Institutional adoption faces blockchain bottleneck: Annabelle Huang

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The adjacent question of organization adoption of cryptocurrencies is emerging arsenic established fintech firms statesman gathering their ain blockchains.

Financial services app Robinhood precocious announced that it is gathering its own layer-2 blockchain to enactment tokenized stocks and real-world assets, portion Stripe followed with plans for Tempo, a payments-focused concatenation built with Paradigm.

“That’s going to beryllium the opening of galore others to come,” Annabelle Huang, co-founder of Altius Labs, told Cointelegraph successful an interview. “The fintechs successful Asia, Latin America and different emerging markets that person looked into this for galore years present are besides getting acceptable to marque much moves.”

Huang has lived done the stages of crypto’s gradual courtship with Wall Street. After starting her vocation trading overseas speech and rates successful New York, she joined Amber Group successful Hong Kong arsenic its managing spouse and helped standard it into 1 of Asia’s largest crypto liquidity providers during the decentralized concern (DeFi) boom.

The caller question of fintech-led blockchains faces the aforesaid show issues that person dogged crypto since its inception. Wall Street firms commercialized successful microseconds, portion blockchains inactive process transactions successful seconds or, astatine best, milliseconds. Huang called this the industry’s “execution bottleneck” and argued it indispensable beryllium cleared earlier fintech-built chains tin transportation the value of organization capital.

Execution bottleneck successful crypto’s way to organization adoption

Since leaving Amber Group, Huang has turned her absorption to solving the execution bottleneck. With Altius Labs, she is gathering a modular execution furniture designed to plug straight into existing blockchains, boosting throughput without forcing projects to rebuild their full stack.

“Our extremity is to bring show to immoderate blockchain successful a plug-and-play way,” Huang said. “That way, a concatenation tin upgrade its artifact execution clip and throughput without having to redesign its full architecture.”

She described the attack arsenic bringing modularity deeper into the execution furniture of the blockchain stack, which is simply a departure from the accustomed exemplary of spinning up sidechains oregon caller furniture 2s. By focusing connected the execution motor itself, Huang argues that Web3 tin adjacent the spread with Web2-level show portion preserving the distributed quality of blockchains.

On June 27, 2025, Wall Street showed conscionable however large the show spread is betwixt modern blockchains and accepted concern infrastructure. Nasdaq’s closing auction for the yearly Russell scale reconstitution — an lawsuit erstwhile scale funds reshuffle their holdings — matched 2.5 cardinal shares successful conscionable 0.871 seconds. The exchange’s INET strategy is advertised to grip much than 1 cardinal bid messages per 2nd with sub-40-microsecond latency.

By contrast, blockchains inactive run astatine a fraction of that speed. Ethereum processes astir 15 transactions per 2nd with artifact times of astir 12 seconds. Solana — 1 of the fastest large networks — has a astir 400-millisecond artifact clip and handles respective 1000 transactions per 2nd successful practice. Even astatine their best, those figures don’t conscionable the benchmarks institutions expect earlier shifting meaningful trading enactment onchain.

Blockchains person improved scaling, with Ethereum L2s offloading postulation to rollups. Solana’s next-generation validator client, Firedancer, aims to constrictive the spread further.

Huang claimed that the manufacture should not expect much “Ethereum killers” oregon general-purpose blockchains to emerge, adding that users similar to consolidate astir a fewer ascendant platforms alternatively than scatter crossed dozens of caller chains.

“But wrong Ethereum, determination was inactive the scalability issue, and that’s wherefore radical started spinning up caller artifact spaces by mounting up sidechains. And past L2s introduced further fragmentation and hard UI/UX due to the fact that of it,” she said.

Institutional adoption successful ETFs and treasuries

Though the adjacent question of organization adoption calls for improvements connected existing blockchain networks, Wall Street hasn’t waited for these method upgrades earlier piling into the integer golden rush. For galore ample investors, vulnerability has travel indirectly done exchange-traded funds (ETFs) oregon firm treasuries. Bitcoin (BTC) funds person go casual introduction points, portion companies similar Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) person turned themselves into leveraged proxies for the asset.

The blueprint hasn’t worked for everyone. Throughout 2025, struggling firms latched onto the “Bitcoin treasury” communicative arsenic a last-ditch mode to spark capitalist enthusiasm. Some concisely saw their banal prices surge, lone to retrace soon after. The anemic finances of immoderate of these companies person besides raised concerns astir what mightiness hap if they falter during unfavorable marketplace conditions.

Huang said these pivots tin beryllium risky, particularly for retail investors, due to the fact that not each firm Bitcoin strategies are structured the aforesaid way. She compared the banal spikes to token launches — an archetypal bid-up, followed by a instrumentality to “fair value.” However, she argued that request for proxies similar ETFs and treasury strategies volition proceed to exist.

“Before MicroStrategy, determination was Grayscale. Everyone assumed that erstwhile a Bitcoin ETF was approved, the Grayscale premium would disappear, and truthful would the MicroStrategy trade. But if you look closer, investors inactive similar MicroStrategy implicit an ETF for a fewer reasons,” Huang said.

“First, due to the fact that Michael Saylor has been accumulating for a longer period, their mean outgo ground is lower. Second, they’ve done respective rounds of fundraising done convertible bonds, which introduces leverage. That makes MicroStrategy efficaciously a somewhat levered play connected Bitcoin astatine a little outgo basis,” she added.

Huang besides said that portion ETF options beryllium for Bitcoin and Ether (ETH), investors who privation altcoin vulnerability often crook to indebtedness strategies instead.

Fintech chains are shaping the adjacent signifier of organization adoption

Fintechs similar Robinhood and Stripe are becoming the adjacent signifier of organization blockchain commitment. Rather than adding crypto tickers to trading apps, they are present investing successful their ain blockchains — a measurement toward embedding integer assets into their halfway infrastructure.

The infrastructure astir them is shifting arsenic well. Over-the-counter desks, erstwhile discreet on-ramps for hedge funds to bargain Bitcoin off-exchange, are present positioning themselves arsenic regulated liquidity providers.

In practice, that means offering the compliance, colony and reporting standards that organization clients expect, bringing crypto 1 measurement person to Wall Street norms.

“What we’re seeing present — and I expect adjacent much going guardant — is simply a inclination of institutions adopting stablecoins oregon adjacent gathering their ain blockchains for circumstantial usage cases,” Huang said.

These are conversations she was having with organization players 4 years agone astatine Amber Group. Now, “they’re yet acceptable to act.”

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