Now banks want in đŸ€‘

Will Kraken’s tokenised equities accelerate Wall Street’s land grab?

May 23, 2025

Hi! Eric here. 

Wall Street’s crypto landgrab just got turbocharged. 

If you missed it, that’s understandable. It’s been a firehose of a week. Bitcoin hit a new record. US President Donald Trump hosted crypto bigwigs at his memecoin dinner. New laws are taking shape in Washington.

But quietly in the background, finance firms are ramping up their plans to tokenise finance. 

US banking giants — including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — are in talks to launch their own stablecoin, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

And Kraken and the Solana Foundation separately announced plans to roll out tokenised equities, which has been high on the likes of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s wishlist for years. 

Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev revealed similar plans earlier in May after he argued for the introduction of blockchain-based stock trading in opinion pieces, interviews, and podcasts.

Why is everyone so interested in tokenisation? To Adam Levi, co-founder of Backed, which has partnered with both Solana and Kraken in their tokenisation efforts, the answer is simple: because the old plumbing is crumbling. 

“The traditional infrastructure is very bad,” he told me, saying it’s slow, cumbersome, and expensive. 

“It’s really 80s technology.” 

Tokenised equities is a way for institutions to lure new customers with better services that don’t rely on the opening hours of stock exchanges.

Those in middle of this push are looking at a massive windfall. 

Ripple and Boston Consulting Group estimate that tokenised assets will grow to a $19 trillion business over the next eight years, up from roughly $600 billion today.

“It is going to accelerate it massively,” Levi said. “Very soon, crypto and TradFi will become one — and that’s a good thing.”

Not everyone is happy. 

Caroline Crenshaw, the sole Democrat commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, issued a stark warning. 

She said that the agency’s efforts to roll back its policing of crypto policing is tantamount to “a game of regulatory Jenga.” 

The SEC has eased off its enforcement actions against the industry as Trump cosies up to the industry. 

The enforcement withdrawal, Crenshaw said, felt “all too similar to those who have lived through 2008.”

But akin to Cassandra in Greek mythology, her warnings are likely to go unheeded as the Wall Street crypto stampede continues.

Trump rewarded more than 200 buyers of his personal memecoin with a gala dinner while protesters decried it as the “Mount Everest of corruption.” Aleks Gilbert reports.

A trader who goes by James Wynn has caught the public eye after making bets worth $1 billion that Bitcoin will reach new heights. Zachary Rampone reports.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei pulled the plug on the investigation into his own crypto scandal. Yes, really.

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DL News is an independent news organisation that provides original, in-depth reporting on the largely misunderstood world of cryptocurrency and decentralised finance. From original stories to investigations, our journalism is accurate, honest and responsible.

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