Summary
As institutional crypto expands beyond spot ETFs and futures into tokenized assets, staking, perpetuals, and prediction markets, legacy operations become a competitive liability. Traditional and crypto-native managers alike need unified, institutional-grade infrastructure that delivers auditability, reconciliation, and a total portfolio view across both TradFi and digital assets.
Crypto was the centerpiece of the SEC’s recently released 2026 regulatory agenda, the agency saying it would move forward in “providing clarity as to how market participants can custody and facilitate trading of tokenized securities onchain.”i For crypto-native management firms and TradFi managers alike, regulatory clarity is the golden goose and the holy grail. And it appears to be coming soon to a financial institution near you.
Digital asset readiness will distinguish winners from losers among buy-side players jostling for a coming surge of crypto business. Traditional asset managers expanding their mandates into digital assets, and crypto-native managers building the operational credibility needed to attract institutional capital, face the same core infrastructure problem. Legacy infrastructure wasn't designed for the full spectrum of crypto complexity, nor was it designed to make sense of today’s swirl of traditional public and alternative assets classes that make up portfolios.
As TradFi and decentralized finance (DeFi) converge and regulatory green flags wave, firms are looking for institutional crypto operations that supply the operational rigor and auditability, and the flexibility to support instrument types that legacy systems can't model.
Registered spot vehicles became a prime institutional avenue, as 66% of institutional investors, asset managers, and asset owners report exposure via spot crypto exchange traded funds (ETFs) and exchange traded products (ETPs).ii After reaching its 2026 zenith of $143.6 billion, the crypto ETF market now stands at $91.7 billion AUM (at the time of this writing). Crypto futures now sit at $1.98 billion and perpetuals at $394.9 billion.iii
Regulatory opacity in the U.S. over the past several years kept digital asset capital on the sidelines. However, stablecoins had their “get ready, get set, go!” moment with the GENIUS Act in 2025. For crypto, actual release of the CLARITY Act proposal for public comment will be the “get set.” The rule finalization will be the “go!” Now is the time to get ready as Congress irons out the rules.
Asset managers generally do not mind restrictive regulations, as long as the rules are clear, so that they know how to operate successfully within those boundaries. If the frameworks are finalized before the end of 2026 as promised, get ready to turn the page to the biggest chapter yet in the institutional digital asset adoption book for 2027.
Clearer rules on stablecoin issuance and a safe harbor path for fundraising will give compliance and risk committees the imprimatur they've been waiting for to greenlight allocations. The SEC’s safe harbor codicil offers temporary exemptions from standard registration procedures, allows startups to raise capital without the risk of being sued for offering unregistered securities, and eases the path for issuers transitioning to decentralized governance.iv Institutional crypto is poised to expand well beyond spot trading and futures as massive amounts of institutional capital are prepared to flood into digital assets.
Once regulatory rules are in place, firms must have their internal back-office and middle-office systems ready to go on day one. EY reported that “institutions are prioritizing repeatable access models and clearer risk guardrails that emphasize liquidity, position sizing and governance as they scale.”v We are glad to hear that. Regulatory clarity is only useful if operations, reconciliation, and reporting infrastructure can support the new asset class. Firms that wait to build this infrastructure until after the rules are finalized could fall years behind competitors who prepared in advance. More than half of global financial firms (54%) are making moderate to large investments in tokenization and digital asset infrastructure.vi Managers are inking deals with crypto-native infrastructure providers and exchanges to get deeper into the digital assets game.
Other tech leaders may assume that it is as simple as adding a crypto operations platform to their firm’s tech stack. In some cases, this may suffice for smaller firms, at least temporarily. They can choose from a number of crypto-native startups that provide institutional-grade operations platforms. However, we have seen the purchase of asset class operations components underperform more often than not. Other buy-side firms that have bought and installed crypto operations platforms have been left out in the cold when the crypto startup exhausts its runway and folds.
"As digital asset markets continue to mature, consistency of operations comes to the forefront of what institutions demand. Crypto services are expected to function by the same operational standards they already apply to traditional markets. Because those are the rules that large-scale organizations are already familiar and comfortable with. And the more these companies reassess how digital assets can fit into their strategies, the stricter their standards and expectations will become.” — Private Banker Internationalvii
Some forward-thinking asset managers have spent years building digital asset infrastructure and are buying crypto-native investment firms, as Franklin Templeton did when it acquired 250 Digital to launch its new institutional crypto business line. They not only acquired the firm’s crypto management talent but also picked up its operating model.viii This approach has its strengths, but this and the buying platform approach result in a firm suddenly saddled with two investment platforms, two accounting approaches, two security masters, two reconciliation processes, and two reporting frameworks.
Both now need one cohesive view across TradFi and digital assets rather than maintaining bifurcated systems that must be manually blended. The integration of another operations platform cobbled into crowded tech stacks can introduce severe data management problems that bottleneck the middle- and back-office operations that it is supposed to enable. What follows is a frustrating puppet show of CTOs trying to get the systems to communicate and integrate so their analysts and managers can gain a total portfolio view of exposures, positions, and collateral.
These are the kinds of onerous problems that managers do not want to face on day one of the institutional crypto golden age.
The bigger structural shift is the convergence of TradFi and DeFi into a single investment strategy. Digital asset classes will become less of a sideshow in portfolios. The split picture that comes from running multiple systems makes real-time, cohesive reporting and modeling nearly impossible without a platform that handles both asset classes equally well. Firms' systems must be able to reconcile, report on, and operate a combined live view of both their TradFi and DeFi holdings. Otherwise, the managers must manually cobble together information from separate dashboards or bolted-on crypto modules.
To bind fragmented systems, managers should prioritize modern data platforms that bridge both ecosystems, providing the modeling tools of a top-tier asset manager with the flexibility of a crypto-native stack. Such platforms model and integrate data across all systems to create a unified view, with consistent taxonomies, real-time reconciliation across all positions, and reporting pipelines that can adjust as SEC and Treasury requirements evolve. A centralized data foundation organizes data assets for easier discovery and understanding, automatically maintaining up- and downstream accuracy for risk modeling, analytics, compliance, and trade execution.
Even better, firms that implement an investment-domain-specific data platform will have a system that comprehends the nuances of crypto financial instruments, transactions, and workflows, out of the box. These firms will be ready as DeFi and TradFi overlap more over the next few years.
Firms without this data foundation will struggle to capitalize on regulatory tailwinds, even if they have the risk appetite to do so. They will be ill-prepared to cope with exploding data volumes and cross-asset complexity, and may soon encounter a torrent of failed trades from poor risk modeling and portfolio balancing and a muddy, incoherent view of positions across TradFi, crypto, and cash.
Conversely, the managers and CTOs that put their crypto infrastructure house in order will be prepped to seize the opportunity on day one. They will be ready to expand beyond spot ETFs and futures into tokenization of RWAs and other lucrative digital asset instruments like staking, prediction markets, and perpetuals. Firms run on infrastructure that wasn't designed for the full spectrum of crypto complexity. Is your firm actively seeking institutional digital asset infrastructure that supports every digital asset instrument with institutional-grade accounting, reconciliation, controls, auditability, and reporting? Day one readiness for the mainstreaming of digital assets will position firms to dominate the market on day one thousand and beyond. Get ready, get set, go!
Discover how your operating model compares to the next generation of institutional digital asset investing.
Phillip Silitschanu
Phillip Silitschanu leads Arcesium's global digital asset commercial efforts as Senior Vice President, Digital Assets. Phillip is an expert and thought leader in the FinTech, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and digital assets space, known for his work as the research director leading IDC’s (Blackstone) global blockchain practice, and in various strategic roles within the financial services industry. He has authored and co-authored numerous whitepapers, reports, and books on these topics and is a recognized speaker and expert cited by major media outlets like the Financial Times and CNBC.
Sources:
[i] SEC, July 7, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/atkins-statement-2026-regulatory-agenda-070726
[ii] EY, 2026. https://www.ey.com/en_us/financial-services/institutional-digital-assets-survey
[iii] Coin Market Cap, July 14, 2026. https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/derivatives-market/
[iv] SEC, 2026. https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=3235-AN49
[v] EY, 2026. https://www.ey.com/en_us/financial-services/institutional-digital-assets-survey
[vi] Broadridge 2026. https://www.broadridge.com/insights/2026-digital-transformation-study
[vii] Yahoo Finance, by Private Banker International, June 9, 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/why-infrastructure-key-driver-behind-163152000.html
[viii] Bitcoin Magazine, June 22, 2026. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/franklin-templeton-closes-250-digital
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