Why Wall Street’s Move On-Chain Could Leave Investors in the Dark, Warns Bitwise CIO

Wall Street firms are launching tokenized funds, stablecoins, and on-chain products, yet Bitwise’s CIO says that investors remain stuck in outdated crypto narratives.

Bitwise’s Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan believes there is a fundamental disconnect between perception and reality in the crypto market. He argued that investors often misinterpret what is truly happening because behavioral biases, particularly anchoring bias, distort their view.

Anchoring bias, the tendency to fixate on the first piece of information encountered, shapes how people evaluate opportunities. This leads them to overweight initial impressions even when new evidence emerges. Hougan stated that this factor played a key role in his own entry into crypto in 2018.

Tokenization Is Exploding

In his latest memo, Hougan stressed that Wall Street is moving on-chain and pointed to several concrete developments. Paul Atkins launched “Project Crypto,” a commission-wide initiative aimed at modernizing securities regulation so that US markets can operate on-chain. Larry Fink said the industry is entering the early stages of tokenizing all assets. BlackRock followed that view by launching its $2 billion BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund on Uniswap. Apollo tokenized its $700 billion Diversified Credit Fund across six blockchains and announced plans to acquire a stake in Morpho.

Additionally, major banks, such as JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, are discussing a joint stablecoin. JPMorgan has already launched a deposit token on Base. Fidelity is hiring a DeFi vaults manager.

Despite these initiatives, the Bitwise exec said that traditional investors fail to register these changes. Even crypto investors themselves, he added, exhibit fatigue from repeated claims of institutional adoption. Data, however, tells a different story.

Where Does the Value Go?

Tokenized real-world assets have grown sharply from 2020 to 2025. Hougan warned that while the opportunity is clear, the exact path to capture it is uncertain. Questions remain about whether value from tokenization will accrue to public Layer 1 networks like Ethereum and Solana, to quasi-private blockchains such as Canton Network and Tempo, to DeFi tokens, or to companies building in the ecosystem, including incumbents like BlackRock and JPMorgan, versus crypto-native firms.

“The biggest alpha opportunities come when the consensus narrative is stale and reality has moved on, but investors are still anchored on the old story. That’s exactly where we are with crypto today. “

Meanwhile, crypto analytics platform Presto Research expects tokenization to be a central driver of crypto’s next institutional phase. In its 2026 outlook, the firm projected that the combined value of tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins will approach $490 billion by the end of 2026.

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The report also observed that growth will be fueled by demand for tokenized US Treasury bills and credit instruments.