I’ll soon be heading to London for Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit. Felix shared yesterday what’s coming up on the podcast front. Now it’s my turn.

The idea isn’t to shill the event (our sales team can do that). I only wish to share some of the top-of-mind crypto/finance topics I’ll want to delve into at this seemingly pivotal time for the space.

A little London preview

Next week is DAS London. For those not onsite, there’ll be a livestream.

When moderating panels, I usually hold my index cards close (nothing to see here, these notes are for me). But in the spirit of amping you all up for what should be a timely gathering, I’ll give you a glimpse into some questions I plan to explore throughout the event. 

First, I’ll be chatting with Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden on Day 2 (Oct. 14). She and I took the stage at DAS New York earlier this year minutes after President Trump addressed the Blockworks crowd (via a recorded statement). Interesting times. 

Plenty has happened since then — crypto IPOs, GENIUS Act signing, SEC strides (Project Crypto and generic listing standards).

Warden, a director at Nasdaq and JPMorgan long ago, can speak well to the TradFi/crypto overlap and its evolution. First crypto was viewed as something of a gnat to much of the broader financial world. Then it faced another level of opposition — via Operation Choke Point 2.0, SEC lawsuits, etc. Now some of the biggest players are exploring ways to make money in the space. 

Which one is/was the worst for crypto? We’ll see what she thinks.

Another one for Staci: With stablecoins’ market size just shy of $300 billion, how will these (for real) integrate into financial plumbing at scale?

And what are people starting to realize is the killer app in crypto? Let’s just say, it’s not NFTs and gaming platforms. 

Not to spoil the unanswered question above, but the tokenization of capital markets will be another big theme next week. Ava Labs’ Morgan Krupetsky, Hedera Foundation’s Gregg Bell and Inversion founder Santiago Roel Santos will join me for a panel about that later on Tuesday. 

I’m curious about their take on some of the most recent developments here (Nasdaq’s filing to allow securities/ETPs trading on the exchange to be tokenized, SWIFT working with Consensys and financial institutions to develop a shared digital ledger, etc.).

What are these DAS speakers’ highest-conviction areas in the tokenization space? What will unlock greater adoption? 

Finally, one of the event’s last panels will feature BlackRock’s Matt Kunke, 21Shares’ Mandy Chiu and Atlas Merchant Capital’s David Schamis. We’ll be talking about ETFs.

We’re poised to see a new wave of US crypto ETFs given the SEC’s generic listing standards approval. S-1 amendments prior to the government shutdown seemed to signal the agency was focused on getting solana ETFs out the door. 

But there are plenty more proposed US products waiting to see the light of day — holding litecoin, dogecoin, XRP, what have you. 

How are fund managers choosing which crypto assets to create ETFs for? What demand will we see for these new single-asset funds compared to their BTC and ETH predecessors? How about compared to index products?  

Why hasn’t BlackRock yet proposed more crypto offerings beyond the wildly successful bitcoin and ether trusts? The asset management giant’s IBIT has grown to managing nearly $100 billion in assets in 21 months. How much bigger can it get?

The point is, there’s a lot to dig into. I plan to hit up the coffee booth early and often — and I guess I’ll mix in some tea time too.

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📅 October 13-15 | London