TradFi | Crypto

Standard Chartered will provide digital asset custody for 21Shares, signaling deeper TradFi expansion into crypto and raising questions about Zodia Custody’s future role. Major bank Standard Chartered announced fund manager 21Shares has selected it as its digital asset custodian, potentially moving away from a crypto-native partner. According to a Monday announcement from Standard Chartered shared with Cointelegraph, the bank will provide crypto custody services to 21Shares, which offers multiple exchange-traded crypto products. Margaret Harwood-Jones, the bank’s global head of financing and securities services, said the collaboration allows them to “to extend our expertise into the fast-evolving digital asset ecosystem.” However, 21Shares already had a crypto-native custody partner. In late June 2024, the fund manager partnered with crypto-native custodian Zodia Custody to hold its assets. Zodia Custody was co-founded by Standard Chartered in 2020 and operated as a wholly owned subsidiary, indicating that th...

Stablecoins, staking tokens and RWAs are bridging crypto’s yield-generation gap, bolstered by the historic approval of the US GENIUS Act in July. Cryptocurrency-based yield products still lag far behind their traditional finance (TradFi) counterparts, but new blockchain sectors such as liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and real-world assets (RWAs) are steadily closing the gap, according to a new report co-authored by RedStone Oracles, Gauntlet, Stablewatch and the Tokenized Asset Coalition, shared with Cointelegraph. Only 8% to 11% of cryptocurrencies offer passive yield-generating models, indicating a significant gap compared to 55% to 65% of TradFi assets, roughly a fivefold disparity, the report found. However, stablecoins, RWAs and “blue-chip” yield tokens are rapidly closing decentralized finance’s (DeFi) passive income gap. Emerging regulations, such as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, passed in July, are helping the industry catch up, resulting in a rising de...

Like early email protocols, DeFi remains complex and isolated. Bridging DeFi and TradFi through hybrid payment solutions could unlock crypto’s mainstream potential. Opinion by: Mark Jones, founder of Hana Wallet It’s often forgotten that the first emails were sent between US college professors looking to share files and work collaboratively in the early 1970s. The sending of emails between two professors initially involved using a closed system between two computers on the ARPANET that would enable messages to be sent over the File Transfer Protocol.  The process was slow, complex, time-consuming and consequently didn’t gain any traction beyond Ivy League universities or government research facilities. Read more

Like early email protocols, DeFi remains complex and isolated. Bridging DeFi and TradFi through hybrid payment solutions could unlock crypto’s mainstream potential. Opinion by: Mark Jones, founder of Hana Wallet It’s often forgotten that the first emails were sent between US college professors looking to share files and work collaboratively in the early 1970s. The sending of emails between two professors initially involved using a closed system between two computers on the ARPANET that would enable messages to be sent over the File Transfer Protocol.  The process was slow, complex, time-consuming and consequently didn’t gain any traction beyond Ivy League universities or government research facilities. Read more

DeFi connected to Bitcoin has been reshaped as funding and access have moved toward TradFi: JPMorgan has explored accepting BTC and ETH as loan collateral, and Fidelity has added Solana trading for eligible U.S. clients, influencing liquidity, spreads, and settlement paths. The post Think Banks Don’t Move Markets? Bitcoin’s DeFi Hopes May Be Crushed by TradFi’s Collateral Grab appeared first on Cryptonews.

Caitlin Long said mismatches between legacy financial systems and blockchain protocols, which settle in real-time, may impact TradFi firms. Institutional investors from the traditional finance world lack the updated risk tolerance models to deal with crypto and may face trouble during the next bear market, according to Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long. “Big Finance is here in a big way, and that seems to be driving this cycle. I suspect it will continue to drive this cycle,” Long told CNBC at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium on Friday. Long said that legacy financial institutions are comfortable taking on large amounts of leverage due to fail-safes built into the system, like discount windows and other “fault tolerances.”  Read more

TradFi giants made 345 blockchain investments between 2020–2024, with G-SIBs leading 100+ deals across tokenization, custody and payments. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Japan’s SBI Group have emerged as the most active players in traditional finance backing blockchain startups, according to a new report by Ripple in partnership with CB Insights and the UK Centre for Blockchain Technologies. Between 2020 and 2024, global banks participated in 345 investments in blockchain companies, most of them in early-stage funding rounds, per the report. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs led the pack with 18 deals each, while JP Morgan and Mitsubishi UFJ followed closely with 15 investments. Mega-rounds, deals worth $100 million or more, were a key focus. Banks contributed to 33 such rounds during the four-year window, pouring capital into firms focused on trading infrastructure, tokenization, custody, and payment solutions. Read more

Decentralization was blockchain’s founding promise—but in finance, milliseconds move markets. Unless Web3 can match Wall Street’s sub-second speed, users will keep choosing the faster rails of traditional finance. We see this in decentralized networks like Ethereum, which processes around 15 transactions per second, compared to Visa’s 24,000. Ever since the internet irrevocably changed finance, the […] The post Blockchain won’t win until it outruns TradFi appeared first on CryptoSlate.

1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz told Cointelegraph that DeFi’s user experience, wider collateral range and optimized fees give it an edge over TradFi in the lending race. As traditional finance (TradFi) eyes the crypto lending market, community members explained how decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocols can compete with what mainstream financial institutions bring to the table.  On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, was reported to be exploring lending directly against crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), according to the Financial Times. An unidentified source said the bank may launch the offering as soon as 2026, though the plan is still in its early stages. With a major TradFi player eyeing the crypto lending market, the pressure on DeFi lenders to remain competitive is increasing. However, 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz told Cointelegraph that crypto lending in DeFi has undeniable advantages over traditional finance institutions.  Read more

Institutional investors will increasingly adopt blockchain-based compliance solutions and tokenized RWAs, Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov told Cointelegraph. Blockchain-based investment products and compliance tools are poised to become more than 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional finance (TradFi) offerings, spurring increased digital asset adoption by financial institutions. Traditional financial compliance products are often fragmented and expensive due to complex manual processes, resulting in billions of dollars in costs. “Compliance is an inefficient part of the traditional finance industry that a lot of people are not happy about, including identity verification of AML and KYC,” Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov told Cointelegraph during the RWA Summit 2025 in Cannes. Read more

LINK price is on the verge of confirming a historically bullish pattern, which could send the altcoin’s price above $18. Key point: Convergence of TradFi and DeFi could propel LINK past $18 and start a new uptrend. At the RWA Summit Cannes, Nelli Zaltsman, JPMorgan Kinexys’ head of blockchain payments innovation, said that decentralized finance and traditional finance are converging rapidly. The banking giant, Chainlink (LINK), and Ondo Finance (ONDO) recently completed a crosschain Delivery versus Payment (DvP) test transaction, involving a permissioned payment network and a public testnet. Read more

JPMorgan’s blockchain lead says merging TradFi with DeFi is accelerating, as the bank’s pilot with Chainlink and Base shows traditional institutions moving onchain. The divide between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi) could disappear within the next few years, according to Nelli Zaltsman, head of blockchain payments innovation at JPMorgan’s Kinexys. Speaking alongside Chainlink Labs co-founder Sergey Nazarov at the RWA Summit Cannes 2025, Zaltsman said JPMorgan is pushing to merge institutional-grade payments infrastructure with emerging onchain assets, signaling what could be a tipping point for mainstream blockchain adoption. “Our goal has always been to find the best way to work with the public blockchain, regulatory environment permitting,” said Zaltsman. She described JPMorgan’s blockchain strategy as “asset agnostic,” aiming to give clients real-time access to multiple networks while minimizing friction. Read more

Bybit launched a new platform on June 16 that allows users to trade gold, forex, stock CFDs, global indices, and commodities directly within its app, a first for any major crypto exchange. The launch of Bybit TradFi expands the company’s offerings beyond digital assets, positioning it as a full-service financial hub aimed at bridging the […] The post Bybit unveils TradFi platform to blend crypto and traditional markets appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Big names, including Securitize, Ethena, Ant Digital and Tradeable, see custom-built Ethereum L2s as the future for trillions in RWAs. Shortly before Ethereums shock 50% price surge earlier this month, when bearishness about its roadmap was reaching its zenith, Real Vision founder Raoul Pal was asked on a podcast if he thought Ethereum was cooked. The former Goldman Sachs executive said hed heard that narrative a lot, but it was wrong not least because TradFi considers Ethereum to be the Microsoft of blockchain. “It clearly works very well for what the financial markets need,” he said. Read more