As mature fintech companies begin to build their own blockchains, the next wave of institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies is rising.

Financial services application Robinhood recently announced that it is developing its own Layer 2 blockchain to support tokenized stocks and real-world assets (RWA), while Stripe plans to launch Tempo, a blockchain built in collaboration with Paradigm, focused on payments.

Annabelle Huang, co-founder of Altius Labs, stated in an interview with Cointelegraph: "This will be the beginning of many follow-up companies. Fintech companies in Asia, Latin America, and other emerging markets have been researching related fields for years and are now ready to take more action."

Annabelle Huang has experienced the various stages of cryptocurrency gradually entering Wall Street. She started in New York in foreign exchange and interest rate trading, then joined Hong Kong's Amber Group as a managing partner, helping the company grow into one of Asia's largest crypto liquidity providers during the decentralized finance (DeFi) boom.

The new wave of fintech-led blockchains still faces performance challenges that have existed since the inception of the crypto industry. Wall Street firms can execute trades in microseconds, while blockchains still require seconds or even milliseconds to process transactions. Annabelle Huang refers to this as the industry's "performance bottleneck," and she believes that for blockchains built by fintech to support institutional capital, this issue must first be resolved.

Since leaving Amber Group, Annabelle Huang has focused on addressing blockchain execution bottlenecks. She and Altius Labs are building a modular execution layer that can directly connect to existing blockchains, thereby increasing throughput without requiring projects to reconstruct their entire tech stack.

Annabelle Huang stated: "Our goal is to enhance the performance of various blockchains in a modular, plug-and-play manner. This way, blockchains can upgrade block execution times and throughput without redesigning the entire architecture."

She noted that this approach applies modularity to the blockchain execution layer, distinguishing it from traditional sidechains or new Layer 2 models. By focusing on the execution engine itself, Annabelle Huang believes Web3 can narrow the performance gap with Web2 while maintaining the distributed characteristics of blockchains.

On June 27, 2025, Wall Street showcased the significant performance gap between modern blockchains and traditional financial infrastructure. Nasdaq executed 2.5 billion shares in just 0.871 seconds during the annual Russell index rebalancing closing auction. The exchange's INET system claims to handle over 1 million order messages per second, with a latency of less than 40 microseconds.

In contrast, blockchain speeds still lag far behind. Ethereum processes about 15 transactions per second, with a block time of around 12 seconds. Solana, one of the fastest in mainstream networks, has a block time of about 400 milliseconds and can handle thousands of transactions per second in practice. Even at their best, these figures do not meet the standards expected by institutions before moving significant trading activities on-chain.

Blockchain scalability has improved, with Ethereum Layer 2 alleviating main chain traffic through Rollup technology. Solana's next-generation validator node client, Firedancer, is also dedicated to further narrowing the gap.

Annabelle Huang believes the industry should no longer expect more "Ethereum killers" or universal blockchains. She added that users prefer to concentrate on a few dominant platforms rather than being dispersed across numerous new chains.

She stated: "However, within Ethereum, scalability issues still exist, so everyone is starting to build sidechains to expand block space. Subsequently, Layer 2 has brought more fragmentation and complex UI/UX."

As the industry evolves, related companies are continuously adjusting their strategic layouts. Although the next wave of institutional adoption requires technological upgrades to existing blockchain networks, Wall Street has already surged into the digital asset craze ahead of these technological improvements. Many large investors are gaining indirect exposure through exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or corporate treasuries. Bitcoin (BTC) funds have become a convenient entry point, with companies like Strategy (now renamed Strategy) transforming into leveraged proxies for this asset.

However, this model does not work for all companies. During 2025, some struggling firms will use "Bitcoin treasuries" as a last resort to spark investor interest. Some companies' stock prices briefly rose before quickly falling back. Poor financial conditions at some firms have also raised concerns about potential issues in unfavorable market environments.

Annabelle Huang pointed out that this transformation poses particular risks for retail investors, as corporate Bitcoin strategies are not uniform. She likened the rise in stock prices to token issuance, which typically sees a rapid increase in the early stages before returning to "reasonable value." However, she believes that demand for proxies like ETFs and treasury strategies will continue to exist.

She said: "Before Strategy, there was Grayscale. People thought that once the Bitcoin ETF was approved, Grayscale's premium would disappear, and Strategy trading would end. But if you look closely, investors still prefer Strategy over ETFs for various reasons."

"First, Michael Saylor has a longer holding period and a lower average cost. Second, the company has raised multiple rounds of convertible debt financing, introducing leverage. This makes Strategy a tool for trading Bitcoin with leverage at a lower cost basis," she added.

Annabelle Huang also stated that while ETFs can be used for Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), investors looking to gain exposure to other digital currency assets typically choose debt strategies.

Fintech companies like Robinhood and Stripe are entering a new phase of institutional blockchain commitment. They are no longer just adding cryptocurrency labels to trading applications but are investing in the development of their own blockchains, embedding digital assets into their core infrastructure.

The related infrastructure is changing. OTC trading desks, which originally provided Bitcoin over-the-counter buying services for hedge funds, are now actively transforming into compliant liquidity providers.

This means providing institutional clients with compliance, settlement, and reporting standards, bringing the crypto industry closer to Wall Street norms.

Annabelle Huang stated: "What we are seeing now—and expect to see more of in the future—is a trend of institutions adopting stablecoins and even building their own blockchains for specific application scenarios."

These discussions began four years ago at Amber Group with institutional clients, and Annabelle Huang noted that now "they are finally ready to take action."

Related: The first ETF for Dogecoin is launched; how high can DOGE's price rise?

Original article: “Annabelle Huang states that institutional adoption faces blockchain bottlenecks”

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