Who is going to emerge as the big dog of crypto? Ever since the collapse of FTX last fall, the favorites have been market leader Binance and long-time incumbent Coinbase. Now, though, there's a chance both companies will fall short and the crypto crown will instead go to one of the new players backed by the likes of Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Citadel, and others in traditional finance.
That's the case put forth by a new Financial Times report that claims deep-pocketed institutional investors are still very interested in crypto, but that they will prefer to do business with new corporate consortiums like EDX Markets or Zodia (backed by the U.K.'s Standard Chartered), or brands like Fidelity that are building out their in-house crypto infrastructure.
The theory here is that institutional money wants to stick with Wall Street players whose names they know, and that aren't tainted by the waves of scandal that have repeatedly tarred the crypto industry. The FT report also claims traditional finance players are adopting business models that will put big investors more at ease.
"The infrastructure being built by large institutions is markedly different to the crypto industry’s original structure. Wall Street executives are keen to separate business units such as trading from custody, as a way to reduce risk and potential conflicts of interest," says the paper, which also suggests the new Wall Street offerings will be more appealing because they don't rely on cloud computing.
The report concludes by citing executives from traditional finance who predict that the likes of EDX and Zodia will soon gobble the market for crypto institutional trading and that Binance will be left to survive on the relative crumbs left over in the retail market.
If this comes to pass, it would be a remarkable—and ironic—turn of events given how the crypto industry was born as a rebellion against the power structure of traditional finance and has ever since maintained a deep mistrust of banks and Wall Street. What would Satoshi say if he learned his creation had been tamed by the biggest names in corporate finance?
That's why I suggest taking the FT report with a big grain of salt. While the story makes a number of compelling points, it also feels like it was planted—complete with talking points—by the PR departments of the would-be corporate kings of crypto. To be sure, some of these gambits to provide a crypto safe space for institutional investors will pay off, and certain players—notably Fidelity—have been in the game long enough to have crypto bona fides of their own. But the idea that Wall Street is going to capture the lion's share of the crypto market still feels premature at best.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
