Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

With the dynamic start of the new US Presidential Administration, on the heels of our global annual kick-off, and with colleagues across our offices starting Lunar New Year celebrations last week, it’s a good time for Fireblocks to share our outlook on digital assets policy for the rest of the year. Years in our industry are often unprecedented.

Berachain is a novel blockchain created to solve consensus mechanism incentive misalignment. For traditional Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains, users have to lock their assets in order to participate in the security model and earn staking rewards. This results in incentive misalignment as the projects building on these blockchains want activity and volumes – this competes with the native security mechanism of staking which requires assets to be locked up.

‘Traditional’ equities trading has undergone massive transformation over centuries. The evolution of how trades are conducted reflects technological advancements, market demands, and the need for efficiency. From the establishment of stock exchanges to the emergence of electronic communication networks (ECNs), the journey from disruption to adoption paints a clear picture of the changing landscape.

Tokenization is gaining momentum in the financial world; more and more financial institutions recognize the impact it will have on how financial products are created, traded, and managed. It is estimated that the potential value of tokenized assets will reach about $16 trillion by 2030.

Fireblocks Off Exchange leverages MPC technology to enable traders to allocate and mirror assets directly to an exchange from a wallet they mutually control, protecting their principal from hacks, bankruptcy, and fraud, while providing centralized exchanges with complete on-chain transparency that client accounts are fully collateralized.

In 2019, only 1 of the top 20 blockchains by market capitalization was a Proof of Stake blockchain (Tezos), with a total value staked of around $50 million. Today, 16 of the top 20 blockchains are Proof of Stake (excl. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Classic, and Litecoin), with a total market cap of around $850 billion; representing about 22% of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies. Without BTC, PoS would represent 50%.

With the advent of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, the payments space is rapidly evolving. A conversation between Ran Goldi of Fireblocks and Nikola Plecas of Visa Crypto took listeners on a deep dive into the world of digital assets, blockchain, and the role and potential of stablecoins in global payments.

The anticipated change in stance from US regulators will drive a huge boost to global stablecoin adoption, which is already rapidly gaining traction as their share in cross-border and business-to-business payments grows, according to Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks.

For digital asset businesses, the increased clarity in the global regulatory landscape, driven by frameworks like MiCA and DORA in the EU and from the Hong Kong SFC and Monetary Authority, has been a welcome evolution. It also means that internal and external compliance requirements are growing more complex to manage as digital asset businesses consider expansion strategies and the need to streamline operational plans.

At Fireblocks, our Decentralized Finance mission is to reduce the complexity to access DeFi protocols and protect users when interacting onchain. Interest in Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, is growing rapidly. In fact, the Fireblocks DeFi suite has supported over $22B in DeFi volume in the past 90 days alone and witnessed a 110% surge in DeFi volume between the second and third quarter of this year.