Anıl Öncü, CEO of Bitpace, told CCN that the divide between traditional banking and crypto may already be fading in practice, even as policymakers continue to debate frameworks.
“While Washington argues over regulatory perimeters, adoption is rendering the ‘banks versus crypto’ framing obsolete,” Oncu said.
He pointed to recent developments including crypto firms pursuing bank charters and traditional institutions launching tokenized assets, adding:
“The lines between DeFi and TradFi are not blurring, but rather dissolving.”
Oncu warned that the bigger risk lies in ineffective compromise.
“The greatest danger now is not that stablecoins destabilise the banking system, or that banks stifle innovation,” he said.
“It is that the current deadlock… produces either no regulation at all, or regulation so compromised that it satisfies nobody and protects nothing.”
He also highlighted how fragile industry alignment has been in recent months, referencing Coinbase’s earlier withdrawal of support for parts of the draft legislation.
“But walking away from the table is not a strategy,” Oncu said, adding that reaching a workable balance between banks and crypto firms remains essential.
“Finding a balance… will resolve the deadlock, and the CLARITY Act is the vehicle to do it.”
More broadly, Oncu framed the debate as part of a larger transformation of the financial system already in motion.
“The stablecoin war was never really about banks versus crypto,” he said.
“It is about whether the global financial system can evolve fast enough to accommodate a technology that is already here… and already reshaping how money moves.”
