Welcome to FinTech TV.
4 years offshore crypto exchanges have dominated the global market, but right now the US is quickly clawing its way back to the top.
Now driven by a massive wave of Wall Street adoption, US exchanges have nearly doubled their market share over the past year, jumping from 8% to 15%, while Bitcoin trading on American platforms is now deeper and.
Growing faster than anywhere else in the world.
Well, joining me here at Digital Asset Summit 2026 is Joshua Lim, Global Co-Head of Markets at FalconX.
Josh, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Glad to be here.
Well, first and foremost, let's talk about the role of Bitcoin in digital assets.
What's changed and what is actually happening when it comes to adoption?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot at stake in the global situation, you know, with Iran, um, with what happened with Venezuela earlier this year.
I think, um, Bitcoin is sort of approving in a proving ground situation, right?
Like I think a lot of investors are looking at Bitcoin as a store value, um, as a dollar inflation hedge, uh, and it's really only recently found a bottom, right?
Um, I think from our point of view, what we're seeing right now with investors, macro discretionary type fund managers is, um, A, a sort of global de-risking and maybe some of the positioning earlier this year that had dominated portfolios being long gold and short crypto exposure is starting to sort of reverse, um, and that has been a strong tailwind for Bitcoin.
It's really established a strong bottom around 600 and we're also seeing just renewed inflows from investors like Michael Saylor, right, with, uh, a lot of the fundraising he's been able to do with his preferred equity and so.
You know, now, now there's a lot of fresh dollars coming into crypto, um, at the moment, but it's really mostly coming from, uh, you know, crypto native and traditional market investors, and we haven't really seen that, um, burst of retail activity that we saw last cycle.
Yeah, and I think it's so important to be able to separate the signal from the noise because there are a lot of headlines coming through on the macro level as well as geopolitics as you and I were talking about ahead of this recording.
So when we look forward, what do you think are the key signals that we need to be paying attention to?
Yeah, I think a couple of things, right?
The biggest thing that we look at is the ratio of Bitcoin to gold.
That ratio has recently found a floor, really around, uh, end of February, and a lot of that is driven by, like I said, just positioning flows with, uh, macro investors.
Uh, that is one indicator in our mind that Bitcoin is regaining its narrative as this non-sovereign, you know, sort of independently positioned store of value.
Um, we also are starting to see just green shoots in the all coin space.
So, you know, there's certain narratives that have recently caught on with institutional investors around sort of privacy, stablecoin settlements, um, and it's really showing in a few isolated areas in the Alcoin space, things like, you know, layer zero, Canton, hype, right, as a sort of like revenue driven all coin.
Uh, and I think you'll, you'll see more and more of that where you have fundamental investors who care about, uh, you know, a thesis, a strong thesis that is backed by real cash flows, and those investors are starting to buy this sort of, at the moment, very limited universe of all coins, but it's becoming like a bigger part of, uh, investors' portfolios.
Yeah, and that's very interesting what you just mentioned, those green shoots.
So why do you think that's happening?
So I think partially because this asset class has been a little bit forgotten and put to the wayside, uh, in the last couple of quarters, right?
And, you know, fair enough, there's been other asset classes that have really taken mindshare like oil, obviously, and the precious metal space, uh, but actually what we're seeing now is that investors who care about those asset classes and care about being able to take exposure to those asset classes and track prices over the weekend, they're actually finding ways to do that in crypto, right?
And so you've got things like the perpetual swaps that are listed on gold and oil trading 24/7.
Uh, it's become actually like a big toolkit for portfolio managers to figure out what to do with their portfolios over the weekend and especially given how much, um, you know, geopolitical stuff is happening in those periods that traditionally you couldn't trade in.
Yeah, and you bring up an important point because some key themes and Developments that we've been paying attention to in 2026 is tokenization as well as perps, and as you mentioned, with this geopolitical headline risk, we've been paying attention to futures ahead of the market open over the weekends on Sunday evenings, and we've seen.
A lot of activity, especially on hyperliquids.
So what do you think is going to move the markets and why do you think this matters to the institutional side?
Sure, if you look at the amount of open interest on hyperliquid, it's grown to almost $2 billion and a lot of it is in The RWA space and um I think more and more the utility of crypto is in providing investors a way to get utilization from assets that would otherwise be idle.
So, um, you can think about this as, you know, a lot of the things that are coming on Shane are uh Traditionally would be sitting in personal accounts at, uh, you know, brokerages, and now they're being used as collateral, let's say on things like Morpho, right?
So it's now sitting there and you can now trade other things or borrow dollars against it using that asset as collateral and that really unlocks something very powerful for investors.
Um, I think we're seeing it both on the institutional side with our investor base.
Mostly, um, crypto native asset managers, they're able to take something that's now in a tokenized form, maybe still earn yield on it because it's a staking asset or it's generating some treasury yield and yet use that as, um, you know, highly mobile collateral that they can deploy to things like hyperliquid or to our trading desk and trade, you know, options on top of, uh, do loans against it, things like that.
Yeah, and we're here at Digital Asset Summit 2026.
Earlier, SEC Chair Paul Atkins was speaking.
So I do want to get your quick take on the regulatory landscape and your expectation for legislation, in particular, the Clarity Act.
Yeah, I think this is obviously one of the biggest catalysts that investors are awaiting this year, I believe.
It's still an ongoing, you know, battle right between multiple constituencies, including large institutional players like Coinbase, um, the stablecoin issuers like Circle, and the, you know, the GIB banks, basically like the large institutions that are, um, mostly trying to defend their market share, right against crypto and um.
I think our view is, it's almost inevitable, right?
No matter how long it takes, it may not happen before the midterm elections, but it is inevitable that there is going to be some framework that regulates how these assets trade on chain, how um permission they are, how easy it is to generate yield and put them to use in the traditional financial system outside of just The DeFI ecosystem that we all, we all live and breathe, but I think, um, it will happen.
And when it does happen, like I think our whole industry will um benefit enormously because there will just be a lot more capital coming in and, and, um, trading the, the assets that are now probably less actively trafficked because there's just not a lot of retail interest in them.
Um, so, you know, I think people ask me a lot, like, how has this cycle really differed from last cycle, and yeah, the biggest thing is just there's a huge winnowing of these sort of high quality assets versus like lower quality assets, and it's much harder to launch like a new DI governance token or L1 token.
Um, because you need to prove out that there's like real demand and utility for something, and I think, um, in this cycle, once there's a lot more regulation in place and maybe even the ability to register some of these things as securities, because they all are now attached to sort of like productive businesses with cash flows, that will attract a lot more institutional investors.
Well, Josh, thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate all of your insights as well as your perspective.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
