Written by: BUBBLE
"The White House is preparing to issue an executive order to punish banks that discriminate against crypto companies" - this news has been circulating widely in friend circles. Those who have been in the crypto industry for more than two years would rub their eyes in disbelief, exclaiming "it feels like a lifetime ago".
But it has only been just over a year since March 2023, when the "Suffocation Action 2.0" was fully implemented. During the Biden administration, through the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, and other institutions, a joint statement was issued listing crypto business as a "high-risk" area, requiring banks to strictly assess crypto customer risk exposure. Regulatory agencies informally pressured and forced crypto-friendly banks like Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank to close core businesses and restrict new customer access. Payment and trading platform builders should be particularly sensitive to this, and listed crypto companies like Coinbase were caught in the middle, forced to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in establishing an independent banking network. Many small and medium-sized crypto startups were compelled to register offshore due to inability to meet KYC/AML requirements.
Over the past month, policy winds have swiftly redefined almost all crypto asset types, including stablecoins, DeFi, ETFs, LST, and more. The accelerated entry of traditional financial institutions and the prevalence of crypto stock companies have created a strong sense of disconnection. But besides giving a "starting signal" to institutions, what opportunities can we find in these bills?
Four Statements, Three Bills, Two Executive Orders
Before interpreting, let's comprehensively review the series of initiatives launched by the US government and regulatory agencies from July to August. Though they appeared dense and fragmented, they piece together like a puzzle to form the current US crypto regulatory blueprint:
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach, maintaining the technical terminology and context of the original text.]The Super App Era of Everything on Chain: Which Crypto Tracks Can Benefit from Policy Dividends
The U.S. compliance framework for the crypto field has now been established. The Trump administration established the foundational status of "stablecoins" through stablecoin legislation and anti-central bank digital currency acts, primarily by binding to U.S. Treasury bonds and linking global liquidity, thereby extending stablecoins to various crypto domains without hesitation. The CLARITY Act established the jurisdictional scope of SEC and CFTC. From July 29 to August 5, within just one week, four statements were closely related to on-chain activities, from opening BTC and ETH ETF "physical redemption" to liquidity staking certificates, all aimed at first connecting "old money" channels to the chain and then expanding the financial system through "DeFi yields". The two administrative orders issued in recent days are genuinely injecting "bank" and "pension" money into the crypto field. This series of combination punches has brought the first truly "policy bull market" in crypto history.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach, maintaining the technical terminology and context of the original text.]Here's the translation:In March 2023, a research team led by Giulio Cornelli from the University of Zurich published a paper in the Journal of Banking and Finance about the importance of lending by large tech companies. The research showed that a clear FinTech regulatory framework can double new lending activities (one study indicated that FinTech lending grows 103% with clear regulation). The same principle applies to crypto lending: clear policies attract capital.
Lending market size, source: magistral consulting
Therefore, during this period of increasing asset tokenization in the RWA field, the on-chain lending industry may be one of the biggest beneficiaries after compliance. Currently, in the crypto field, without the big data support of a "government credit score" system like traditional finance, they can only focus on "collateralized assets" and use DeFi to enter the secondary credit market to diversify risks. Thus, private credit assets currently account for about 60% of on-chain RWA, approximately $14 billion.
Behind this wave is deep involvement from traditional institutions, with Figure, which is currently discussing going public, taking the largest share. Its Cosmos ecosystem chain Provenance, designed specifically for asset securitization and loan financial scenarios, has hosted about $11 billion in private credit assets as of August 10, 2025, accounting for 75% of the track. Its founder is Mike Cagney, the former SoFi founder, and as a "serial entrepreneur" in the lending field, this has made him adept in blockchain lending, with the platform connecting the entire chain of loan origination, tokenization, and secondary trading.
The second is Tradable, which collaborated with the $330 billion asset management company Janus Henderson. They tokenized $1.7 billion in private credit on Zksync at the beginning of the year (also making Zksync the second-largest "lending chain"), while the third is Ethereum, the "world computer", but its market share in this field is only 1/10 of Provenance.
Left: "Credit Public Chain" market value, Right: Credit project market value, source: RWAxyz
DeFi native platforms are also entering the RWA lending market. For example, Maple Finance has cumulatively matched over $3.3 billion in loans, with current active loans around $777 million, partly targeting real-world accounts receivable. MakerDAO has also started configuring government bonds and commercial loans and other real assets, while platforms like Goldfinch and TrueFi had already laid out their strategies early on.
All of this was previously suppressed under regulatory hostility, but now a "policy warming" may completely activate this sector.
For instance, Apollo launched a tokenized fund for its flagship credit fund ACRED, allowing investors to mint sACRED tokens representing their shares, which can then be used for lending arbitrage on DeFi platforms (like Morpho on Polygon). Through RedStone's price oracle and Gauntlet's risk control engine, sACRED is collateralized to borrow stablecoins, then leveraged to repurchase ACRED, thereby leveraging the base yield of 5-11% to 16% annually. This innovation combines institutional credit funds with DeFi leverage.
sACRED circular lending architecture, source: Redstone
Looking further ahead, 401(k) reform will indirectly benefit on-chain lending. Wintermute's OTC trader Jake Ostrovskis says the impact cannot be underestimated. "Just a 2% allocation to Bitcoin and Ethereum is equivalent to 1.5 times the cumulative ETF inflows so far, and a 3% allocation will more than double the market's capital inflow. The key is that these buyers are mostly price-insensitive, focusing on meeting allocation benchmarks rather than tactical trading." Traditional pension fund yield requirements are expected to generate investment interest in stable, high-yield DeFi products. Tokenized assets based on real estate debt, small business loans, and private credit pools, if properly packaged for compliance, may become a new option for pensions.
Current market share top 10 on-chain lending projects, source: RWAxyz
Under the premise of clear regulations, such institutional "DeFi credit funds" may be quickly replicated. After all, most large institutions (Apollo, BlackRock, JPMorgan) have viewed tokenization as a key tool to enhance market liquidity and yields. After 2025, as more assets (such as real estate, trade finance, and even mortgages) are tokenized on-chain, on-chain lending is expected to become a market worth trillions of dollars.
(Note: I've translated the text as requested, preserving the <> tags and their contents, and translating all other text to English.)Because of this, on-chain US stocks currently resemble a teacher who is "educating" Degen players about basic stock knowledge while simultaneously shouting to traditional brokerage users that this is "7*24 operational". StableStock's founder ZiXI, in an interview, divided on-chain US stock users into three categories and analyzed why they "need" on-chain US stocks:
Novice users: Mainly distributed in countries with strict foreign exchange controls like China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Nigeria. They have stablecoins but cannot open overseas bank accounts due to various restrictions, making it difficult to buy traditional US stocks.
Professional users: They have both stablecoins and overseas bank accounts, but traditional brokers' leverage is too low, such as Tiger's 2.5x leverage. On-chain, by setting a higher LTV (loan-to-value ratio), higher leverage can be achieved, such as 9x leverage with a 90% LTV.
High-net-worth users: Long-term holders of US stock assets who may earn interest, dividends, or benefit from stock price appreciation in traditional brokerage accounts. After tokenization, their stocks can be used for LP, lending, and even cross-chain operations.
From Robinhood's press conference to Coinbase's SEC pilot application to become one of the first licensed "on-chain US stocks" services, along with the SEC's favorable statement on liquidity staking, it can be anticipated that with policy bull market progression, on-chain US stocks will gradually integrate into the DeFi ecosystem, building a relatively deep liquidity pool. The US market, once limited to 5x7 trading hours, is accelerating its transformation into an on-chain equity market that global investors can participate in anytime, regardless of time zone. This not only greatly expands crypto investors' asset map but also introduces round-the-clock liquidity to the traditional stock market, marking Wall Street's move towards a "Super-App era" of on-chain capital markets.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach, maintaining the original meaning while translating into clear English.]Will Policies Really Bring a Bull Market?
Whether it's the "Stablecoin Bill" establishing the compliance status of USD-anchored assets or the "Project Crypto" outlining the on-chain capital market blueprint, this top-down policy shift has indeed brought unprecedented institutional space to the crypto industry. However, historical experience shows that regulatory friendliness does not equal unlimited openness, and the standards, thresholds, and implementation details during the policy trial period will directly determine the life and death of various tracks.
From RWA, on-chain lending to Staking derivatives and on-chain US stocks, almost every track can find its position in the new framework, but their real test may be whether they can maintain crypto's native efficiency and innovation while becoming compliant. Whether the global influence of the US capital market can truly integrate with the decentralized nature of blockchain will depend on the long-term game between regulators, traditional finance, and the crypto industry. The policy wind has turned, and how to grasp the rhythm and control risks will be the key to determining how far this "policy bull market" can go.
