by In a bodega on Flatbush Avenue, you can buy Bitcoin from a cash machine. At BlackRock, portfolio managers oversee nearly $3 billion in tokenized Treasuries. And in Washington, D.C., a President pardons crypto felons while regulators stand down. Each of these developments, in its own way, points to the same phenomenon: crypto is becoming infrastructure.
The question is no longer whether traditional finance will adopt blockchain technology. That adoption is well underway. JP Morgan has launched tokenized money market funds. Stablecoin supply has exceeded $200 billion. Asset managers across the industry are exploring how to embed distributed ledger technology into custody, settlement, and reporting. The question now is what kind of infrastructure crypto is becoming and whether it will mature into something stable enough to bear the weight being placed on it.
As crypto moves from the fringes to the core of global finance, “the burden of proof” for leaders is shifting. In this landscape, legitimacy is a constant process of managing expectations between eager early adopters and cautious institutionalists. For fellow PR pros, the challenge is ensuring that the growing sense of normalcy doesn’t outpace the work of verification.
1. How did we get from insurgency to infrastructure?
Bitcoin emerged in October 2008, weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system designed to operate without financial intermediaries. Ethereum, launched in 2015, expanded the concept from an alternative currency to a programmable platform, enabling developers to build decentralized applications for lending, trading, and financial services. The broader movement, often labeled “DeFi,” reflected a conviction that core financial functions could be performed through code rather than institutions.
The industry’s growth has been marked by sharp cycles. Bitcoin has experienced multiple drawdowns exceeding 80 percent. Adjacent markets, like NFTs or metaverse-related tokens, attracted significant capital before contracting. Through these cycles, however, the underlying technology continued to develop, and institutional interest steadily increased. The firms that crypto was originally positioned as an alternative to begin exploring how to use the same technology within their own operations.
2. What do we actually mean by “infrastructure”?
Crypto “infrastructure” encompasses at least three distinct layers, each developing at its own pace. The technology layer includes the blockchain networks themselves, stablecoins functioning as payment rails, and tokenization – the process of representing traditional assets such as bonds, equities, or real estate on-chain. The technology has matured significantly. Proponents point to the potential for faster settlement, greater liquidity in traditionally illiquid markets, and reduced transaction costs. Some see blockchain as a long-term complement or alternative to systems like SWIFT for cross-border payments. Critics note that many of these efficiencies remain theoretical at scale and that the complexity of smart contract architectures introduces its own set of risks.
The regulatory layer is evolving but remains incomplete. The GENIUS Act would create federal standards for stablecoin issuers. Several jurisdictions have begun developing compliance frameworks, and some countries, like El Salvador, have adopted crypto as legal tender. At the same time, significant ambiguity persists, particularly around the classification of digital assets. The SEC’s position that many tokens are not securities, even as they exhibit characteristics of securities, reflects an unresolved tension in how existing legal frameworks apply to new instruments. How this tension is resolved will shape the risk profile of the entire ecosystem.
The opinion layer may be the most consequential. This is the broader consensus — among market participants, regulators, and the public — about whether crypto is legitimate. Institutional adoption both reflects and accelerates this consensus. When BlackRock launches a tokenized fund, it is not only deploying capital; it is signaling confidence that shapes how others evaluate the space. The pace at which this consensus is forming raises a question worth examining: whether the growing perception of legitimacy is fully supported by the maturity of the technology and regulatory frameworks underneath it, or whether confidence is, in some measure, running ahead of verification.
3. What risks are we not examining closely enough?
The institutional embrace of blockchain raises questions alongside its opportunities. One involves decentralization. Bitcoin’s original design distributed control across a network of participants. As institutional players become the primary builders and users of blockchain infrastructure, the degree of decentralization in practice —as distinct from theory —is shifting. Mining and staking are increasingly concentrated. A relatively small number of exchanges handle the majority of the trading volume. Whether this concentration undermines the technology’s core value proposition or simply reflects the natural evolution of a maturing market is a matter of ongoing debate.
Illicit use remains a concern. Blockchain’s properties – pseudonymity, borderlessness, resistance to censorship – offer clear benefits for legitimate users, particularly in regions with unstable currencies or limited banking access. These same properties also present challenges for anti-money laundering enforcement and sanctions compliance. Industry advocates argue that blockchain transactions are, in fact, more traceable than cash and that compliance tools are rapidly improving. Regulators and law enforcement agencies have expressed a range of views on whether these tools are developing quickly enough to match the pace of adoption.
There is also a question of complexity. As tokenized products proliferate, the chain of dependencies in any given instrument – smart contracts referencing other contracts, interacting with liquidity pools governed by separate protocols – can become difficult to evaluate. This is not a problem unique to crypto; structured products in traditional finance have raised similar concerns. But it is a problem that intensifies as adoption accelerates and as more participants enter the market without deep technical expertise in the underlying systems.
4. What does “boring” mean in the context of financial innovation?
In financial markets, the most consequential transitions often happen quietly. An instrument moves from being debated to being assumed —from something that requires justification to something that requires no explanation. High-yield bonds made that transition. Mortgage-backed securities made it. Exchange-traded funds made it. In each case, the transition brought genuine benefits: broader access, greater efficiency, and new sources of liquidity. In some cases, it also brought complacency, a gradual decline in the scrutiny applied to instruments that had become routine – as long as people were still making money from it.
Financial history offers a useful frame. Many innovations that are now considered part of the market’s core architecture were once regarded as speculative or even reckless. High-yield bonds, once dismissed as “junk,” became a standard component of fixed-income portfolios. The emergence of the private credit industry has essentially replaced high-yield lending from the banks. Mortgage-backed securities evolved from a novel securitization technique into a foundational element of the housing finance system.
In these cases, the transition from novelty to normalcy raised a question that applies directly to crypto today: at what point does an innovation become familiar enough that we trust it, and does that trust reflect genuine stability, or is there a fault line developing within it which could result in a financial crash – whether just of the asset class or because of the reach of that asset class a systemic problem that extends into the broader financial system?
5. Are we willing to do the work of understanding it?
Crypto appears to be in the early stages of a similar transition. The next phase of its integration into the financial system will likely be driven not by speculative cycles but by the operational decisions of asset managers, banks, and public institutions. The infrastructure is being built. The question is whether it is being built with transparency, oversight, and structural resilience to support the weight of mainstream adoption, or whether the growing sense of normalcy is outpacing the work of verification. (TK)
6. Is crypto becoming a time bomb or a self-correcting system?
That question does not have a single answer because the crypto ecosystem is not a single thing. Some parts of it are being developed with serious attention to compliance, risk management, and institutional standards. Others are not. The challenge for participants, regulators, and the public is distinguishing between the two while maintaining the willingness to keep looking, even after the looking starts to feel unnecessary. That all depends on whether the “two” are truly distinguishable in the eyes of the beholders. That clarity of sight can never be lost.
We must look no further than MicroStrategy as a case study for this tension. Is the company’s aggressive Bitcoin-treasury strategy a visionary masterstroke of corporate finance, or is it a ticking time bomb? In 2007, two Bear Stearns mortgage-backed funds imploded, acting as the “canary in the coal mine” that triggered the subprime mortgage crisis and the global collapse that followed. We must consider whether high-leverage crypto strategies represent a similar fault line. One that could result in a crash that extends far beyond the asset class itself and into the broader financial system.
In an asset class defined by volatile sentiment, complacency is the greatest risk. While many will normalize crypto, a significant portion of the market remains primed for “I told you so” moments during a crash. True strategic PR counsel requires positioning defensively during periods of stability through disciplined issues management & crisis communications planning. This ensures that if a “ticking time bomb” event occurs, an organization has the institutional credibility to lead the narrative, rather than just survive it.