Banks Won't Rebuild Crypto's Stack — They'll Plug Into It

Institutions were never going to arrive in crypto waving governance tokens. The real adoption story is quieter and more structural: banks, fintechs, and asset managers are beginning to plug into crypto-native infrastructure rather than rebuild it from scratch — and the distinction matters enormously.

The argument, laid out by Solstice co-founder Ben Nadareski, is that crypto's real moat is not decentralisation or open-source code. It is iteration velocity under live-market pressure. Every bridge exploit, oracle failure, liquidation cascade, and broken incentive loop has added to a collective body of knowledge that no internal bank innovation lab can properly simulate. BlackRock's BUIDL, Stripe's acquisition of Bridge, and J.P.