Deus X Capital’s Grant said the industry’s fascination with Bitcoin should not be the theme that leads conversations in 2025, urging digital asset pioneers to focus instead on attracting new capital into digital assets from the world’s largest asset owners. “[Bitcoin] is a bit of a red herring,” he said. “We also talked about Central Bank Digital Currencies for a while, but they were a bit of a stupid idea. We should be talking about how to get the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to put fresh capital into the market. “What does the Norwegian Pension Fund need to see? What is it that they are not seeing today that is preventing them from applying risk capital? What doesn’t give them the security and comfort to allocate capital?” Panellists explored whether the SEC’s decision to rescind the rules laid out in its Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB)121 in January would be enough to encourage more capital into the digital assets arena, but they believed this would have a limited effect. Trident Digital’s Patrick Heusser said: “I am not 100% sure that SAB121 would unlock the sovereign wealth funds to pour in capital, but it is another step that was needed. If banks do not have crypto within their investment schemes and can’t actually advertise it to their clients, there won’t be much happening. “Banks will never push it from their side and there is still not enough clarity and hunger from the bank industry to push this asset class.” BCB Group’s Tonkin said he expected stablecoins to remain central to digital asset discussions throughout 2025, although he urged European regulators to consider the suitability of new related rulesets. “Stablecoins, their use cases, volumes and circulation have risen in the past 12 months and that will continue,” he said. “Globally, stablecoins are a massive market now and have become quite respectable. There are genuine use cases which make them very exciting.” Tonkin added one note of caution in Europe, relating to the recently introduced Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, questioning how suitable the new rulesets would continue to be to this rapidly developing asset group. He urged regulators to continue to build out their frameworks to ensure they keep pace with market innovation. ◆
Oliver Tonkin CEO BCB Group
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