Consensus 2026: Crypto Is Becoming Wall Street’s Next Financial Infrastructure Play

Welcome to FinTech TV.

I'm Remy Blur coming to you live from Consensus Miami 2026.

Now this year's event has gathered over 20,000 attendees with the companies represented managing over $4 trillion in assets.

Well, as this year's gathering kicks into high gear, the RWA tokenization market topping $31 billion in value, excluding stable coins, while Bitcoin has reclaimed.

Three month highs.

Now all eyes do remain on Washington DC, but live here on the ground.

Joining me is Dave Lavalle, who's president of Coindu Data and Idices.

Dave, great to have you here.

Thanks for joining me, It's great to be here.

We're normally on the floor of the New York.

Now we're on the floor of consensus.

It's so exciting.

It's so exciting.

And on the ground here we have so many companies represented.

It's not just Fratfi or DeFi, it's innovators, builders, and.

Policymakers and a lot of content creators as well.

Oh gosh, yeah.

Your takeaway so far this year.

Oh my gosh, I mean, first of all, you kind of can't even walk around, it's so packed.

As you mentioned, 20,000 people.

There's over, you know, 450 speakers, there's 400 side events, like, trying to figure out what you're going to do after the doors closed, the consensus, you know, expo floor is shut down.

I mean, it's really a full takeover for several days down here in Miami.

I mean, the key takeaway is, honestly, you mentioned, like, you know, tradfi markets or crypto markets.

Honestly, this is just representation of the market.

And there's a real convergence of Tradfi and crypto right now, and I think that kind of nomenclature is almost kind of washing away because the players that you have here now are some of the largest global banks in the world.

Some of the most innovative companies in the world are trying to figure out exactly how to take advantage of this next wave of innovation in the marketplace, and that's really been tokenization.

Yes, absolutely.

So I do want to expand on that, but before we get to that, there have been so many announcements, my gosh, as well as partnerships that have been mentioned, and I do also want to bring up the point that we've seen Bitcoin back above that 80,000 level, and usually you and I, we talk about price action, right?

I know.

So yeah, what's happening right now.

Well, first of all, we had a massive announcement yesterday morning where Bullish, my parent company, is buying Equinity for just over $4 billion.

And so this is really a full stack tokenization play.

It's the opportunity to kind of really.

Trench with all the tokenization expertise that we have with a, you know, historically traditional finance transfer agent backbone.

So transfer agents are a sleepy part of the marketplace that nobody paid any attention to, but they're the full stack kind of, uh, you know, registry of who owns the certificated shares of all these public companies or fund complexes.

And so this is an opportunity to really kind of entrench.

With, I don't know, nearly 40% of the S&P 500 and over half of the FTSE 100 public companies around the globe and the opportunity to really, you know, enhance their footprint in tokenization.

So we're super excited about that.

Um, but that's just one of many announcements that we've heard across the entire floor and, um, honestly, it's just a story of innovation in the next phase of the market.

Yeah, and speaking of innovation, there are also policymakers on the ground, so a lot of the conversation has been focused on clarity, but you have also mentioned that there are other announcements.

So what are the key takeaways in terms of impact for people who are watching right now?

What do you think will transpire, not just this year, but also heading into 2017?

I mean, the truth of the matter is, anytime we talk about innovation, what do you need?

You need a piece of disruptive technology, but you also need regulation. or legislative clarity, right?

And so what we have seen is we've seen a tremendous amount of regulatory action with the new administration, both on the SEC from an agency perspective and the CFTC, but you've also seen a tremendous amount of activity coming out of Congress.

So, obviously, we have the Genius Act, which really gave some guardrails around stablecoins, and now there's a lot of conversation over some of the progress that's been made with the Clarity Act.

And so what we've heard and, you know, Senator Gillibrand, a Democrat, um, uh, representing New York, was on stage and also in an event last night, talking about a really favorable outlook for the Clarity Act to be passed, you know, sometime this year.

And there's been some uncertainty there and there's been some debate, um, but this is really not a partisan issue any longer.

Uh, it's not even, it's not even a bipartisan issue anymore.

I think it's kind of a non-partisan issue.

You know, there's nothing to be gained to being anti-crypto down in DC and so that's been something that's been an accelerant to getting, you know, not only policy made, but, but legislative active action over the finish line.

And Dave, finally, I do want to ask you about Consensus 2026.

Yeah.

What's so different from other iterations of this gathering.

Oh my gosh, my first consensus was 2021, just after COVID, you know, we were just talking about the things.

You know, FinTech TV wasn't here in 2021.

There's been a real institutionalization.

Obviously, you guys started coming in 2023, I believe.

But the truth is, in 2021, I don't know, I used to joke that, like, every 10th person I would see would be in a pink sequin tuxedo with a pink sequin top hat, and there weren't really any, you know, blazers or or suits.

And now there's really a preponderance of, you know, people that are dressed kind of crypto-dressy, as I call it.

Jeans, sneakers, maybe a blazer, button-down shirt as I'm dressed today, and that's really indicative of the real institutionalization of the market.

And that's something that we're really excited about.

We think it's going to continue.

Well, Dave, I think we had a cameo of an astronaut that just passed by.

Maybe we're going to the moon and back.

Who knows?

But Dave, great to have you here in Miami.

I look forward to speaking with you back in New York.

Thank you so much for having me and congrats.