Convergence
The quiet reconciliation of old money and new money.
Two worlds seem to collide on the stage of the New York Times DealBook Summit. You could sense it the second both guests take their seats. On one side, Brian Armstrong, black sweater, black pants, white sneakers, both feet planted firmly on the ground. The Coinbase founder has the look of someone building the future from a MacBook. On the other, Larry Fink. Navy suit, black loafers, legs crossed with the ease of a man who has been running the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, for thirty years. A living embodiment of Wall Street. The contrast is sharp, the caricature too perfect. Appearances, that day, are deceiving.
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“You famously, in 2017, called crypto an index for money laundering. You now have the largest Bitcoin ETF. What happened?” Andrew Ross Sorkin, journalist, author, and moderator for the day, opens the conversation without pulling any punches. It’s true that in 2017, Larry Fink portrayed Bitcoin as a tool for money laundering and thieves. That year, Bitcoin surged from $1,000 to over $15,000. The market was young, chaotic, poorly regulated. At the time, it took a good dose of imagination, faith, or foresight to see any broader potential in it.
Fink, with Olympian calm, acknowledges having changed his mind. “During Covid, we had a little more time. I actually took it upon myself to visit and talk to a lot of people who were advocates for it. I wanted to understand what I am missing, why do I have that belief. I was testing myself. Around 2021, 2022, I began to evolve those views [...] My thought process always evolves, this is a very glaring public example of a big shift in my opinion.” It’s rare to see a leader of this stature admit to being wrong. Even more so publicly.
That said, Fink hasn’t become a crypto enthusiast. Although BlackRock’s ETF holds more than 3% of Bitcoin’s total supply, it’s not Bitcoin—which he still considers an asset of fear—that excites him most. It’s tokenization.
In an op-ed published the same week in The Economist, he explains why. In a world fragmented between London, New York, Tokyo and their staggered time zones, tokenization enables the seamless functioning of global financial markets. The elimination of paperwork in favor of code, particularly in private markets still mired in PDFs, signatures, and lengthy administrative processes, also means less friction, lower costs, and greater efficiency.
Brian Armstrong sums up this idea, but in four lines, in a tweet posted after the conference: “Tokenization is going to reinvent finance. Everything that can be tokenized, will be. It’s much better for the end user. Real-time settlement (eliminates counterparty risk); Improved liquidity/accessibility; Higher efficiency by reducing bureaucracy/friction.”
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If the big banks are embracing blockchain today, it’s not just out of technological fascination. It’s also because the political and regulatory balance of power has shifted. In the United States, Trump’s arrival in Washington opened a breach that Coinbase rushed into: a more conciliatory administration, certainly driven more by political than societal interest, a more receptive Congress, and crypto lobbying now openly embraced. For years, Coinbase worked to play an institutional role, sometimes criticized by purists, by advocating for a clear framework, engaging with regulators, and occupying the space left vacant by more radical players. This strategy eventually paid off.
When banks realized that the lines were shifting in Washington, that blockchain no longer threatened their legitimacy but could strengthen their infrastructure. They stopped viewing crypto as a counterculture and started examining it as a technological opportunity. Last November, JPMorgan announced it was partnering with Coinbase to enable its institutional clients to transfer funds on-chain, 24/7, almost instantaneously. A month earlier, Citi announced the same initiative. These announcements are the most visible signs of a silent convergence, unimaginable just five years ago.
However, don’t speak of “crypto” with a banker just yet. Stick to “token”, “blockchain”, or “stablecoin.” Words matter. Traditional finance may be adopting crypto technology, but it’s not adopting the narrative. Armstrong speaks of Bitcoin, stablecoins, and tokenization as a societal lever. As a tool for economic freedom, a way to redistribute power. Fink speaks of infrastructure. Of efficiency. Of more reliable, more liquid, more transparent markets. These are two very different visions. But somewhere between the two, a line is emerging. Old money and new money are no longer at odds. Much to the dismay of purists, these two currents are learning, each in their own way, to move in the same direction.
Main sources and references:
I encourage you to watch the discussion between Armstrong and Fink in its entirety, as many other topics are addressed. Fink and Goldstein’s op-ed in The Economist also offers a clear view of the broader vision for tokenization.
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