Written by: Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub

Translated by: Cynthia(@cynthiaju 333）

Guest: Joseph Chalom — CEO, Sharplink (NASDAQ: SBET) | Former Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock

On June 8, 2026, at a VIP event jointly organized by Futu, SNZ, ETH HK Hub, and Sharplink, Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom (former Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock, who led BlackRock's Bitcoin/Ethereum ETF, BUIDL tokenized fund, and Circle/USDC reserve management) delivered a speech titled "The Future Transformation of Financial Markets," summarizing it as "The Industrialization of Trust."

Drawing on his 20 years of institutional experience at BlackRock, he analyzed the significant hidden costs of "building trust" in the traditional financial system, proposing that Ethereum is becoming the global settlement layer and "trust commodity" for finance, and predicting that stablecoins, tokenized assets, DeFi, and "Agentic Finance" will radically change the operation of the financial industry in the coming years.

Table of Contents:

1. My Institutional and Crypto Journey: From BlackRock to Sharplink

2. Trust is Eroding: From Web1 to "Web2.5"

3. The "Trust Cost" of Traditional Finance: $9.3 Trillion Annually

4. Rewriting Infrastructure: From "9 to 5" to 24/7 Tokenized Assets

5. Ethereum: The "Trust Commodity" of Global Finance

6. The Three Accelerating Pillars: Stablecoins, Tokenized Assets, and DeFi

7. The Fourth Pillar: Agentic Finance

1. My Institutional and Crypto Journey: From BlackRock to Sharplink

Today's theme is "The Future Transformation of Financial Markets," but if I were to rename it, I would call it "The Industrialization of Trust." First, I would like to give you some background information — a brief overview of my career — and then discuss my outlook for the future.

I am probably the oldest person in the room. I am the CEO of Sharplink, a publicly listed company. But before that, I spent 20 years as an executive at a large financial services firm called BlackRock in New York — BlackRock is the world's largest asset management company.

In the first 12 years, I was involved in building the Aladdin platform — this technology platform now provides risk management services for about $50 trillion in assets for buy-side institutions (pension funds, asset managers, etc.). In the last six years or so, from 2018 to 2025, I led a team that spent several years researching the role asset management companies can play in the crypto space — essentially becoming a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto industry.

Initially, the answer we received was "no" — the industry was not up to the standards expected by our clients at that time. However, we ultimately launched this strategy and did some very interesting things:

• We launched Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF in 2024 — among the first such products in the U.S. We communicated with regulators and educated them, and these products later became the largest crypto ETFs in the world, raising around $100 billion, enabling institutional investors to participate more equitably in digital asset investments.

• We also launched BlackRock's first tokenized fund — BUIDL, a rather silly name that I didn't come up with. We weren't the first to do this; Franklin Templeton had already launched a tokenized money market fund before us. But our fund was natively deployed on Ethereum (later expanded to several other chains). We allowed clients to hold stablecoins when desired, but also — even at midnight — instantly transfer into this tokenized treasury fund. This fund raised about $2.6 billion, making it the largest tokenized fund in the world. The second largest will be another fund BlackRock is about to launch, backed by about $8 billion in existing money market assets.

• We made a significant investment in Circle and became the manager of USDC stablecoin reserve assets — managing around $75 billion in reserve assets for this leading regulated stablecoin.

My professional experience is quite rich, and I am older, so let me share some of my views on the future.

To provide context: Sharplink is the first company to build a digital asset treasury around "non-Bitcoin tokens." We are the first Ethereum-centric company and currently hold the second largest public ETH position — slightly above $2 billion. My friend Tom Lee has a larger position at BitMine, and we share a common interest in "strengthening the ecosystem." We actively manage our treasury, being involved in DeFi from day one. By the end of this year, we will allocate about $325 million of ETH into DeFi protocols to support this ecosystem. We are experiencing a true transformation.

2. Trust is Eroding: From Web1 to "Web2.5"

Before discussing the future, I would first like to talk about the past. We are in a moment where "trust is breaking down" — this breakdown is partly caused by AI — and it will ultimately be repaired by both AI and blockchain.

Let's return to the era of Web1: it essentially unified information from around the world — you could find information, and it connected all of humanity. The promise of Web3 is that information is verifiable, real, identities are clear, and funds can be transferred securely and economically. But we are not there yet. We are not in Web3 yet — we are currently in the so-called "Web2.5" phase. In most societies — take the United States as an example — you cannot trust the information presented to you. Social media uses information as a weapon. I do not trust that anyone contacting me online is who they claim to be, nor do I believe any software company in the world — including Anthropic — can guarantee that their code has no flaws.

It sounds dire, doesn't it? But it isn't — we are at a critical point toward the future. It's just that we cannot fully trust information at this moment.

3. The "Trust Cost" of Traditional Finance: $9.3 Trillion Annually

So, what is the upcoming transformation? Let's start from the financial services industry. Just in the United States — because people do not trust each other in economic transactions — this industry spends more than $9.3 trillion each year on "man-made trust": contracts, insurance, counterparty risk management, etc. This is wasted capital.

Why? Because transaction settlements take 1 to 3 days — nearly same day in the U.S., two days in Hong Kong, and up to three days in much of Southeast Asia. You have to trust that your counterparty will indeed fulfill the contract by that time — and that they still exist then. Because of this, there are over a million independent, fragmented databases worldwide, each needing to be maintained separately, requiring endless reconciliation every day: Where is my cash? Where are my stocks? Where is my position? This system is slow and fragmented, not a good economic system. The technology behind the American trading system has mostly been built over the past 40 years.

4. Rewriting Infrastructure: From "9 to 5" to 24/7 Tokenized Assets

We are breaking away from such a fragmented system — where people can only trade between 9:30 AM and 4 PM, and if the U.S. president declares war on a Friday night, you want to sell your stocks but can only wait until 9 AM Monday to do so. Did everyone hear what I just said? If the president declares war at that time, the only asset you can sell that weekend is crypto — tokenized stocks, tokenized precious metals, tokenized assets, and futures.

This is the direction of the future. We will have tokenized assets available 24/7. You will be able to trade "programmable currencies" with others. Assets will be immediately transferred and settled on decentralized blockchains — there will be no trust issues. This is what I mean: AI will be responsible for verifying identities and facts, while the blockchain will provide final settlement confirmation.

5. Ethereum: The "Trust Settlement Layer" of Global Finance

But this takes time. In the capital markets, Ethereum is leading this transformation, becoming the settlement layer for financial transactions — you can call it "trustware," or "proof layer," which can confirm that transactions are real and identities are genuine, because in Web3, once a transaction is completed, it is irreversible. Today, Ethereum has over a million validation nodes across 84 countries, with zero downtime for over a decade — it is the most rigorously tested financial infrastructure to date. The liquidity assets secured by Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks exceed ten times that of its closest competitor, currently backing over $300 billion in on-chain assets, with more than 65% of the world's stablecoins and tokenized assets safely stored and transacted on Ethereum.

After 20 years in the financial services industry, you will make many mistakes — but if you are lucky, you will also accumulate some experience and wisdom along the way. I can tell you: most traditional financial professionals wish to work on platforms that are trusted, that do not experience downtime, and that are secure enough. There are indeed faster and cheaper public chains, but they experience outages, lack economic security, and do not have the liquidity profiles required by the world's largest institutions.

This is where assets like Ether come into play — it is the native token of this network, and you can stake it to help secure the network. This is somewhat difficult to explain: on one hand, it is a means of storing value; on the other hand, you can stake it to secure transactions, validate blocks, and thereby earn returns — this differs from Bitcoin, which does not generate returns (people like Michael Saylor must leverage MicroStrategy to gain returns on Bitcoin). Staked ETH can yield close to 10%; the more ETH staked, the stronger the network's economic security. We have staked 100% of the ETH we hold to enhance this security.

6. The Three Accelerating Pillars: Stablecoins, Tokenized Assets, and DeFi

Using a baseball analogy: in the U.S., a baseball game lasts nine innings. I believe we are currently in about the second inning. Although the crypto industry has been around for 16 or 17 years, we are at a moment I describe as on the eve of a "step-function" change. Bill Gates famously said that people often overestimate what can happen in a year but underestimate what can occur in ten years. And that is what will happen in the remainder of this decade.

Stablecoins: Currently, the total amount of stablecoins in the market is around $330 billion, of which approximately 99.75% are dollar-denominated. There is a small portion in Europe; Hong Kong just approved the relevant regulatory framework, and Korea is set to follow. Initially, stablecoins had basically one purpose — "I want to participate in the crypto market, but my USD funds can't go directly in, so I need a stablecoin as a bridge." But that situation is changing. Stablecoins will become a track for cross-border payments. Businesses will use them to transfer funds between thousands of subsidiaries; individuals will also be able to make cross-border funds transfers instantaneously and almost for free. The salaries you receive in a year or two might be paid in stablecoin — efficiently, quickly, and at minimal cost.

Tokenized Assets: Asset tokenization began approximately eight years ago, but eight years later, the total scale of tokenized assets is only about $35 billion — which is somewhat unbelievable. I believe the largest institutions globally are preparing to completely change this paradigm. This year, there have already been four announcements that were unimaginable just a few years ago. The New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ — the two largest exchanges globally — are both working towards a trading model of 23 hours a day, 7 days a week so that tokenized assets can be freely traded around the clock. Additionally, DTCC — many of you may not have heard of this institution, but it is the world's largest securities settlement and clearing organization — processes transaction amounts approximately at the level of $1 quadrillion annually. They are currently conducting pilot programs with regulatory approval for DeFi-style models — such as lending and swaps, primarily based on Ethereum — which will change the way centralized trading venues operate and how capital is allocated, as the uses for stablecoins will increase, more tokenized assets will emerge, and the range of tradable items will expand.

I believe that in the coming years, this will no longer be a conversation about "crypto" — we may even stop using the term "crypto." The financial industry will undergo a digitization transformation on a scale never seen since the shift from paper to electronic stocks in the 1970s.

DeFi (the third pillar): A year ago, I would have said that the three key pillars driving this change were stablecoins, tokenized assets, and DeFi — these decentralized protocols now provide automated trading, lending, and liquidity services on-chain, available 24/7, with over $200 billion flowing through DeFi protocols.

7. The Fourth Pillar: Agentic Finance

I believe that the force that could truly alter the game rules permanently is "Agentic Finance." AI agents are now autonomously conducting transactions — executing payments, making investments, and autonomously managing investment portfolios. What they truly need is "programmable settlement": stablecoins plus smart contracts allow funds to be automatically executed when conditions are met — without needing a bank account, wire transfer, or intermediaries. Relevant standards are already emerging — such as X402, which defines machine-readable payment protocols; and ERC-8004, which allows agents to perform programmable, permission-controlled financial operations.

How many of you currently own a "smart wallet"? Probably very few, right? Currently, there are about 800 million such wallets globally. I envisage that soon, everyone with a securities account will also have a digital "twin" wallet — operated by regulated agents within regulated companies — essentially your own digital twin, an AI agent that understands your goals, risk tolerance, and asset situation, capable of executing tasks that are currently challenging for individual retail investors to manage.

What I want to say is that by the end of 2027, everyone here will effectively own a "CFO in their pocket." It will scan your accounts for idle funds that are not earning their due interest and transfer them to accounts generating higher returns. If you hold assets like SpaceX or Tesla in tokenized form, it will operate like large institutions: putting these holdings on-chain, lending them out, returning the generated earnings to you, and consequently rebalancing your investment portfolio. Your AI agent will become a reflection of yourself, helping you achieve better investment outcomes.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that within about a year, the number of on-chain transactions could reach around 1,000 times the current level — these will be "agent-to-agent" transactions following rules and guidelines to transfer funds and manage wealth in ways that are nearly impossible today. If you have the chance, you might want to chat with the Canopy team later, as they are working on some things that can give you a sense of the future direction.

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