By Dan Jowett, CEO, Openmarkets Group
Remember the early days of crypto? They were about declaring economic independence and rejecting traditional finance.
It was a great idea, but times have changed. That’s not how 500 million people today use digital assets. From here, the future will be about bringing the two systems together.
The vast majority of today’s digital asset investors are not mining Bitcoin in a basement or transacting peer-to-peer. They use exchanges and banks that sit squarely in the regulated economy, and pay fiat currencies for tokenised assets. Read any news article on Bitcoin and you’ll find its worth measured in a fiat currency.
Two of the world’s largest digital asset exchanges, Coinbase and Gemini, are Nasdaq-listed and follow rules set by the SEC. Investors measure their value in US dollars and trade US dollars for company shares.
There is now regulatory recognition for digital assets. In July 2025 US President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, creating a path to bring stablecoins into the US financial system. In Australia, the Albanese Government has proposed its own regulations for stablecoins and digital asset platforms. This is needed. Regulation brings clarity and confidence, which unlocks access.
What hasn’t changed is the core innovation of blockchain. It is still decentralised, fast, and highly secure. These characteristics of blockchain give us the profound opportunity to address some of the greatest friction points in traditional finance.
The decentralised finance conversation is no longer about separating from the financial system but making finance better, faster, and open to everyone. The future isn’t two parallel systems but one single, unified, bridged one.
Why bridging matters
Decentralised finance brings profound opportunities to improve our financial system.
Think about Real-World Assets (RWAs) like real estate, private credit, private equity. They’re central to wealth creation, but the traditional way of buying and selling them is slow, admin-heavy, and typically only accessible to a few sophisticated investors.
Tokenisation changes the game. By bringing RWA ownership onchain, we simplify transactions, speed them up, and, most importantly, we can fractionalise assets. Suddenly, a smaller investor can participate in a $10 million private credit deal, buy a commercial property, or buy 1/10th of a CBA or BHP share. That’s true democratisation of finance.
Stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) or US Dollar Coin (USDC) offer a path to fixing our clunky payments system, making domestic and cross-border transactions instant, global, and secure, with less intermediaries and fewer surcharges.
We’re also seeing a growing number of companies in Australia and abroad establishing digital asset treasuries. Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) in the US, Metaplanet (TSE:3350) in Japan and Locate Technologies (ASX: LOC) here in Australia. These companies are offering their investors long-term exposure to decentralised assets through standard company equities.
Fintechs: The engineers of our new economy
To make this vision real and roll out more of these powerful products, we need trusted, regulated technology bridges between decentralised finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi). If we are to see adoption accelerate, focus on this bridge space is critical.
Large financial institutions will only bring meaningful capital into DeFi if they see credible protections against fraud, market manipulation, and systemic risk. Using regulated bridges, we can unlock greater institutional uptake, from superannuation funds investing in tokenised property infrastructure to non-bank lenders structuring private credit transactions using DeFi instruments.
This is where innovative fintechs and brokers come in. They’re the ones who deeply understand both the world of compliance and the new world of digital assets. They’re well positioned to build and own this critical ecosystem of bridging solutions.
When it comes to building bridges between DeFi and TradFi, experienced fintechs are poised to deliver an ecosystem of bridging solutions. Such an ecosystem will be critical to more retail investors, private wealth, SMSFs and large institutions participating.
We’re no longer in 2008. We need to stop seeing decentralised finance as the opposition and start building it as an extension of finance – one that is radically more efficient, transparent, and inclusive for every investor. The sooner we build those bridges, the sooner we all get to that future.