In this kickoff episode of Quadrillions, a mini-series from Blockworks and Canton Network, we draw the big picture of how TradFi is a multiplier for crypto, the barriers to institutional adoption, and how crypto can overcome those barriers.
The following is a recap of key themes from the conversation. For the full discussion, watch Episode 1 here.
In 2024, the DTCC processed approximately $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions. That volume still moves through batch-processed, time-zone-locked rails stacked with intermediaries. Each layer adds cost and risk.
Settling those transactions 24/7 against tokenized dollars would cut more friction from financial markets than any upgrade in decades.
"Most instruments that are frequently traded will be traded onchain within the next 5 years."
— Don Wilson, Founder & CEO of DRW.
Episode one brought together two figures who have spent over a decade at the intersection of traditional markets and crypto infrastructure.
Don Wilson founded DRW and Cumberland. He started as a solo floor trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1992 and built a firm with over 2,000 employees. Cumberland, launched in 2014, became one of the first institutional crypto liquidity desks. Wilson bet that combining TradFi operations with crypto rails would produce better market infrastructure.
His long-time collaborator Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, built the infrastructure side. After stints at Citadel and DRW, Rooz started developing Canton's thesis with his team in 2016.
The gap in the market? No blockchain could support onchain capital markets at institutional scale.
His position: without privacy baked into the base layer, institutions won't be able to adopt wholesale.
Asset managers don’t want to broadcast positions or collateral movements. Doing so encourages front-running, violates fiduciary duties, and exposes strategies to competitors.
"There's broad consensus from people in traditional finance that the last thing they would want to do is publish to the world trades they're doing in real time." — Don Wilson.
Existing public chains replicate state across every participant, making full transparency a design choice. Privacy techniques layered on top are retrofits that largely remain unproven in production for institutions.
Privacy isn’t anonymity. Institutions need selective, compliant disclosure: only the parties to a transaction and the relevant regulators should see it.
"Privacy is the ability to share information on a need-to-know basis. In many cases, people will call things ‘privacy’, but really, what they're talking about is anonymity. Meaning nobody gets to see what's inside the transaction." — Yuval Rooz.
Digital Asset’s Canton team built the chain from scratch around need-to-know confidentiality. Selective disclosure means that only parties in a transaction can see the data, while regulators and auditors can be given granular permissions on a need to know basis.
On Canton, real-world assets are real, legally recognized securities that live on the L1. Canton provides the onchain books and records trusted by issuers, custodians, and regulators.
Figure 1: Full transparency vs need-to-know privacy
Canton operates as a network of networks. Sovereign applications already in production, connect through Canton, spanning insurance processing, mortgage origination, commodities trading, bond issuance, repo, tokenized cash and more. Canton initially proved its resilience and capabilities through private permissioned implementations, before going live with the public mainnet in mid-2025 and finding broader product market fit across capital markets and onchain payments use cases. And when the token, Canton Coin went live there was no premine. No token sale.
Today, Canton’s tokenomics are a major incentive for high value builders. Canton directs economic rewards toward those who build and generate real activity on the network, not only validators and early investors. This addresses one of the largest incentive misalignments in crypto today.
That delay and deliberate approach preserved institutional trust and has led to the onboarding of over 600 institutions, including Goldman Sachs, DTCC, BNY, and Franklin Templeton.
Around $9 trillion in monthly transaction volume now flows through the network every month. Explore the full Canton ecosystem here.
"We could have made a lot of money selling a token in 2020... and we would have immediately lost every single institution that was doing stuff on the chain." — Don Wilson.
Canton upgrades how settlements, collateral, and payments move behind the scenes. It plugs into the systems institutions already run, without forcing institutions to rip out the systems they have built their infrastructure around.
During a fixed income issuance on Canton, a major asset manager committed $50 million. But when they considered connecting directly via a wallet, the firm pushed back. As a firm managing trillions through established custodial pipes, audit frameworks, and regulatory reporting, adding a separate wallet for a single position made no operational sense.
That kind of operational overhead for a single position defeats the purpose of moving onchain in the first place.
Canton enabled institutions to participate in these new markets early on, leveraging new infrastructure alongside the existing architecture.
"Do you want us to have all these pipes and all of these audit reports... for the trillions of dollars that we need to manage, and then we're going to have a wallet for this $50 million?" — Yuval Rooz, relaying an asset manager's response.
Wilson and Rooz reject the "crypto eats TradFi" framing. Crypto rails will upgrade legacy rails. Institutions that adopt them gain an edge… those that don't fall behind.
Over the next two years, expect the DTCC’s move to bring US treasuries to Canton will advance onchain mobility and settlement of core institutional assets at scale. Starting with the world’s highest quality, most trusted assets.
First mover use cases you should be thinking about? 24/7 collateral mobility, privacy-enabled stablecoins, tokenized deposits/payments for onchain capital markets and treasury optimization, and the expansion of privacy-preserving DEXs.
Next in the series: Episode 2, "You're Already Late," on stablecoins, 24/7 repo financing, and why the adoption window is narrowing faster than most realise.
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Quadrillions is a miniseries produced by Blockworks and sponsored by Canton Network. Listen to the full episode at quadrillionspod.com or click one of the links below.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this show is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. Views expressed are solely those of the guests.