Ashley Ebersole, co-founder and chief legal officer at TX, joins FinTech TV to break down whether current market conditions truly signal a “crypto winter” or simply a natural correction following the major 2025 rally fueled by institutional demand and ETF-driven liquidity. He explains that recent volatility reflects crypto’s evolution into a mature financial market influenced by macroeconomic forces and geopolitical shifts rather than a structural downturn. Ebersole also outlines TX’s core mission to build a unified marketplace and operating system for tokenized real-world assets, comparing its long-term vision to Amazon for on-chain finance, while noting that the policy environment in the United States is increasingly supportive of innovation in digital assets. Looking ahead, he highlights the growing convergence between crypto and agentic AI, arguing that autonomous machine-to-machine economies will naturally transact using blockchain-based digital finance rather than traditional banking rails, reinforcing the long-term growth case for tokenization and decentralized infrastructure.
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Ashley Ebersole, co-founder and chief legal officer at TX, Ashley, it is great to have you here joining taking stock.
I want to get your perspective on what some people are calling crypto winter, ongoing crypto bear market.
A lot of skepticism, a lot of concerns here, Ashley, given where the crypto majors have been trading off those Monday, October 6th highs.
What do you make of where the crypto majors are today?
So, first, Judy, I want to thank, thank you so much for having me on.
It's, uh, it's great to be on FinTech TV again and great to connect with you.
Um, I think that, you know, the crypto winter uh characterization is certainly borne out by some of the, uh, The price performance, but I think you got to put it in context of where we were after the substantial price buildup in 2025.
Uh, that was obviously accompanied by A lot of new institutional products like ETFs coming offline and building up demand and liquidity in the space, driving prices up and then, you know, crypto is a full scale financial market now.
You saw a turn when geopolitics and other things led to institutional selling and you saw the effects of that and you've continued to see some volatility in 2026.
So, you know, I, it's a volatile ride and, uh, crypto is proving that it behaves like a legit real financial market and is not immune to, uh, macro pressures.
Ashley, how is all this impacting your work at TX and talk to us a bit more about your priorities here in early 2026 for anyone a bit unfamiliar with what TX is all about.
Sure, so TX was built on the thesis that the next big movement in the crypto space will be movement of real world assets on chain.
Uh, there's obviously only one real way for that to happen, which is tokens that are backed by real world assets that represent them in some way.
So, TX is the unified marketplace for real-world assets, uh, and operating system for the, uh, the tokenization of real-world assets.
Think of us like Amazon, uh, as what we're aiming for to sort of own the, uh, the overall operations in this space.
Uh, where we are right now from a policy perspective in many ways couldn't be better.
You've got a very supportive administration.
You've got um alignment across the various organs of of our political system that are in favor of crypto that want to see the United States remain a leader and remain competitive in crypto.
Uh, that's going to be the same for asset tokenization as as that market continues to evolve, and we look forward to remaining in that dialogue, remaining close to the regulatory changes, and Riding the wave, I guess.
Right on.
Hey man, we'll all ride the wave here together.
Before I let you go, Agentic AI, we've already been talking about it in the cycle for quite some time, but really it's come to the forefront, I'd argue, especially the last few months.
Is crypto the native currency inherently for more of an autonomous machine to machine to machine, excuse me, type of commerce under agentic AI?
Well, I think it's helpful to think about it from the perspective of if you have a gen, you know, AI agents talking to each other, wanting to transact with each other, they're not gonna do it in fiat, they're not gonna do it on traditional bank rails.
What is the natural way it's going to happen?
It's going to happen through digital finance.
And so in addition to the huge shift that we see continuing into the RWA space, I do think that the continued interaction and enmeshing of agentic AI with crypto assets is only going to accelerate.
Ashley Ebersoel, co-founder and chief legal officer at TX, thank you for joining us on the Friday edition of the show.
Have a terrific weekend.