Two Divided Worlds: Insights from the New York Digital Asset Summit, the Most Institutionalized Blockchain Conference

Author | Turbo Guo IOSG Ventures

In March this year, I attended the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in New York. This was the most "institutionalized" blockchain conference I have ever attended, and it left me with a complex feeling.

After several days of the conference, what kept coming to my mind was not how hot a certain sector was or how strong a certain project was, but rather a pervasive sense of disconnection. This disconnection not only existed within the conference venue but extended to my observations of the entire industry during my time in the U.S.

Tickets That Few Want

This does not mean that no one wanted tickets to DAS; in fact, the venue was very lively. Rather, I want to share a detail that struck me.

I am currently studying at the University of Pennsylvania and have joined the school's blockchain club, Penn Blockchain Club. The ticket for DAS costs $1,800, and this time the club received free tickets to distribute to members, along with reimbursement for round-trip train fare. As someone who has been in the industry for a while, my first reaction was excitement. The SEC chairman was giving the keynote, executives from BlackRock and BNY Mellon were on stage, and companies like DTCC, Kalshi, Dragonfly, Ethena, Aave, OKX, and BNB Chain were all participating, which was a fantastic lineup. A ticket worth $1,800, available for free—what's there to hesitate about?

However, not many people in the club wanted this ticket.

This is the first layer of disconnection: I felt very excited about such an opportunity; while most American undergraduates did not care as much. They were more interested in Goldman Sachs' info sessions, securing an internship at an AI lab, or pursuing banking. The allure of crypto for them was not that strong. There is no right or wrong in this, but it clearly tells you one thing: in the eyes of young people at top universities in the U.S., the appeal of crypto is being continuously diluted by AI and traditional finance.

Institutionalized Conference

The DAS venue was filled with suits; this was the only crypto event I attended where almost everyone was in formal attire. The overall atmosphere was relatively institutionalized.

I met quite a few people during the conference and in one-on-one conversations outside: Santiago, the founder of Inversion, and George, the head of research; Guy Young, the founder of Ethena; Richard, the Managing Partner of Fabric.vc; and people from Bridge, Circle, KPMG, Deloitte, Token Terminal, DoubleZero, and others. This list itself indicates DAS's positioning: this is a place where traditional finance and crypto infrastructure deeply intersect.

Institutions Are Advancing, Crypto Natives Are Relatively Confused

After attending DAS for a few days, my core feeling can be summarized in one sentence: Institutions are advancing, while Crypto Natives are relatively confused. We have been looking forward to the arrival of mass adoption, but when it truly arrives, it is already a different world.

This is the second layer of disconnection.

First, regarding the institutions. The entire agenda of DAS itself tells you that the pace of advancement in traditional finance is actually quite fast:

Tokenized securities are no longer just a concept; they are being implemented. The SEC has released a classification system for tokenization, dividing it into three models: direct tokenization (issuers directly issue through transfer agents), indirect tokenization (custodians like DTCC issue "digital twin" equity certificates), and synthetic tokenization (exposure mapping based on derivatives). Among these, DTCC's plan is the most noteworthy, as it can complete the conversion between tokens and traditional securities in about fifteen minutes while maintaining liquidity uniformity across both pools. DTCC plans to put Russell 1000 stocks, major ETFs, government bonds, and fixed-income products on-chain by the second half of 2026 and has already received a no-action letter from the SEC. These are not derivative packages but real equity certificates, real dividends, real investor protections, and real ownership.

Stablecoin as a Service is forming three clear sub-markets. After discussing with people from Bridge, Circle, and Ethena, I found a common theme: Bridge is doing institutional white-label solutions, Circle focuses on regional compliance scenarios (like stablecoin payments in the Latin American construction industry), and Ethena serves crypto-native projects (Jupiter, MegaETH, Sui, etc., Layer 1/Layer 2 are all looking for Ethena to provide Stablecoin as a Service). These three paths do not conflict and are advancing in their respective sub-markets.

The credit market using Bitcoin as collateral is maturing rapidly. At the end of February 2026, Ledn issued the first publicly rated Bitcoin loan ABS (asset-backed security), receiving an investment-grade rating from S&P. This is a three-year financing, with over a dozen insurance, pension, mutual funds, and hedge funds participating, and custody provided by Fidelity Digital Assets. Compared to crypto loans, which typically have terms of less than twelve months, this is a milestone. Maple also added $400 million in lending capital inflow this year. Traditional banks are entering the crypto prime brokerage business because they are concerned that hedge fund clients will turn to crypto exchanges.

The liquidity of prediction markets is the real moat. John Wang from Kalshi shared an interesting perspective on stage: the self-built prediction markets by Robinhood and Coinbase do not pose a significant threat because the hardest part of prediction markets is liquidity, not distribution. Kalshi maintains a unified liquidity pool globally, while competitors are forced to split their pools into U.S. and non-U.S. due to regulatory reasons, creating a natural disconnection in depth.

On-chain Vaults are being viewed as a new type of ETF. This topic was repeatedly mentioned at DAS. The logic of traditional ETFs is to bundle a basket of assets into standardized products, and what on-chain Vaults do is essentially the same, but with added composability and transparency. More and more institutions are starting to build strategy management services around Vaults, and the role of Vault managers is very similar to that of traditional fund managers. Coupled with the recent influx of traders engaging in futures and commodity trading on Hyperliquid, the demand for fund management in on-chain Vaults will continue to grow.

The discussion of public chains vs. private chains is also interesting. JPMorgan's approach is multi-chain deployment, using private chains for internal efficiency (no need for additional wallet configurations) and public chains for distribution, driven entirely by demand. DTCC initially deployed on Canton (a private chain), but after the SEC lifted restrictions, it also began deploying on public chains, building a cross-chain orchestration layer to enable the free flow of tokens. From the perspective of Crypto Natives, public chains excel in practicality, as DEX trading, lending markets, and composability all occur on public chains. However, it is undeniable that private chains like Canton and Tempo have inherent compliance advantages in institutional back-end scenarios. Currently, there are too many L1/L2 chains, primarily due to excessive VC funding, and several guests expect that ultimately, there will be no more than ten meaningful chains.

Multicoin provided four structural de-risking catalysts, calling them "rare inflection points": regulatory clarity (the GENIUS Act was signed in July 2025), mature infrastructure (stablecoin transfers are nearly zero-cost, wallet experiences are abstracted), AI compressing build cycles (individual engineers can deliver MVPs in days), and mainstream awareness (over 52 million Americans hold cryptocurrencies). Multicoin also specifically mentioned the concept of "DeFi Mullet," where the front end is the user experience of traditional finance, while the back end runs on DeFi protocols, and users are completely unaware that they are using DeFi.

Another interesting investment perspective comes from Santiago of Inversion. His core argument is that technologies like AI and crypto that lower costs often benefit not the startups building them but the traditional giants that have distribution channels and adopt them. He cited Western Union as an example, where everyone once thought stablecoins would eliminate Western Union, but Western Union is actually the company best positioned to utilize stablecoins. It has a brand, a distribution network covering over 200 countries, and $923 million in EBITDA. The CEO of Western Union clearly articulated the stablecoin strategy on the main stage at DAS and announced the launch of its own stablecoin USDPT on Solana. A 175-year-old company transitioned from skepticism to issuing coins in less than a year, while the market still values it at $2.8 billion, with a 6x price-to-earnings ratio and a 10% dividend yield, indicating that the market is pricing in a zero probability of technology adoption. If executed properly, this represents a free re-evaluation option.

These data and facts sound exhilarating. However, in other corners of the venue, the atmosphere was completely different.

Many Crypto Natives expressed a bearish sentiment in private conversations. Funds dealing with altcoins have been liquidating token positions for over six months because many project teams treat tokens like "Monopoly money," and the issue of "dual profit" between equity and tokens has not been resolved. On-chain does not equate to creating liquidity; many DeFi tokenized products do not even meet bankruptcy isolation requirements. Some directly stated: You know what the future will look like; the question is how and when, but as someone in the industry, it feels like you can't participate. There is a huge gap between what these institutions are pushing and what you can do with what you have.

The Disconnection on the Student Side: Penn Blockchain Conference

Shortly after DAS, I, along with my club members, organized the Penn Blockchain Conference (PBC) in Philadelphia. If the disconnection at DAS was "institution vs. Crypto Native," then PBC showed me another side of this disconnection: "quality of resources vs. interests of the new generation."

The attendees at PBC were also quite impressive, including the head of digital assets at Fidelity, the CEO of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), ParaFi Capital, Dragonfly, MasterCard, Ribbit Capital, and more.

However, the larger student body does not have a high enthusiasm for crypto. Most undergraduates are more interested in AI-related events or pursuing banking, which is an undeniable fact.

From another perspective, this is also a signal. The quality of attendees at PBC is rising; Fidelity and Strategy are not there just to go through the motions, and BNB Chain has also started touring U.S. universities, attempting to expand developers and users at the campus level. This indicates that the direction of crypto is becoming increasingly institutionalized and centralized. If you are providing infrastructure services to institutions, this is actually a bullish signal.

Two Worlds

Standing in New York in the spring of 2026, I see two worlds that are accelerating their split.

In one world, the SEC chairman discusses regulatory frameworks on stage, DTCC prepares to move Russell 1000 on-chain, S&P rates Bitcoin loan ABS as investment-grade, Western Union issues stablecoins on Solana, and traditional banks rush to formulate digital asset strategies. The keywords in this world are advancement, implementation, and seizing positions.

In another world, Crypto Natives are hesitating about whether they should switch to AI, young people in schools show little interest in blockchain, liquidity funds for altcoins are liquidating, and the job market is frozen. The keywords in this world are confusion, contraction, and waiting.

Resources and opportunities in this industry are flooding in at an unprecedented speed, but their flow is highly concentrated: concentrated on the institutional side, concentrated in the hands of a very small number of top-tier individuals.

As a practitioner in the Chinese-speaking region, I want to say: do not let short-term market sentiment and AI narratives obscure your vision. This industry is undergoing a profound structural transformation, and the logic driven by institutions, compliance, and infrastructure in the new world is taking over. The disconnection between these two worlds will continue for quite some time.

Author's Note: This article is based on the author's on-site records and exchanges from attending the Digital Asset Summit in New York and the Penn Blockchain Conference in Philadelphia in March 2026. The project information and market views mentioned in the article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice.