Original Author: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise

Original Translation: Luffy, Foresight News

Last week, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins delivered a speech titled “America's Leadership in the Digital Financial Revolution” at the American Priority Policy Institute.

You should read it right now. Seriously, don’t hesitate; this speech serves as a roadmap for investments over the next five years.

In the speech, Atkins outlined a vision for the future of financial markets. Spoiler alert: everything will revolve around public chains like Ethereum. He proposed:

• All assets (stocks, bonds, dollars, etc.) will eventually migrate to public chains;
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) will play an important role in the future;
• Crypto assets and blockchain can give rise to exciting new business models;
• The main obstacle to this "revolution" is the hostile regulatory environment, which has now turned 180 degrees.

This is the most comprehensive vision I have read on how cryptocurrencies will reshape financial markets.

After reading this speech, it’s hard not to want to allocate significant funds to the crypto space. If you work in the financial industry, you might even consider shifting the focus of your career here. The SEC Chairman distilled all the essential points raised by cryptocurrency supporters over the past decade into this speech and detailed how the SEC will promote these ideas.

"This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity," he wrote in the speech. A few years ago, I wasn’t even sure if the compliance department would allow me to say such things.

What It Means for Investors

For investors, there is so much to dig into in this speech. You could start a venture capital firm around Atkins' vision, creating corresponding businesses for each opportunity he presents. But in my view, three investment opportunities stand out.

Opportunity One: Ethereum (and Other Layer 1 Public Chains)

The most obvious opportunity is to invest in Ethereum and other Layer 1 public chains that support stablecoins and asset tokenization.

"Today, I am announcing the launch of 'Project Crypto,'" Atkins said, "This is a full committee initiative aimed at updating securities regulations to allow the U.S. financial markets to migrate on-chain."

It’s clear: if almost all assets are going to migrate to public chains, you will want to position yourself in these chains.

Which public chains are worth paying attention to? The best strategy might be to buy a basket of mainstream assets: Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, XRP, Avalanche, Aptos, Sui, NEAR, and so on.

I know some readers will say: Ethereum is clearly the dominant chain in the tokenization and stablecoin space. I agree! It is in a leading position. But looking back at the early 2000s when digital trading emerged—the last major upgrade of the financial system—the early market leaders were companies like Island ECN and Instinet.

Heard those names recently? Me neither. But Nasdaq's stock price has risen 2275% since its IPO in July 2002.

Instead of trying to pick individual assets, it may be better to take an indexed approach and buy a basket of assets to cover future leading projects.

Opportunity Two: "Super Apps" like Coinbase and Robinhood

The most instructive part of the speech is the section titled "Driving Super Apps: Horizontal Integration of Product Services." In it, Atkins painted a future where a single application can provide comprehensive financial services to customers.

Atkins stated, "Broker-dealers with alternative trading systems should be able to simultaneously offer trading in non-securities crypto assets, crypto asset securities, and traditional securities, as well as services like crypto asset staking and lending, without needing to obtain licenses from over 50 states or multiple federal licenses."

Reading this part, it’s hard not to think of Coinbase and Robinhood, both of which are practicing the super app concept, just starting from different points: Coinbase started in the crypto space and is expanding into traditional assets; while Robinhood began with traditional assets and is rapidly moving towards crypto.

I dare to predict: one of these companies may become the largest financial services company in the world, potentially even the first financial services company to surpass a $1 trillion market cap. Atkins has just laid out the roadmap for them.

Opportunity Three: DeFi Applications

The third prominent opportunity in Atkins' speech is decentralized finance (DeFi).

DeFi applications have long existed in a regulatory gray area, neither explicitly allowed nor clearly prohibited by existing regulations. This has limited their development: while DeFi applications are widely used by crypto enthusiasts, mainstream investors and institutions have rarely ventured in.

In the section titled "Unlocking the Potential of the U.S. Market: A Vast and Robust On-Chain Software System," Atkins explained why regulators struggle to understand DeFi:

"Decentralized finance software systems (like automated market makers) facilitate automated, non-intermediated financial market activities. Federal securities laws have always assumed the existence of intermediaries that need regulation, but that does not mean we should forcibly introduce intermediaries in a market that can operate without them."

In other words: DeFi is not just a technological revolution, but a conceptual revolution. And the SEC Chairman understands this.

Despite the lack of regulatory clarity, the usage of DeFi applications has been quite substantial. The largest spot trading application, Uniswap, saw a trading volume of $88 billion in June, setting a record; the locked value of DeFi lending protocols like Aave also hit a record of $56 billion; and derivatives platforms like Hyperliquid are similarly large.

If regulation becomes clearer, could these numbers grow 10 times? 50 times? Or even 100 times? As traditional markets and crypto markets converge, the opportunities in the DeFi space will be vast.

Critics point out that most DeFi tokens lack a clear economic connection to the underlying protocols. For example, Uniswap's UNI token is a "governance token": it means holders can vote on the direction of the protocol's development but cannot benefit from the trading fees collected by the platform.

I suspect this is a legacy issue from the past hostile regulatory environment. Under the SEC's new vision, assets like UNI may establish a more direct economic connection with the underlying protocols, unlocking significant value.

The Core Question: Is It Already Priced In?

The most obvious question about Atkins' vision is: has this been reflected in the prices? If the market has already anticipated that the SEC will shift from being a crypto adversary to a "catalyst," then the prices of assets like Ethereum, Solana, and Uniswap should already reflect this.

Maybe. But what I want to say in conclusion is: this speech caught me off guard.

For the past eight years, I have been researching and writing about cryptocurrencies, and I have long been optimistic about their future, even stating that all assets will eventually migrate to the blockchain. But after reading this speech, I realized that my perspective was not broad enough and that I need to accelerate my pace of action.

If I didn’t foresee this, I suspect others didn’t either.

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