Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley has predicted that every Wall Street institution will engage with cryptocurrency within the next year. He shared this bold outlook on X, emphasizing crypto's transformative potential for capital markets. This forecast aligns with growing institutional interest in digital assets.
Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise, made a striking prediction on X, stating that "Software is eating the world. Crypto is going to eat capital markets." He claims institutional adoption of crypto is now inevitable, not merely hypothetical, with every Wall Street institution set to be involved within the next 12 months.
This outlook reflects broader trends in traditional finance, or TradFi, where global institutions managing over $30 trillion are exploring digital asset exposure. According to Fortune, decentralized finance (DeFi) currently represents less than half a percent of TradFi's total market scope, but its influence is growing through tokenization, yield-bearing products, and programmable structures tied to real-world assets.
Major players are leading this shift. BlackRock, for instance, manages more than $87 billion in spot Bitcoin ETF assets and $10 billion in Ether ETFs. Its tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, holds nearly 10% of the $25 billion tokenized asset market. Similarly, JPMorgan, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, and BNY Mellon are experimenting with on-chain settlement, tokenized funds, and regulated DeFi strategies, moving beyond testing to active building on blockchain technology.
Citi has also embraced the trend. Its head of enterprise digital assets, Artem Korenyuk, affirmed that "blockchain is here to stay." Citi's Token Services platform enables 24/7 payments for institutional clients via private blockchain infrastructure. This comes after the U.S. government's passage of the Genius Act, which formalized stablecoin regulations and spurred expansions in tokenized securities and blockchain-based payments.
Horsley's message underscores a structural turning point: with DeFi merging with institutional capital and clearer regulations in place, the next year could redefine the coexistence of traditional markets and crypto.