“DeFi is dead.” This is how Sid Powell, CEO and co-founder of Maple Finance, sums up what he sees for crypto over the next few years.
However, this does not mean the end of decentralized finance; rather, it is the end of treating DeFi as something distinct from traditional markets.
“In a few years, institutions will no longer distinguish between DeFi and TradFi at all,” Powell told CoinDesk in an interview. “Eventually, all capital markets activities will take place on-chain.”
Think of it this way: before the Internet, people purchased goods and services the traditional way: by physically visiting merchants. After the Internet and e-commerce revolution, people still make purchases, but the majority of them are done with one or two clicks.
According to Powell, blockchains will play a similar role in the financial services sector. On-chain finance is simply the next layer of technology that global markets will settle on, just as the internet has changed the way people shop.
Most individuals and businesses now rely more on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Alibaba to purchase their goods and services because it is a simpler, efficient and sometimes cost-effective way to find the best product or value.
Powell expects a similar shift in the traditional financial services sector, where crypto will become the infrastructure of capital markets, with the majority of transactions cleared and settled using public ledgers rather than legacy systems. It also sees more debt capital markets adopting crypto-native structures, including BTC-backed mortgages and other asset-backed securities linked to crypto loans, as well as crypto card issuers whose receivables can be securitized and sold in financial markets.
Of course, an appropriate regulatory framework will need to be established before this turning point occurs.
And who will use this new financial system? Sovereign funds, pension managers, insurers and large asset managers, or “the ruling class that controls global financial markets”, as Powell puts it, will be the main holders of this new “chain paper”.
This is what Powell means when he says, “DeFi is dead,” where blockchain technology becomes the dominant infrastructure layer, without even thinking twice about the fact that people are using new technology to conduct their daily financial transactions.
The $50 trillion reason
Although the total overhaul may take time, signs of such a change are already being felt throughout the system.
Take stablecoins, for example. Following the adoption of the GENIUS law, financial giants are adopting or considering using them en masse. PayPal launched PYUSD, Société Générale issued euro- and dollar-pegged stablecoins through its crypto unit, and Fiserv introduced FIUSD for use on payment networks, while Wall Street giants including Bank of America (BAC), Citi, and (C) Wells Fargo (WFC) have expressed interest in following suit.
Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) are not issuing coins, but are building stable settlement rails that could accelerate adoption and intensify competition with token deposits and other bank-run digital currencies.
This is where Powell’s most aggressive prediction regarding the new shift in the financial system comes in: stablecoins could process $50 trillion in transactions in 2026, eclipsing the major card networks.
It showcases stablecoins as a powerful but still underappreciated tool for traders and small businesses. Retailers already operate on low margins and pay 2-3% to Visa and Mastercard on card payments.
Using stablecoins for settlement can significantly reduce this cost, effectively returning several percentage points of revenue to traders.
According to Powell, this economic incentive will push small businesses to quickly adopt stablecoins, while neobanks and eventually traditional banks will issue and support them directly.
He even went so far as to compare large stablecoin issuers to insurers like Berkshire Hathaway because they benefit from a negative cost of capital. Users deposit dollars and issuers place those funds in safe assets, such as Treasury bills, earning a yield while paying no interest on their debts. If they operate cautiously, the gap between what they earn and what they owe becomes a powerful driver of compound returns, the same way Warren Buffett exploited the insurance float.
A trillion dollar market
What does this mean for the DeFi market as it exists today?
That could reach as much as $1 trillion over the next two years, Powell estimates. The space is cyclical and macro-dependent, but he says it is growing faster than traditional finance and is closely tied to the trajectory of stablecoins and tokenized assets. The total market capitalization of DeFi currently stands at around $69 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
As the circulating supply of stablecoins increases and more real-world and crypto-native assets are tokenized, he expects the total value locked in DeFi to increase in tandem.
According to him, the growth of DeFi is ultimately “a function of the market capitalization of stablecoins and tokenized assets.”
Overall, Powell’s vision is less about crypto and more about traditional finance and more about how traditional finance becomes fully crypto-native. If he is right, the “death of DeFi” will not only blur the distinction between DeFi and TradFi; it will disappear into the plumbing of a new blockchain-based market infrastructure.
