Crypto is misunderstood.
For many, it is synonymous with speculation – a digital casino filled with meme coins, Bitcoin millionaires and overnight losses. But that view misses the bigger story. Crypto is not a game of chance; it is the next chapter in the evolution of the internet’s infrastructure.
The confusion stems from how we categorize it. Most see crypto as a vertical industry, like banking or entertainment. In reality, it’s a horizontal platform: a foundational layer that cuts across industries, much like “digital” has over the past few decades.
Consider the media industry.
Print, television and radio are verticals. You are either a newspaper or magazine, a broadcaster or a station – or you are not. Digitization then emerged as a horizontal platform redefining how all content was created, distributed and monetized. Words became websites. Music became streams. Ads became data. Entirely new verticals – social media, podcasts, video platforms – evolved from the same digital foundation.
Crypto, and specifically tokenization, is the next stage of that transformation. It does not replace the digital world, it enhances it. If something can be digitized, it can also be tokenized: represented as a transferable, verifiable digital record of ownership or rights.
This is not technological destiny, it is economic logic. Any industry that benefits from greater transparency, faster settlement or improved liquidity will adopt tokenization because it is cheaper, safer and more efficient.
Tokenization simply means representing ownership or rights digitally on a blockchain. It is not a speculative play, it is an infrastructure upgrade.
And, that upgrade is already underway: Blackrock has launched a tokenized treasury fund this year, enabling investors to hold yield-bearing government bonds as instantly transferable digital assets; JPMorgan’s Onyx platform has processed over $1 trillion in tokenized intraday transactions, highlighting that blockchain technology can reduce settlement risk in wholesale banking without replacing regulation or custody; and stablecoins, the digital equivalents of fiat currency, have quietly surpassed $11 trillion in annual on-chain settlements, according to research firm CCData. For context, that is double Visa’s annual purchase volume. While much of this is institutional liquidity, it demonstrates real demand for programmable, always-on dollars.
The use cases will only keep expanding.
Once you view crypto as a horizontal platform, its complexity starts to make sense. Within it are multiple verticals, each serving distinct functions:
Bitcoin has matured into a global alternative asset – i.e., “digital gold” for balance sheets for corporations to institutions and governments.
The crypto ETFs bridge traditional finance and digital assets, allowing these companies to hold exposure through regulated vehicles.
Stablecoins enable low-cost, real-time global payments, which are particularly powerful in remittances and emerging-market commerce. They also provide decentralized, retail distribution of government debt.
Decentralized finance (Defi) automates financial transactions through smart contracts, reducing counterparty and settlement risk.
Real World Assets (RWAs) bring traditional instruments, like real estate, bonds or commodities, onto blockchains, expanding liquidity and transparency.
Meme Coins, however absurd, illustrate a cultural truth: value in the digital age can now be shaped just as much by attention and community.
Like the early internet, crypto’s verticals may appear chaotic but that is what early infrastructure looks like before it scales and standardizes.
Headlines will always focus on volatility: bitcoin’s price, regulatory battles or the latest meme coin. But focusing on the noise misses the signal. Behind the scenes, the infrastructure of value exchange is being rebuilt for a digital economy.
The early internet faced the same skepticism. It was dismissed as slow, insecure and unnecessary. Yet beneath the dot-com chaos, it quietly rewired how communication and commerce worked. Tokenization is following a similar trajectory.
Crypto is not a gamble. It is the infrastructure for the next phase of the digital economy.
Its impact will not come from speculative coins or price swings or the headlines you see today, it will actually come from embedding trust, transparency and ownership into the systems we already use.
Marc Andreessen once wrote, “Software is eating the world.” Today, tokenization is eating finance, trade and even culture. It will not happen holistically overnight but it is already happening around us.
Understanding this is not about hype. It is about keeping up.
The following post was authored by Keith A. Grossman, President of Enterprise at MoonPay. Before MoonPay, he was President of TIME Magazine.
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