In the coming years, the lines between decentralized and traditional finance will vanish, according to Maple Finance CEO Sid Powell in an interview with CoinDeck. He believes that institutional investors will no longer differentiate between these concepts, and capital management will fully migrate on-chain.
Powell compared this transition to the evolution of commerce: the internet moved shopping online but did not change the essence of commerce itself. Blockchain will play a similar role, becoming the technological foundation for global transactions.
The expert is confident that public ledgers will replace outdated banking infrastructure in capital markets. New instruments will emerge, such as bitcoin-backed mortgages, with sovereign funds and insurance companies becoming key holders of such assets.
Stablecoins to Surpass Visa in Transaction Volume
The expert predicts that by 2026, stablecoins will process transactions worth $50 trillion, surpassing Visa and Mastercard.
The main driver will be retail and small businesses. Currently, merchants pay Visa and Mastercard fees of 2-3%. Switching to “stablecoin” payments will allow these funds to remain in revenue. The economic benefit will accelerate the adoption of the technology, prompting neobanks and traditional financial institutions to issue their own digital assets.
Signs of change are already visible. Wall Street giants, including Bank of America and Citi, are showing interest in the sector. Visa and Mastercard are also building their own settlement gateways.
Amid the growing popularity of stablecoins and asset tokenization, the capitalization of the DeFi sector could reach $1 trillion in the next couple of years. Currently, this figure stands at $105 billion, according to CoinGecko.
Powell explained that talks of the “death of decentralized finance” do not predict the industry’s disappearance but rather its full integration into a new blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
Back in November, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov forecasted the mass adoption of DeFi by 2030.