Welcome to FinTech TV.
As Trad F and digital assets converge, the infrastructure powering this shift is also critical.
Now Fire Blocks provides the underlying infrastructure for organizations to manage operations on the blockchain, securing digital asset transactions for major institutions.
Well, joining me to talk about legacy institutions integrating digital assets into their core businesses is Neil Chopra, Head of Strategy & Business Development for the Americas at Fireblocks.
Neil, great.
You here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me, Reme.
Well, we're here at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in New York City.
So first and foremost, give us an idea of where we are at when it comes to institutional adoption.
I think we're right now at the inflection point of institutional adoption.
I've been in this space now for 9 years.
I spent 10 years in corporate treasury and consulting and technology prior to this, and for the last 9 years, it's been very much an uphill battle in engaging with.
A lot of regulated financial institutions, regulations, market sentiments, understanding what the value of this technology and market truly was.
But I think with the regulatory framework and posture that we're now starting to see in the US, it's really starting to drive the largest institutions globally to start to engage and really understand where and how this technology fits in within their existing business models.
And so I think we're starting to see with stablecoins and the narrative and the scaling.
A real proof of value and utility, and I think a lot of the traditional institutions are starting to wake up and understand that this is sort of existential to what they do today, not saying good or bad, but ultimately will change how a lot of the market will do business over the next 25 to 10 years.
Yes, and speaking of regulation here at Digital Asset Summit, we will be hearing from SEC Chair Atkins later on today, but we're keeping an eye on the landscape in.
Of how this will affect consumers here in the US, but when it comes to the institutional side, you mentioned stablecoins.
So what is your focus and what are you working on?
Yeah, it's really honestly enabling the market structure for all of these regulated institutions to come in and start to participate within blockchain-based markets.
I think we've seen the adoption and the scaling of stablecoins because it's a much less regulated and fragmented market.
Versus some of the other equities and securities market structure that is out there.
And so, in terms of fireblocks as a whole, we're really looking to power this digital asset and blockchain-based ecosystem from an infrastructure and platform perspective, really truly being blockchain use case and asset agnostic.
We understand that different firms will have different strategies for how they want to engage.
Some of them are looking at their existing business and translating that.
On chain, some of them are looking at blockchain and trying to see where they can disrupt existing models.
And so it's really, really cool to see the ecosystem and landscape coming together.
And what we're very much focused on is ensuring that we bring those participants to the table and we can enable and allow the market to scale as quickly as possible.
Yeah, and speaking of scaling, as we look ahead to 2026 and beyond, where are you seeing financial institutions moving and why?
Uh, so what we're seeing now is really a focus significantly more from the technology side of the house, where traditionally it has been the business trying to understand the business value, new products they can enter into or markets that they are sorry, uh, products that they could deliver uh through, through blockchain.
Uh, now we're really seeing the technology and security teams at banks and institutions step forward to say we need similar to AI, a blockchain strategy.
Because we're seeing this hype cycle around AI, I think we're seeing a lot of excitement for the potential applications of it.
Blockchain went through this for 456 years already.
We've come out the other side to say stablecoins, RWAs, assets moving on chain will provide value across different markets in different ways.
I don't think AI can scale without blockchain because you see this Agentic payments as an example, as a use case.
That you cannot execute real-time settlement on the back end of agentic payments without the use of blockchain as we see these applications of AI starting to evolve, I think that will then ultimately drive more adoption and utility of blockchain-based use cases as well.
And so it's really exciting to see that this is again moving more into a tech strategy focus to understand how this impacts the business as a whole and not just necessarily.
Specific business lines or products that individual institutions want to roll out.
Yeah, and while I have you here, I do want to ask you about market fragmentation that we're seeing.
So what do you think needs to happen?
I think it's a big lift that's going to require a lot of different folks to come to the table.
I think on the one hand we have again the traditional institutions that are trying to understand the impact of this technology to their existing businesses.
And then you have these new age asset managers, fund managers, digital banks that are really stepping in and saying we can actually own more of the stack, we can move up or downstream from what our traditional business would typically do.
And so I think it's really going to be this middle ground that everyone needs to come to because if you see with the Clarity Act and this conversation around stable coin yield is a simple example.
Incumbent banks don't want any yield.
Stablecoin issuers and crypto firms want to share an unlimited yield for anything that a customer parks with them.
Again, it's, it's one side versus another, one viewer versus another.
I'm not going to say either is fully right or fully wrong.
We're ultimately.
All of these different cases going to have to come to the middle and, and really understand where and how the, the end user and the consumer can benefit from this, which I think at the end of the day, a lot of folks here are, are really very much focused on, and I'd say, I'd say the ethos of, of where blockchain and Bitcoin really was derived from too.
Yeah, and finally, before I let you go, you've been entrenched in this space for many years, so you have a bird's eye view of what we're seeing.
So, let's say 5 years, 10 years from now, where do you think we'll be and what do you think the space will look like?
Uh, that's a really loaded question.
We have a lot of conversations about that with different institutions, uh, all over the globe.
This is, I'll say maybe my personal view, not necessarily the fireblock's view, but I do think we're starting.
To see this fintech revolution over the past 1015 years, this move from first payments and retail remittances, upmarket to B2B, now we're seeing the Revoluts and the Robinhoods and Coinbaseses of the world offer this sort of all in one trading stack for consumers.
I think that's really going to force banks to revisit what their business model looks like.
At the end of the day, technology firms are moving into financial services.
The financial services firms have not necessarily pivoted towards the technology side.
And so again, similar to the stablecoin yield conversation, I think it ends up somewhere in the middle and a hybrid of traditional banking services with some form of fintech element to it.
Millions of guesses in terms of what that could ultimately look like, but I think the trend towards that will just continue, and I think we have a favorable regulatory environment to allow it.
So honestly, really excited for the next couple of years, and then I think that will set the baseline for kind of where we go from there.
Well, Neil, it was great talking to you.
Thank you so much for joining me here at Digital Assets Summit 2026.
Thank you for having me.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Bye.
