We are witnessing a massive paradigm shift in crypto and blockchain.
Major financial institutions, as well as global financial institutions and enterprises, are no longer just watching from the sidelines.
They are actively deploying capital, exploring tokenization, and also integrating digital assets into their core strategies.
In addition to stablecoins and tokenization, gente commerce is also growing on chain.
Agents are speeding up processing, scaling large volume.
Purchases and enabling 24/7 on-chain operations.
Well, joining me to weigh in is Greg Genega, Manager, Digital Assets at KPMG.
Greg, Greg, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
Well, here we are at the beginning of Digital Asset Summit 2026.
So tell us what's going on when it comes to digital assets and what is actually happening when it comes to institutional adoption.
Yeah, so in my 4 year career at KPMG as a blockchain subject matter expert, we have never been busier than we are right now.
The founders of Blockworks here are saying we are basically in like an institutional super cycle, and I would say that's definitely the truth.
We're seeing interest from GSIBs, super regional banks, asset managers, wealth managers, payment companies.
Everyone is exploring their strategies, revolving around tokenization, around stablecoins, offering digital assets, and of course the custody and the security and the Governance that goes along with that.
So we're seeing lots and lots of interest from the biggest household names in finance.
Yeah.
And as you mentioned, we have a gathering of Trad Phi, Dehi, as well as policymakers here at Digital Asset Summit 2026.
So tell us what you think are the key drivers and what is the data telling you.
Yeah, I would say the big drivers are, for one, the technology has become very mature.
You know, we're seeing that. smart contracts came around almost 11 years ago.
They've proven themselves to be robust, but the real big thing is I would say from the regulatory perspective in the last year or so, we have not only the Genius Act that passed last summer, but we also have a lot of the regulators coming out and saying to, you know, encouraging or allowing financial institutions, please go ahead, experiment, you can, you can go ahead, there's nothing wrong with this.
And and then everyone is free to free to look out where blockchain can overlap and provide efficiencies in the traditional financial infrastructure.
Yeah.
And speaking of which, of course we're keeping our eyes on the nation's capital for progress on the regulatory side, but at the same time there are questions about regulatory hurdles and of course with strategic execution comes challenges as well.
So what are you watching and what still needs to be done here?
Yeah, we're watching, of course, the Clarity Act.
There's all eyes on that.
So what's going to be the results of that?
Of course that's a huge implications on market structure.
Of course, when you have well defined legislation that tends to stick a lot more than what the what the regulators are signaling to everybody.
So I think there's a, there's a lot that hinges on that, but KPMG is going to be there every.
Step of the way advising our clients based on based on the outcomes of that.
So I think those are the things that we're we're waiting, we're waiting to see.
And then we think that there's going to be even, even more people, even more institutions diving in after that point.
Yeah.
And Greg, I'm sure navigating risk and compliance also comes into the equation here.
So what does that actually look like for institutions?
Yeah, so it all comes down to making sure people have the right governance.
They're looking at risk in the right way, you know, KPMG, we've been supporting the digital asset industry for 10 years roughly, you know, we employ seasoned experts.
We have proprietary technology specifically for looking at blockchain information.
And so when people are on their journey, they really need to make sure that they're looking at those security elements that they're paying really.
Close attention to custody and smart contract risk, you know, in the, in the world of blockchain and DeFi, you know, transactions aren't always as reversible as they are in traditional finance, so that requires way more rigor when building out the controls and governance and policies.
Yeah, and Greg, while I have you here, you mentioned technology.
One technology all of us are keeping our eyes on is artificial intelligence.
So tell us about the role of.
Agente commerce.
Yeah, so I'm actually here moderating the Agente Commerce panel with a lot of the biggest builders in the business at this right now.
So I would say right now there's a few things that need to happen.
Of course we're seeing that the LLMs, that the JediI platforms, they've come a really, really far away.
Every month, every week there's significant developments in making them more accurate, making them more reliable.
I think we, we still need to see.
A little bit more security guard rails, and we still need to see the hallucination risk come down in a lot of these LLMs before people are really willing to trust those systems with transacting with one another autonomously without a man in the middle effectively.
But we are seeing this, this hybrid where you have, you have some G AI automation mixed with some man in the middle with some users, so that it is creating more automation.
It is creating more efficiency.
Acies, but you know, we know that the technology is only going to get better and better as it goes on and that we're going to have millions of the Agente employees transacting with one another, processing, processing information, and it will be the face of many businesses.
Yeah.
And finally, before I let you go, especially since you're going to be moderating this panel and being a part of it, tell us how blockchain is set to be a transaction.
Sectional layer, especially when it comes to gentic commerce.
Yeah, well, I would say that that's what blockchains are permissionless blockchains.
They are settlement layers.
They are a settlement layer where anybody with an internet connection, whether that's an agent or a person, they have the ability to enter the global financial system effectively, and it makes sense that there's no intermediary.
There's nobody that can shut down these systems.
So I think the agenda, the agents themselves are going to prefer the Prefer these rails because they know that it has the the the assurances and of course you know these agents don't have Social Security numbers or anything and most traditional financial infrastructure there's a little bit of KYC and stuff that you need to do in there.
So blockchain where it's just cryptography, it's wallets, etc. it seems to be like the perfect proving ground for genta commerce.
Well Greg, it was great talking to you ahead of your panel.
So thank you so much for joining me today and thank you so much for all of your insight.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
