If the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs in 2024 was merely a tentative step by Wall Street into the crypto world, then the situation has quietly changed over the past year: a systemic "incorporation" is accelerating.
From stablecoins becoming a practical bridge for traditional finance to enter the market, to LayerZero announcing last night the launch of its Layer 1 blockchain "Zero" for institutions, partnering with giants such as Citadel Securities, DTCC, and Google Cloud, and receiving strategic investment in the ZRO token from Citadel Securities and ARK Invest... every step points in the same direction: blockchain is being systematically integrated into the main artery of traditional finance.
As soon as the news broke, a familiar voice echoed in the market: "Wall Street is entering the market, is a bull market on the horizon?"
However, upon closer examination, the truly noteworthy aspect of this news isn't whether Wall Street will jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, but rather a more fundamental issue: Wall Street is seriously considering using blockchain as part of its financial infrastructure. This impact on the crypto world may be far more profound and complex than any short-term price fluctuation.
Wall Street doesn't want a higher price.
LayerZero's positioning for Zero is very clear: it aims to solve not the on-chain application ecosystem, but the most fundamental process issues in the financial market, such as trading, clearing, settlement, and collateral management. In other words, this chain doesn't want to make retail trading faster, but rather to make the back-end systems of financial institutions more efficient.
The composition of the partners also illustrates this point. Citadel Securities is one of the world's most important market makers, DTCC is a core infrastructure of the US securities market's post-trade system, and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) operates a network of major exchanges, including the NYSE. These institutions are involved in discussions about blockchain not because they want to allocate a particular token, but because blockchain theoretically can solve several long-standing pain points in traditional finance: complex reconciliation, long settlement cycles, inefficient use of collateral, and difficulties in interoperability between systems.
For them, if blockchain has value, it lies in "whether it can reduce costs, reduce friction, and improve capital efficiency," rather than "whether it can bring about a speculative boom." This is why Zero's narrative is closer to "global market infrastructure" than "a new generation of public chain ecosystem."
LayerZero has solved the "connectivity" problem, but for global finance to truly run on the blockchain, issues of privacy, data, and asset origination still need to be addressed.
Currently, besides LayerZero, three other projects are particularly favored by Wall Street:
1. Canton Network
If you think financial institutions will expose all their transaction data on public blockchains, you're being naive. Canton Network, spearheaded by Digital Asset and with deep involvement from Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, and others, is becoming a privacy-focused clearing layer for top banks. It complements LayerZero: the latter handles asset transport on the "public sea," while the former processes highly sensitive settlement procedures within the "bank's internal network." This hybrid architecture of "public blockchain + private network" is the form that institutions truly dare to use.
2. Chainlink (CCIP)
By the end of 2025, Chainlink had automated the processing of corporate actions data through AI and oracle technology. This means that, via CCIP, the traditional financial messaging system SWIFT can directly interact with on-chain smart contracts. In the eyes of Wall Street, Chainlink has evolved from a "price feed tool" into a trusted financial data infrastructure.
3. Ondo Finance: RWA's "On-Chain Exit"
As BlackRock's low-profile partner in the DeFi space, Ondo is tokenizing US Treasury yields. In the 2026 narrative, it offers not a virtual "inflation hedging story," but real US Treasury interest cash flow. This makes it one of the most robust bridges connecting traditional capital markets and crypto liquidity.
Does this still have anything to do with the " crypto "?
The answer is: yes, but the logic is changing.
Over the past few years, the growth of the crypto market has primarily relied on two things: liquidity and narrative. When macro liquidity is loose and risk appetite increases, a large amount of capital flows into highly volatile assets, and rising token prices bring more attention and capital, creating a positive feedback loop. This logic peaked in 2021, making the concept of a "full-blown bull market" deeply ingrained.
However, institutions use blockchain with different logic. They are more likely to enter the market through stablecoins, tokenized government bonds, on-chain settlement, and collateral management. The reason is simple: these scenarios are directly related to real financial needs and are easier to implement within a compliant framework.
For example, DTCC's collaboration with blockchain companies to advance the tokenization experiment of US Treasury bonds is a typical example of starting "from collateral and settlement efficiency" rather than from trading speculation. The goal of such projects is to facilitate the smooth flow of assets between different institutions, not to make the assets themselves easier to speculate on.
Once this infrastructure is gradually implemented, the structure of on-chain assets will change. In the past, on-chain assets were mainly high-volatility assets and stablecoins; in the future, more low-risk, real-world assets that can be used for collateral and settlement may emerge. This will make on-chain finance more like a financial system, rather than a pure speculative market.
Conclusion
We must acknowledge that the era of cryptocurrency as a "speculative fantasy detached from reality" is coming to an end. However, its role as a financial tool to improve economic efficiency is only just beginning.
The future crypto market may gradually diverge into two parallel worlds: one side consists of highly volatile speculative assets, which still have cycles and narratives; the other side consists of infrastructure and asset layers that are closer to real financial needs, with slower but more solid growth.
In other words, blockchain is gradually transforming from a "venue for speculative assets" into a "pipeline in the financial system." This process won't create overnight riches, but it may determine whether the industry can ultimately truly integrate into the pulse of the global economy.
Author: Choi | Bitpush
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