendrick added, "My market cap forecast for RWAs, which are around $45 billion now, is that we go to $2 trillion over the next few years. And the only feedback I get is that roughly 50x forecast is too low, not too high."

NEW: @The_DTCC-tokenized assets are expected to be available on @Solana in the second half of 2027. The service only went live on Oct 28 and runs on the @CantonNetwork and DTCC’s private Besu network today. 20 DTC participants have signed up so far, including Bank of America, Citadel Securities, Citi, Fidelity, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and State Street. DTC holds more than $114 trillion in assets under custody.

Managing Director and Head of Europe at Bitwise (@Bitwise), Bradley Duke (@BradleyDuke_) explained how Europe is viewing crypto adoption: "Institutions are a mixed bunch, and they're all moving at their own speeds... But the good news is that Ethereum has a big share of the mind share. When people are thinking about crypto, they're always thinking about Bitcoin and Ethereum." When asked about the European opportunity, Duke shared his thoughts on MiCA, saying, "I think MiCA is doing the things that it should be doing, and giving confidence to investors that it's okay to invest in these things." On what's changed over the past year, Duke added, "We used to go into meetings and they would use Bitcoin and crypto interchangeably... And now the conversation is much, much higher."

Full interview with Ben Chodroff (@benchodroff), Head of Technical Strategy and MENA at @ethereuminsti: How Ethereum Institutional is bringing banks onchain, and why MENA is leading the way. TIMESTAMPS: 00:25 The Gap Between Protocol Research and Institutions 01:20 How Ethereum Helps Institutions 02:48 Who's Leading by Example on Ethereum 03:35 JPMorgan's Path From Private Ledger to Mainnet 04:12 Why Legal and Compliance Are the Real Challenges 04:54 Where Momentum Is Building: US, Asia and MENA 06:00 Why MENA Is Leading on Digital Asset Policy 07:15 Inside the Ethereum Institutional Forum in London 08:17 Why Institutions Need a Post-Quantum Roadmap Now

LIVE: Inside The Ethereum Institutional Forum in London xitter.twitterapi.xyz/i/broadcasts/2zkVWpzlJ…

Institutional adoption is here, and privacy has become a must have for it. Our institutional research analyst @ahbeaudry breaks down the confidentiality tools built for institutional use: "Shielded pools are great and all, but that’s probably more of a user-facing product. For institutions, it’s probably gonna be permissioned ledgers, just because you can do so much more with it. You’re looking at things like @Zama, which just put out shielded vaults, where an institution can put their assets onchain, interact with DeFi privately, lend their assets, and execute strategies without their competitors seeing what they’re doing."

Our @StellarOrg report dives into recent developments between July and October. Here are five key developments the ecosystem should care about: • @usbank in September ran a live cross-border payment pilot using USBDC, its dollar-backed stablecoin, on Stellar in September. Built with @pwc_de, the pilot sent a payment between the bank’s North American and European branches. ▪ The pilot tested minting, payments, redemption, freezing and clawback through the bank’s existing systems, showing how issuer controls could work without custom smart contracts. • @StateStreet and Galaxy launched SWEEP, a tokenized liquidity fund, on Stellar in September. The fund invests in assets such as short-duration U.S. Treasuries and Treasury-backed repurchase agreements, aiming to generate income while preserving principal and liquidity. ▪ Investors can subscribe and redeem assets in certain stablecoins at any hour, allowing them to put stablecoin balances to work. • Tokenized real-world assets on Stellar reached $5.5 billion, up about 80% from $3.05 billion at the end of June. Top categories include: U.S. Treasuries for $1.93 billion, active strategies accounted for $1.79 billion, and private credit for $640 million. ▪ Tradable’s tokenized private credit and continued inflows to the @Spiko_finance Amundi Overnight Swap Fund drove most of the period’s growth. Spiko held $1.7 billion on Stellar, more than the total of the other four networks it also uses. • Adjusted stablecoin transfer volume on Stellar reached $3.11 billion in October, up 144% from $1.27 billion in July. Transfers above $1 million accounted for $2.4 billion of October’s adjusted volume, highlighting the network’s role of being used for large-value onchain transfers. ▪ @USDC was Stellar’s most active stablecoin in terms of monthly velocity, reaching 73.23x circulating supply, showing how frequently the token was traded relative to its outstanding supply. • Stellar announced a number of partnerships and integrations with banks, fintech companies, as well as blockchain integrations that expanded accessibility at its Meridian event in Lisbon, Portugal at the end of October. Janus Henderson and @Centrifuge launched a Nasdaq-100 index fund for non-U.S. investors, chose Stellar as its only network at launch.

Yesterday, @DigitalAsset signed an MOU with @progmat_en to bring Japanese government bond trading and settlement onto @CantonNetwork, opening 24/7 access between Asian and U.S. markets. We asked Eric Saraniecki (@wesarn_real), Co-Founder of Digital Asset and Canton Network, on why that matters: "24/7 is very much associated with degens and punters right now. But it is really just continuous access to US markets, and that’s a very normal thing. That connection between Asian markets and US markets is a really important corridor."

ICYMI: Here were the main themes from DAS London Day-2: - Tokenized equities appear to be the next major use case for blockchains and crypto, and will drive the next wave of adoption. - Interoperability will be a challenge moving forward. The industry needs to figure out how to remove liquidity siloing and fragmentation. - Onchain options are an upcoming use case with a lot of potential. Market makers are coming onboard, and recent technical advancements have led to an explosion of new entrants. The products are built, institutions are coming on board. All that is left is for existing teams to prove their PMF, form partnerships, and attract new liquidity.

LIVE at DAS London: Stani Kulechov, Founder & CEO of @aave - TradFi doesn't compete with DeFi but compliments it. As institutions move onchain they create new use cases for DeFi protocols and increase the overall liquidity. - The future of finance is based on optimization. The first leg is AI and the second is moving assets onchain. - Tokenizing equities will be the next major unlock for financial markets, and DeFi protocols will need to adapt to accomedate for the new uses cases. "What's fascinating about tokenization is that there are multiple different models. It's a big challenge trying to figure out which model to use. Each one has different capabilities and we're not sure which model will prevail."

Live at DAS London: Theo Golden, Head of Tokenised Product @Broadridge Interoperability is going to be the biggest challenge for tokenizing assets. Capital will need to be able to flow between markets in order to prevent fragmentation or siloing. The three pillars to interoperability include: 1) Technology: building out the layers that allow capital to flow freely 2) Communication: making it possible for smart contracts to talk to each other, and for market particpants to send information 3) Legal: figuring out how to navigate different regulations and determining what is allowed across jurisdictions