Written by: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise
Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News
Industry news often emerges in clusters. Such moments warrant close attention, as they often indicate a significant underlying trend.
Just this Monday, stablecoin issuer Circle announced that its new blockchain project, Arc, had completed a $222 million funding round, valuing the company at $3 billion. The investors include top institutions such as BlackRock, Apollo Funds, and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.
The day before, Digital Asset, the developer of another emerging blockchain, Canton Network, announced a funding round: led by a16z, it raised $300 million at a valuation of $2 billion.
Coincidentally, Stripe's Tempo blockchain has already taken the lead in the field: it completed a $500 million funding round at the end of last year, with a valuation of $5 billion, and subsequently announced strategic partnerships with companies such as DoorDash and Visa.
Arc, Canton, and Tempo are all public blockchains specifically designed for stablecoins and asset tokenization. This wave of concentrated fundraising has led me to summarize three crucial insights for the crypto industry.
Capital always follows regulation and legislation.
All of the aforementioned large-scale financing deals, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, occurred after the U.S. Congress passed the Genius Act in July 2025.
I have always believed that the sluggish and slow progress of US crypto legislation before the bill was passed directly dampened investment enthusiasm in the industry; major institutions were unwilling to rashly deploy their businesses and build public blockchain infrastructure under the premise of an unclear regulatory outlook. Now that the regulations are clear, the industry landscape is changing.
No one can be certain whether these projects could have maintained their current valuations and completed large-scale fundraising without the protection of the Genius Act, but what is certain is that regulatory clarity has played a crucial role in their success.
For investors, the most important question to consider is: how much industry opportunity will the Clarity Act, a comprehensive market architecture bill for the crypto industry, unleash if it is successfully passed by Congress?
The Clarity Act has a much broader scope than the Genius Act, and since the final text is not yet finalized, it's impossible to accurately predict its impact. However, it's certain that asset tokenization and compliant financial infrastructure will be the biggest beneficiaries. I also hope that the final version of the bill will benefit decentralized finance and innovative token design, but we still need to wait for the official text to be released. The Clarity Act is worth everyone's continued attention.
Privacy protection may become a phenomenal core application.
Arc, Canton, and Tempo share a common feature, which is also the biggest difference between them and Ethereum and Solana: all three public chains have native built-in private transaction functionality.
As crypto assets gradually integrate into mainstream business scenarios, this design logic aligns perfectly with real-world needs. The openness and transparency of public blockchains, which are the cornerstone of trust, can become a weakness in commercial settings.
Businesses are unwilling to make every unfinished transaction publicly available online, and professionals don't want their pay stubs to be freely accessed by anyone through blockchain explorers. In this situation, transparency is no longer an advantage, but rather a real pain point.
Even the most ardent supporters of blockchain transparency have to admit that the business world inherently requires a degree of privacy and information confidentiality. These three emerging public blockchains have privacy features pre-designed from the ground up, precisely addressing the real needs of traditional institutions. Recent rounds of high-value funding further confirm that this path is absolutely on the right track.
Traditional giants have officially entered the fray, joining the competition.
What makes Arc, Canton, and Tempo truly unique is that they are backed by top-tier corporations and financial institutions.
- Arc was primarily developed by the publicly traded company Circle.
- Canton's investors include Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs, Citadel, DTCC, Nasdaq, BNY Mellon, S&P Global, and Virtu.
- Tempo is a joint venture between payment giant Stripe and crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, with Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Shopify, Visa, and OpenAI all involved in the project's architecture design.
In contrast, established public blockchains are quite different: Ethereum was founded by a 19-year-old college dropout on a Bitcoin forum, while Solana was conceived by a Qualcomm engineer in a flash of inspiration.
Of course, this doesn't mean traditional giants will necessarily win; in fact, I personally have a more long-term positive outlook on native crypto projects. However, it's undeniable that the entry of banks and large tech companies will bring more substantial capital, stronger implementation capabilities, and more professional and standardized operations to the industry.
Competition and cooperation among peers will drive growth. I believe that with the two-way competition between giants and native projects, the innovation speed and development boundaries of the entire crypto industry will be further expanded.
After all, only through competition and cooperation can progress be achieved.
