Web3 had plenty on its mind this week, including some interesting thoughts on tokenization and market speculation.
Crypto markets
“The Clarity Act will become law and the narrative for crypto will switch to one of acceptance and embracement by banks and money managers.
“Treasury will begin a coordinated effort to rollover $7-9T in debt with large treasury/asset buys by the Fed who starts to fear deflation. This will pump huge dollars into the financial system and act as fuel for risk on assets.
“In April, new bank rules take effect that lower the buffer requirements for leverage by about half. That should unlock even more liquidity that will flow from the financial system into investors’ accounts.
“This liquidity cycle feels more and more like 2021, where gold led and crypto/equities followed. If that happens again we could see $200k bitcoin within weeks of a new run up in price. Not predicting exactly when the run up would start but when it does it will catch almost everyone off guard.
“It’s indicative of what we’re seeing here. First of all, the vibe here has nothing to do with price. Everybody’s talking about tokenization. So institutions are so bullish right now on the future of crypto.”
– Bill Barhydt, founder and CEO of Abra
“The crypto markets are experiencing their most severe deleveraging event since the FTX collapse, with Bitcoin’s breach below $61,000 triggering a cascading liquidation cycle that cleared $2.7 billion in forced position closures within 24 hours.
“This isn’t merely a technical breakdown; it represents institutional capitulation at scale, evidenced by record entity-adjusted realized losses of $3.2 billion and the first break below Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average since March 2022. The institutional ETF complex, once heralded as crypto’s legitimization pathway, recorded over $1.1 billion in weekly outflows with BlackRock’s IBIT alone shedding half a billion dollars.
“What’s particularly striking is how this selloff reveals crypto’s complete transformation from ‘digital gold’ to a leveraged risk asset. While traditional haven assets like gold held relatively steady amid Iran tensions and government shutdown fears, Bitcoin correlated perfectly with equity weakness, demonstrating that institutional adoption has paradoxically made crypto more sensitive to macro risk-off moves, not less.
“The geographic fault lines are equally telling: CoinDesk Research shows Asia continuing to dominate actual trading volumes while US institutional infrastructure hemorrhages capital, suggesting a potential structural shift in crypto’s center of gravity back toward retail-driven Asian markets.
“Looking forward, this deleveraging cycle may be clearing the deck for a more sustainable foundation, but the speed and severity suggest we’re nowhere near equilibrium. The technical picture shows Bitcoin testing critical support at the $58,000-$60,000 range, where previous bull market cycles found major accumulation zones.
“If this level holds, we could see a period of consolidation between $60,000-$70,000 as overleveraged positions are flushed out. However, a break below $58,000 would likely trigger another wave of institutional selling, potentially targeting the $52,000-$55,000 zone where longer-term holders accumulated during 2023.
“The fundamental backdrop suggests this correction was overdue. On-chain metrics show the market had reached frothy levels, with realized cap MVRV ratios hitting cycle peaks and exchange inflows accelerating from long-term holders. Paradoxically, this washout may create the conditions for the next leg higher by resetting valuations and clearing excess leverage.
“With open interest collapsing to $103 billion and institutional flows reversing dramatically, the next phase will likely depend on whether Asia’s trading dominance can stabilize price discovery without the weight of Western institutional capital.”
– Jimmy Xue, co-founder and COO of Axis
Tokenization
“Tokenization is coming; look at the SEC and what Atkins and Bessent are talking about on a regular basis. I’m shocked this is the first time that I’ve gone to a crypto conference (BTC Investor Week) of any kind where the price is in the middle of a 50% drawdown and the aura is just pure bullishness. I’ve never experienced that in crypto before. It’s fascinating.
“I think your sentiment in the crypto space is directly correlated right now to how much cash you have on the sidelines. If you have a lot of cash on the sidelines, you’re exceptionally happy and you look at this as a buying opportunity. If you’re over allocated at 126, then you’re crying right now.
“This is where you make all of your money on the buy side, not on the sell side.”
“The future of banking for retail globally, in my opinion, is asset-based lending. It’s going to be tokenized everything with the ability to borrow 35 to 50% of those assets.”
“That ownership is going to be tokenized…eventually is going to be tokenized assets that they’re going to store in their Abra account, Robin Hood wallet, whatever, and then have the equivalent of a credit line against them integrated with Apple Pay, Google Pay that they’ll be able to spend.”
“I think the market’s grown to a point where retail doesn’t matter anymore. I do know that over the next 10 years, the shape and the look and the feel of finance and how we interact with finance is going to materially change. If crypto’s only meaningful use case was to make big changes in finance, well, that’s the big deal. We’re on the precipice and it’s exciting.”
– Bill Barhydt, CEO, Abra
China’s RWA tokenization approach
“What most coverage is missing is that China didn’t actually ban tokenization. They banned private tokenization. The notice explicitly carves out an exception for activity conducted on state approved financial infrastructure. That’s a very deliberate distinction.
“Beijing is saying what a lot of governments are thinking but haven’t said publicly yet, real world assets on public, permissionless chains is a non-starter for sovereign economies. The only version of this that works is state controlled, sovereign-native infrastructure.
“The interesting comparison is Saudi Arabia, which reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction. Instead of locking down first and figuring out the infrastructure later, the Kingdom went straight to building it, integrating tokenization directly into the national property registry and executing live sovereign transactions.
“And critically, they’re inviting the private sector to build on top of that infrastructure, not shutting them out. The state owns the rails, but technology companies, banks, fintech and proptech firms are welcome to build services on them. China is closing the door to private participation. Saudi Arabia is holding it open on sovereign terms.
“Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE, are all advancing regulated frameworks and supervised pilots. But the jurisdictions that will actually define this market aren’t the ones testing in sandboxes. They’re the ones putting national infrastructure into production. That’s where this is heading and China’s notice just made it harder to argue otherwise.”
– Faisal Monai, CEO of droppRWA
NFTs
“NFTs are foundational to OpenSea and they’re a true differentiator in this strategy. The power of true infallible digital ownership is still extremely powerful. People are using them for a real mode of digital ownership and membership. NFTs will always be very core and foundational to our business.
“If we’re being honest with ourselves, the large majority of people that bought NFTs in 2021 and 2022 were doing it for money. When you have a majority of a community that cares mostly about speculation and gambling, it actually takes away from the ability for that community to really thrive. Downtimes in the market actually represent a lot of opportunity for real communities to form.
“It kind of sucks if you stop playing a game and that sword is just stuck on the centralized servers of the company that made it. There is so much potential for NFTs and blockchain to affect industries like gaming in a meaningful way.”
“I would much rather see people buy things for the love of it. If you buy something because you genuinely love it, then you don’t have the burden of caring about what the price is on any given day.”
– Adam Hollander, CMO, Open Sea
Bitcoin
“Large holders, or the so-called whales, are absorbing supply in size. When wallets of this magnitude step back in after a prolonged sell-off, it reflects high conviction. They’re seemingly positioning ahead of broader participation returning.
“Bitcoin’s correction from its October high has tested sentiment. Retail flows have slowed and short-term traders have remained cautious. Whale behavior, however, often diverges from surface-level sentiment.
“Sustained accumulation phases by large wallets during periods of price weakness have historically preceded powerful upside moves once demand broadens. Smart capital tends to move before consensus shifts. A 40% pullback resets positioning and removes excess leverage. Whales accumulating at this stage are signalling that they see long-term value and scarcity.
“Bitcoin’s supply is finite. When large investors absorb tens of thousands of coins in a compressed period, the market structure tightens. If sidelined capital begins to re-enter while whales continue accumulating, upside pressure can build quickly.
“Consolidation below prior highs is likely building the base for the next structural rally. We’ve seen before that smart money doesn’t panic, it positions.”
– Nigel Green, CEO, deVere Group
AI and finance
“I think if you can have personalized portfolios, if you can basically do real balancing, not the RIA 60/40 thing, but a real look into your life, your liquidity requirements, your lifestyle requirements, and have an AI financial assistant/planner that’s integrated with an RIA as a fiduciary and still have a person on the hook. I think that’s a killer business model.
“This is the kind of second coming of crypto to me: this convergence where crypto acts as the transaction layer for AI and the agentic web.”
– Barhydt
“This is a reckoning for financial services.vInvestors are legitimately questioning what part of advice is process and what part is genuinely strategic.
“AI will compress the commoditized end of advice. Routine, single-country planning will become more efficient and more price competitive. This transition is underway in real-time.
“An algorithm operating inside one tax code works in a contained framework. But clients increasingly hold assets, pensions and business interests across multiple jurisdictions. Residency rules shift, bilateral tax treaties evolve, capital gains treatment varies, and regulatory divergence between regions is widening.
“Geopolitics now directly influences portfolio construction. Trade disputes, sanctions, regional conflicts and regulatory realignment between blocs affect capital flows, currency exposure and asset allocation decisions.
“When wealth depends upon several highly complex, highly societal, highly human and consistently evolving geopolitical scenarios all at the same time, advisory decisions can’t be reduced to an AI data set.
“Governments adjust tax policy in response to debt pressures and domestic priorities. AI can process data quickly, but it can’t independently anticipate how shifting geopolitical realities alter long-term structuring decisions. Firms built around domestic, process-driven advice models are more exposed to automation-led fee compression.
“Firms operating across numerous jurisdictions, coordinating wealth through complex regulatory, tax and geopolitical environments, sit in a different category.
“In an era where automation reduces the value of routine tasks, that same international complexity becomes strategic insulation. AI simplifies the uniform. Global wealth management is never uniform.
“Tech will reshape delivery, but it won’t eliminate the need for experienced oversight. Indeed, far from it. It becomes more valuable than ever. The sharp market reaction due to AI advances marks the beginning of differentiation rather than decline, and the start of a new, competitive hierarchy within wealth management.”
– Green
“AI is changing the way people shop from the very beginning. Shoppers are using it to compare prices, get product recommendations, and plan what to buy long before they even visit a retailer’s site.
“That means brands can easily be overlooked if they’re not showing up in those early moments. Giving AI clear context about who a product is for, why it matters, and what problems it solves is becoming essential to stay visible.
“As AI plays a bigger role in guiding purchase decisions, brands need a solid data foundation to make sure their products are seen. For small businesses, structured product data with clear attributes and real-world use cases helps AI systems recommend their offerings. Retailers without a clear agentic commerce strategy and AI-ready data risk losing visibility in this next era of shopping.”
– Afshin Yazdian, CEO, Kurv