The technology built to remove middlepersons is quietly producing some of the most powerful new ones.
The technology built to remove middlepersons is quietly producing some of the most powerful new ones.
The technology built to remove middlepersons is quietly producing some of the most powerful new intermediaries. For more than a decade, the cryptocurrency industry has promoted a vision of disintermediation. Public blockchains would allow people to transact, save and invest without relying on banks, brokers or other traditional gatekeepers. Yet some of the most significant developments in digital assets during 2026 point in a more complicated direction. Stablecoins are increasingly moving within formal regulatory frameworks. Asset tokenisation is increasingly being driven by some of the world’s largest financial institutions. Many investors now gain crypto exposure through exchange-traded products and professional custodians rather than through direct ownership of cryptoassets. And the experience of DAOs shows that technological decentralisation does not, on its own, eliminate governance frictions. At first glance, this appears to contradict crypto’s original promise. But financial history suggests a different reading: technological innovations tend to transform intermediaries rather than eliminate them.
Stablecoins Are Becoming Financial Infrastructure
One of the clearest examples is the evolution of stablecoins. Industry and policy discussions in 2026 increasingly treat stablecoins not as a niche crypto product, but as financial market infrastructure; the challenge is increasingly less about the technology itself and more about the regulatory and operational infrastructure needed for adoption. Regulatory initiatives across multiple jurisdictions are focusing on reserve management, compliance requirements and operational oversight.
This matters because stablecoins were initially presented as a way to reduce dependence on traditional banking institutions. Today, however, confidence in a stablecoin often depends on trust in the issuer, its governance, its reserves and its regulatory compliance.
In other words, trust has not disappeared. It has been reassigned.
Tokenised real-world assets, or RWAs, have attracted growing interest from financial institutions in 2026. According to RWA.xyz, more than $36 billion in real-world assets are now represented on-chain across a range of asset classes, including Treasury products, credit instruments and commodities. The scale of the market suggests that tokenisation is gradually moving beyond pilot projects towards broader use in financial markets.
But the leading participants are not anonymous decentralised communities. Among the largest tokenised products tracked by RWA.xyz are offerings associated with BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan, WisdomTree and Janus Henderson. This suggests that established financial institutions are playing a central role in the sector’s growth.
This is not surprising. Tokenising a bond, fund or other real-world asset does not eliminate the need for legal ownership structures, custody arrangements, investor protections or compliance procedures. Blockchain technology may improve settlement efficiency and transparency, but many traditional financial functions remain essential. A tokenised fund still requires a fund manager. A tokenised bond still requires an issuer.
The evidence from tokenised asset markets suggests that blockchain is changing the infrastructure through which financial services are delivered, but not necessarily the need for the institutions that provide them.
The form of institutional adoption may be as important as its scale. Rather than interacting directly with blockchain networks, many institutions access digital assets through exchange-traded products, regulated custodians and other established financial intermediaries. The rapid growth of spot bitcoin ETFs illustrates this trend. According to Farside Investors, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have attracted more than $51 billion in cumulative net inflows as of July 27, 2026, highlighting how a growing share of crypto exposure is being accessed through regulated investment vehicles rather than through direct interaction with blockchain networks.
For many investors, particularly larger institutions, this approach is practical. Professional custody can reduce operational risks, while exchange-traded products fit within existing governance, compliance and risk management frameworks.
However, the result is a more intermediated ecosystem than many early crypto advocates envisioned. An institutional investor may gain exposure to cryptoassets without ever controlling a private key directly.
The experience of DAOs provides a broader lesson about decentralisation. In theory, DAOs distribute decision-making across a large community of token holders. In practice, participation often remains limited, while influence tends to concentrate among highly engaged delegates, large token holders and governance specialists. As I argued previously, these developments are consistent with long-standing findings from the corporate governance literature. Dispersed ownership does not necessarily result in dispersed control. Recent DAO governance trends suggest that technological decentralization does not eliminate collective-action problems or participation constraints. Instead, it can create new forms of delegation and influence.
These outcomes are consistent with long-standing findings in corporate governance research. For decades, researchers have documented the challenges associated with dispersed ownership, collective action and voter apathy. Technologies may change, but many of the underlying governance challenges persist. Decentralized ownership does not necessarily result in decentralized control.
It may be misleading to view these developments as a failure of cryptocurrencies.
Financial history offers many examples in which technological innovations transformed, rather than eliminated, intermediaries. Electronic trading reshaped securities markets, but did not eliminate exchanges. Similarly, the growth of e-commerce reduced the role of some retail middlemen while creating powerful new digital platforms.
Digital assets may be following a similar path. Rather than removing intermediaries altogether, blockchain technology appears to be changing who performs these functions and how they are performed.
The evidence from stablecoins, tokenisation, institutional adoption and DAO governance suggests that blockchain technology is not eliminating intermediaries. Instead, it is changing their role.
The key question is no longer whether institutions will participate in digital assets. In many areas, that question has already been answered. The more important question is whether the intermediaries emerging on blockchain infrastructure will be more transparent, accountable and efficient than the ones they replace. That is where the promise of decentralisation should be judged. The goal was never simply to remove every intermediary from the system. It was to reduce unnecessary reliance on gatekeepers and give users more choice, control and flexibility. If blockchain technology can make financial services easier to access, easier to verify and less costly to use, it may still deliver part of that promise. But technology alone will not determine the eventual outcome. Governance, regulation and market structure will matter greatly in practice.