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Stablecoins and tokenization (shocker!) remained a big theme at DAS London’s Day 2. Upon the umpteenth mention of these segments, Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos got real with the industry members watching.
But first, Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden kicked off the main stage festivities by calling tokenization crypto’s killer app. This clip comes from later in the chat:
The market value of stablecoins — tokenization’s “top of the funnel” — has grown to nearly $300 billion. There’s about $33 billion worth of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) — i.e. private credit, money market funds, equities, etc. — RWA.xyz data shows.
Even many crypto skeptics understand the benefits of blockchain technology. Index fund giant Vanguard, which doesn’t allow bitcoin ETFs to trade on its platform, was testing the tech five-plus years ago in an effort to streamline asset-backed securities markets.
So tokenization’s growth potential is by no means a new conversation. You know that as a Forward Guidance reader.
That might explain what Santos said during an afternoon chat I was moderating: “I’m tired of sitting behind a screen or coming to these panels and pontificating about this [gosh darn!] technology. It’s good, we use it, but someone has to deploy it at scale.”
We shouldn’t need another decade before mass adoption takes hold, Santos argued. He told me there’s a three-to-five year “execution window” before tokenization becomes “table stakes” — and no excuse if the industry can’t make it happen.
“The tech is ready, the regulation is there and so let’s accelerate that, let’s actually muscle our way to go-to-market and development,” Santos said.
He didn’t stop there, and I think his words kind of sum up where the industry is heading.