WisdomTree CEO: Crypto ‘is going to go mainstream’

Crypto “is going to go mainstream” as regulatory clarity, publicly-traded crypto funds, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization spur adoption, Jonothan Steinberg, founder and CEO of asset manager WisdomTree, said in a July 29 interview on CNBC. 

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s July 27 speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, highlights how US political leaders are softening on crypto and may soon provide the industry with much-needed regulatory clarity, Steinberg said.

The former US president “could not have spoken in a more ambitious tone for what he would do with crypto and Bitcoin as an asset class,” Steinberg said.

“He's promising regulatory clarity for crypto and digital assets broadly,” Steinberg said. “I think that will have a very positive effect on not just crypto, the asset class, which is really only half the story, but also blockchain-enabled finance.”

Steinberg said he expects the prevailing narrative around crypto to expand beyond core crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) to encompass asset tokenization more broadly.

“Crypto is an asset class, and then there’s this broader tokenization of all real-world assets. We see it all converging,” Steinberg said. “We’re moving toward programmable money, which will really transform financial services broadly, and it’s an exciting place to be.”

WisdomTree launched its first crypto exchange-traded fund (ETF) — WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund (BTCW) —in January and has submitted registration filings for an Ethereum ETF to United States regulators.

Meanwhile, the RWA market is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.

Traditional financial institutions are already beginning to enter the market for tokenized RWAs with products such BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) and Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX). Goldman Sachs is preparing to launch three new tokenization products later his year. 

Launched less than four months ago BlackRock's BUIDL currently holds more than $500 million worth of tokenized Treasurys, according to Ethereum block explorer Etherscan.