The passing of the GENIUS Act for stablecoin regulation last summer, and federal consideration of a crypto market structure bill in recent weeks, has formally kicked off a digital asset race within the financial services industry.
Processing Content
Whether through well-established forms of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, fiat currency-backed stablecoins or "tokenized" assets, traditional financial institutions are beginning to consider their role in the world of digital assets.
"The blockchain, in concert with our traditional ways of doing business, is going to transform how we do business for the future," BNY Chief Product and Innovation Officer Carolyn Weinberg said at American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking conference last fall.
Weinberg is one of dozens of digital assets experts who will be speaking at American Banker's inaugural ON-CHAIN executive summit event March 19-20 at Convene 360 Madison in New York, NY. Request an invitation to the conference here.
Here's what to look out for:
Stablecoins
Stablecoins, a form of digital currency tied to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, have moved from the edge of the cryptocurrency conversation to the center of policy and banking conversations. Once U.S. financial institutions were given stablecoin issuing guidance from the government via the GENIUS Act in July 2025, banks, fintech companies and payments providers started testing stablecoins for cross-border payments, liquidity management and digital wallets.
Anchorage Digital Bank chief operating officer Rachel Anderika told American Banker last year that traditional finance and digital assets are now meeting because banks are finding business use cases for stablecoins. "We're seeing international remittances being improved by stablecoins. When you see operations being meaningfully improved, that's when you see institutions being able to come in," she said.
Some firms are also exploring how stablecoins can support interbank transactions or be issued directly by regulated institutions. Even smaller players, such as St. Cloud Financial Credit Union in Minnesota, are issuing their own stablecoins.
In American Banker's recently released On-Chain Finance survey, over half (55%) of survey respondents (defined as knowledgeable employees at financial institutions launching or planning a stablecoin) agreed that increasing the speed of payments was the top use case for issuing stablecoins. Close behind was cross-border payments (including interoperability), followed by a tie for third between 24/7 access and directness of payments.
A panel on Thursday featuring Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long, Uphold Enterprise CEO Robin O'Connell, Moonpay President Keith Grossman and American Banker's Paul Vigna will discuss how traditional financial institutions can build an institutional-grade stablecoin infrastructure in order to adopt an overall stablecoin strategy.
Ryan Rugg, Citi's global head of digital assets for Treasury and Trade Solutions, will also discuss stablecoins and compare them to tokenized assets in her fireside chat on Friday.
Blockchain cryptocurrency
As the U.S. government becomes increasingly crypto-friendly in its regulation, decentralized blockchain assets such Bitcoin and Ethereum are becoming more mainstream. As banks explore use cases for blockchain infrastructure, digital assets are reshaping payments, custody, compliance, and more.
Coinbase, Binance, Anchorage Digital and Gemini are among the large crypto-native custody providers that big banks such as Citi, JPMorganChase, PNC and others have partnered with in recent months.
Cryptocurrency is a topic throughout the ON-CHAIN summit. Sessions featuring public blockchain include a panel discussing opportunities and risks for banks in digital assets featuring State Street Chief Product Officer and head of State Street Digital Donna Milrod and a panel featuring BBVA's head of digital assets Andres Fondevila Maron and Fidelity's head of digital asset management Cynthia Lo Bessette on how digital assets will impact wealth management, especially for younger millennial and Gen Z investors.
Tokenization
Tokenization, the process of creating a digital representation of a real thing, has become the next big conversation in asset management for digital asset firms and traditional finance companies alike.
Weinberg said during the fireside chat at American Banker's Most Powerful Women In Banking conference in October that the applications of distributed ledgers for banks include storing unique digital representations of a bank's assets as tokens.
"You can say, 'I'm going to represent this security on the chain' and it sounds super fancy, but actually the old version of that was data input," she said. "The new version of data input is putting it on-chain, or tokenizing."
There are currently two main tokenization use cases for banks: deposits and real world assets, or RWAs.
Citi earned a 2025 Innovation of the Year Award from American Banker for its launch of Citi Token Services, a blockchain technology platform that converts deposits into digital "tokens," enabling real-time cross-border payments and liquidity management.
William Peck, head of digital assets for WisdomTree and a speaker at the ON-CHAIN executive summit, told American Banker in October that "we view tokenization of real-world assets as kind of the next evolution in investment management." RWAs that have been tokenized for trading include mutual funds, gold, commercial real estate and U.S. treasuries.
The ON-CHAIN summit will feature a session on tokenization with panelists such as J.P. Morgan's Global Co-head of Kinexys Kara Kennedy and Coinbase Head of Tokenization Shaun Martinak. The panel will discuss how traditional institutions can participate safely and profitably in on-chain finance through focusing on tokenization.
