Web3's Failed Assumption: Ultimately Just Another Expansion of Wall Street's Balance Sheet
The article argues that the core assumption of Web3—that it would revolutionize finance by moving traditional assets on-chain—is failing. Instead, a one-sided absorption is occurring: Traditional Finance (TradFi) is successfully expanding into crypto, while the reverse movement of crypto into traditional assets is struggling.
The pivotal moment was November 10, 2023, when CME's Bitcoin futures open interest surpassed Binance's, signaling a major shift. This is because TradFi giants like CME or BlackRock can launch crypto products with near-zero marginal cost, leveraging their existing regulatory licenses, mature risk models, and institutional networks.
Conversely, crypto-native platforms face an insurmountable "compliance cost" barrier when trying to tokenize real-world assets (RWA), such as stocks. The stringent regulatory requirements for securities trading make it a prohibitively expensive endeavor.
The author concludes that true liquidity comes from large, regulated institutional capital (pension funds, etc.), which prioritizes security and compliance. Products like Bitcoin ETF provide this, allowing traditional capital to enter easily. Therefore, crypto is being stripped of its ideological attributes and is becoming a pure, volatile financial asset class within the traditional system. The financial upper layers of trading and derivatives will likely remain dominated by TradFi, with Web3's role reduced to the base layer of asset generation and settlement.
比推01/09 08:43
