Author: Climber, CryptoPulse Labs
For over a decade, the crypto industry has been like a financial experiment operating independently from the real world. It has its own monetary system, its own trading markets, its own logic for asset pricing, and its own set of beliefs and narratives.
From the birth of Bitcoin, through the ICO boom, to the explosion of DeFi, NFTs, Layer 2s, meme coins, and on-chain derivatives, the crypto world has gradually built an almost complete financial ecosystem.
But no matter how it has developed, one question has always remained. That is, a wall still separates the crypto world and the real-world financial system. Now, this wall is being dismantled. In the next decade, an era of native crypto securities brokerage that integrates with the global financial system is opening up.
I: The First Half of the Crypto Industry: The Self-Evolution of a Closed Ecosystem
In recent years, the U.S. CFTC has been gradually promoting a regulatory framework for compliant perpetual contracts, and the U.S. SEC has also begun to consistently signal policy support for tokenizing securities. The recent news about SpaceX's upcoming super IPO event has also made the market realize that the world's highest-quality assets in the future may be seeking new ways to circulate.
Scenarios that once sounded like science fiction are now step by step becoming reality. This means the crypto industry is about to enter a new stage.
However, looking back at the history of the crypto industry, it becomes clear that the past decade-plus has actually been an ongoing, escalating internal financial experiment.
The 2017 ICO frenzy essentially solved the fundraising problem. For the first time, startup projects didn't need traditional VCs or IPO approvals; with just a whitepaper and a token model, they could raise funds globally. The market saw for the first time the immense efficiency gains blockchain could bring to capital formation.
The subsequent DeFi Summer then began to address the issue of financial services. Lending, trading, market-making, yield aggregation began to move on-chain. Functions originally performed by banks, brokerages, and financial institutions were gradually replaced by smart contracts. The most important change during this period was not the emergence of a particular killer protocol, but the fact that the entire financial infrastructure began to be reconstructed.
Next, the industry entered the era of the public chain war. Due to Ethereum's performance limitations, numerous high-performance public chains began competing for developers, users, and liquidity. Faster speeds, lower costs, and higher TPS became the focus of market competition. However, looking back, this competition was still essentially internal.
Because the participants didn't change—users were still crypto users, capital was still crypto capital, and assets were still crypto assets.
Later, the NFT boom shifted the industry narrative from finance to culture and social interaction. Digital collectibles, on-chain identity, and gaming assets entered the market. This was followed by the meme coin frenzy, decentralized perpetual contracts, DAT, and other new models continuously emerging.
While the industry seems to have been evolving, most of these changes occurred within the same circle. The crypto world has been more like an ever-expanding closed economy, with capital flowing internally, users circulating internally, new assets constantly being created, and then being bought up by new capital.
This is also why every cycle has seen obvious bubbles and pullbacks—because truly massive external capital had never fully entered.
Even with Bitcoin ETFs starting to attract Wall Street capital, the crypto industry has still not truly connected with the real-world financial system. Because ETFs only allow traditional capital to buy crypto assets; real-world assets have not yet truly moved on-chain.
II. A Bigger Story than ETFs: Real-World Assets Begin Moving On-Chain
Many believe that Bitcoin ETFs opened the door for traditional finance to embrace crypto. But in reality, ETFs are only the first step.
Because they merely add a channel for the traditional financial system to purchase crypto assets. What could truly change the industry's structure is another matter—securities assets beginning to enter the on-chain world.
This means stocks, bonds, funds, income rights, and even future cash flows could all be digitized.
In the past, buying a stock required a securities account, cross-border trading required a broker, asset custody required a bank, and after trading, a clearinghouse was needed for final settlement—the entire system was extremely complex.
But blockchain offers a new perspective. If assets natively exist on-chain, then trading, settlement, clearing, custody, and even identity verification could all be completed within the same network.
Processes that used to take days to complete could end in seconds in the future. Work that previously relied on multiple institutions could potentially be executed automatically by smart contracts. This is actually changing the financial infrastructure itself.
What makes Wall Street truly powerful has never been just the scale of its capital. More importantly, it controls the underlying financial network. Exchanges, brokerages, banks, custodians, clearinghouses together constitute a vast system. And blockchain is gradually compressing these links.
In the future, many financial services may no longer be performed by multiple institutions, but run directly within a unified network.
Therefore, the protagonists of the crypto industry's next phase may no longer be trading platforms. They will be new financial gateways.
The so-called native crypto securities brokerage is essentially this new gateway. It not only handles trading functions but also assumes the roles of wallet, asset management, custody, clearing, and financial services.
It might be like an exchange, and also like a broker. Like a bank, and also like a payment system—even more like a global financial operating system.
III. The Next War: Not Public Chain Competition, but Financial System Competition
In recent years, the crypto market has been debating who will become the next king of public chains. The market compares TPS, gas fees, number of ecosystems, and developer size. But in the future, the importance of these metrics may gradually decline.
Because what truly matters in financial markets is not speed, but assets. Even if a chain has a million TPS, it's hard to create long-term value without high-quality assets entering.
What is truly valuable is liquidity. And the core of liquidity is asset quality.
If in the future, users can buy global stocks, index funds, bonds, and even shares in top-tier tech companies like SpaceX on-chain, the entire industry logic will change.
Because the boundary between the on-chain world and the real world will gradually disappear.
In the past, the crypto industry competed for the internal market; in the future, it will compete for the global capital market. These are two completely different stories.
Currently, the global crypto market remains in the multi-trillion dollar range, while the global stock market is close to a hundred trillion dollars, and the bond market is even larger. They are not on the same order of magnitude.
In the past, the industry discussed the next billion-dollar project; in the future, it may discuss how to accommodate the flow of tens of trillions of dollars in assets. The ICO era solved the fundraising problem; the DeFi era solved the on-chain finance problem; the ETF era solved the capital gateway problem; and the native crypto securities brokerage era may solve the problem of integrating real-world finance with crypto finance.
Conclusion
For over a decade, the crypto industry has been trying to create a new world. In the next decade, it may no longer need to recreate the world.
Because it will directly connect to the original world.
When traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem truly converge, the industry's biggest growth story may just be beginning.
