The line between traditional finance (TradFi) and crypto is disappearing, with tokenization still a dominant narrative of the digital assets sector for several years.
Edwin Mata, CEO and founder of tokenization platform Brickken, predicts that Wall Street will run entirely on blockchain technology by 2030. Mata told CoinDesk that tech industry buzzwords like “Web3” are fading as big banks adopt the technology for standard financial plumbing, like settlements and payments.
“The merger between Wall Street and technology is going to dissipate,” Mata said in an interview. “We are no longer going to talk about blockchain. It is merging with fintech.”
As institutional interest in tokenizing real-world assets grows, driven by major moves like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, Mata warned that Europe is over-regulating itself and putting itself out of the race.
This push toward native blockchain infrastructure was highlighted by Bullish’s (BLSH) acquisition of transfer agent Equiiniti for $4.2 billion. The agreement aims to keep company shareholder records to ensure that shares are issued and recorded directly on-chain from the outset, rather than using synthetic digital “wrapping”. Bullish is also the parent company of CoinDesk.
The next shift in tokenization will not be driven by humans, but by software, Mata said. Brickken, a Barcelona, Spain-based tokenization platform that has brought $500 million in real-world assets online, is currently integrating AI agents to automate asset onboarding and liquidity provisioning for its 200 clients. .
Mata predicts that traditional software dashboards will soon be replaced by simple chat prompts, in which AI agents will take care of the back-end work of finding the best financial returns.
“The decision maker will no longer be us. It will be AI,” Mata said.
Mata also criticized the European Union’s MiCA regulatory framework, which he said protects traditional banks by imposing costly and slow compliance rules on small startups.
“Small players cannot access the market, which creates a gap for larger players,” Mata said. “It could take you nine months [to get a license]and if you’re a startup, nine months without monetizing, you’re dead.”
Startups may choose to set up operations in the UAE and Southeast Asia rather than tackling these steep barriers. Mata believes that the United States will remain the main driver of crypto innovation simply because it controls the world’s largest capital market, making the current regulatory disputes in Washington temporary.
Charles Guillemet, Ledger’s France-based technical director, shared Mata’s criticism. He told CoinDesk that the EU regulatory framework has transformed the competitive landscape for Web3, unintentionally affecting crypto startups and instead hugely benefiting traditional financial institutions.
Read more: Abra’s Bill Barhydt says Wall Street’s next crypto bet is tokenization
