Why BitGo CEO Mike Belshe Sees a $70 Trillion Opportunity in Tokenization
The size of the prize is growing at the intersection of crypto and TradFi
By Zack Guzman
October 20, 2026
For years, the cryptocurrency industry has looked to Wall Street for its next wave of growth. But as traditional financial institutions increasingly embrace blockchain technology, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe believes the biggest opportunity may have finally arrived.
While the cryptocurrency market has grown into a multitrillion-dollar asset class, the traditional markets that are in the process of coming onchain are vastly larger.
"The crypto industry... is about $2 trillion in size right now," Belshe told Coinage in a new interview. "But the equities industry is $70 trillion, and we haven't even talked about the banking sector."
For Belshe, who co-founded digital asset custody giant BitGo in 2013, the opportunity extends far beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. Tokenization, the process of representing traditional financial assets on blockchain networks, could fundamentally change how stocks, bonds, and other financial products are traded, settled, and held.
"Whether you're talking about the crypto market, the DeFi market, the capital markets, or the banking sector, all of this is going digital," he said.
That shift could prove especially consequential for companies like BitGo, which have spent more than a decade building the infrastructure needed to securely store and transact digital assets. After years of operating largely behind the scenes of the cryptocurrency industry, BitGo entered the public markets in January, listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company also secured a federal national trust bank charter, positioning it to serve financial institutions under a unified federal regulatory framework.
Read More from Coinage:
But adoption at even the highest levels of traditional markets are accelerating. Belshe pointed to efforts by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a critical piece of infrastructure supporting U.S. securities markets, as evidence that tokenization is moving beyond the experimental phase.
"These aren't coming from minor players. These are coming from major true financial institutions," Belshe said. "We got the DTCC doing it, right? It doesn't get any better than that."
Despite decades of technological advances, traditional financial markets still operate within relatively rigid trading schedules, and securities transactions can take additional time to settle. Blockchain networks offer the potential to move assets and money around the clock while dramatically shortening settlement times.
"If you've been in finance for any period of time, you know that what really makes business go is speed," Belshe said. "Everything is about speed."
That's particularly important for global investors who have historically been forced to operate around U.S. market hours. While cryptocurrency markets have traded around the clock for years, conventional U.S. stock exchanges still maintain regular trading sessions, even as extended-hours offerings continue to expand.
"What do you get with digital assets? You get speed," Belshe explained. "Not only do we get the speed of the transaction, but we get the speed of the settlement."
That potential transformation is increasingly attracting attention from financial giants that once viewed cryptocurrency with skepticism. Belshe specifically pointed to Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Charles Schwab as examples of major firms pursuing opportunities in digital assets.
And while much of the industry's focus has been on tokenized stocks, Belshe sees an even broader convergence underway. Stablecoins have already demonstrated how blockchain networks can facilitate the movement of dollars, while decentralized finance has introduced new ways for investors to borrow, lend, and trade without relying on traditional market infrastructure.
For BitGo, that convergence presents an opportunity to expand beyond its historical role as a cryptocurrency custodian and into financial services traditionally dominated by Wall Street banks.
One example is prime brokerage, which combines custody, trading liquidity, and lending to help institutional investors manage capital more efficiently.
Belshe said the crypto industry's previous attempts to offer similar services often relied on inefficient and risky lending arrangements. Firms like Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis became prominent during the previous bull market, only to collapse amid the industry's broader credit crisis in 2022.
"What happened in the 2021, 2022 period is people got exuberant," Belshe explained, describing how lenders increasingly accepted less collateral against loans and exposed themselves to significant counterparty risk.
BitGo's approach, he argued, is designed to more closely resemble traditional prime brokerage by maintaining custody of assets, monitoring positions continuously, and limiting how borrowed funds can be deployed.
"It's safer because we know exactly what you're trading. It's safer because we can watch it 24 hours a day," he said.
That model carries its own risks, particularly when leverage amplifies losses, but it illustrates how Belshe believes crypto infrastructure providers can increasingly compete in financial services historically reserved for major investment banks.
The opportunity also helps explain why BitGo's transition into a publicly traded company has become an important part of its strategy.
While going public introduced additional reporting requirements and regulatory scrutiny, Belshe said the transparency has made it easier to win institutional business.
"Being a public company is very good for us with our clients, and it has been making it much easier for us to bring new clients into the bank," he said.
For institutions responsible for safeguarding billions of dollars on behalf of customers, investors, or shareholders, financial transparency can be just as important as technological capabilities.
Belshe pointed to the failures of prominent cryptocurrency companies in 2022 as a reminder that high-profile venture capital backing is no substitute for rigorous financial oversight.
"What it taught Wall Street, what it taught the world is that Silicon Valley diligence... that's not diligence," he said.
But even as traditional financial institutions accelerate their blockchain ambitions, Belshe warned that regulatory uncertainty remains a significant threat to the industry's long-term development.
Although the Trump administration has taken a more accommodating approach toward digital assets, Congress has struggled to establish comprehensive market structure legislation through the CLARITY Act.
Belshe believes the current regulatory environment has already encouraged institutions to move forward with projects that previously faced significant uncertainty. But without legislation establishing more durable rules, a future administration could potentially reverse that progress.
"My fear is actually more about two years from now," he said, warning that a future president hostile to cryptocurrency could attempt to undo the current administration's regulatory changes.
The absence of comprehensive legislation also raises questions about how tokenized financial markets will ultimately operate, particularly when it comes to investor protection and the market structures needed to support institutional trading.
Still, Belshe believes the momentum behind tokenization is unlikely to disappear overnight.
"There's a ton of momentum in our industry," he said, pointing to the growing involvement of Wall Street's largest firms. "I don't think that stops immediately."
For Belshe, the ultimate prize isn't necessarily a bigger cryptocurrency market. It's a financial system in which the distinction between crypto and traditional assets becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Subscribe to the free Coinage newsletter to stay up-to-date on all things crypto and finance.
