Arredondo maintains that the industry has spent years building separate blockchain networks, stablecoins, and digital money projects, but has spent less time ensuring those systems can work together.
“We need to move the market from everyone doing their own cool stuff to really thinking about setting standards across the board.”
The issue has become more important as governments, banks and private companies increasingly experiment with tokenized deposits, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
Arredondo pointed to the European Union (EU) as an example of a jurisdiction seeking to accommodate multiple forms of digital money simultaneously.
The EU’s approach allows stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits and central bank money to coexist under the same broad framework, he said.
Wall Street’s Crypto Role
The growing role of banks, asset managers and large financial institutions in cryptocurrencies has divided the industry. Some early supporters of cryptocurrencies argue that the sector is moving away from its original goals of decentralization and disintermediation.
Arredondo sees it differently. “The early cryptographic vision raised fundamental economic questions and brought them to the mainstream,” he said.
For Arredondo, the rise of institutional cryptocurrencies does not mean that the industry’s first ideas failed.
Instead, he sees it as evidence that ideas first developed within the cryptosphere are increasingly being adopted by mainstream finance. “It should not be disappointing that we maintain the pillars that have long anchored trust in money.”
