DIGITAL ASSETS
The cryptocurrency industry has a visibility problem. Retail investors obsess over memecoins, while institutional money managers debate Bitcoin allocations. Yet the critical factor determining whether digital assets achieve mainstream adoption has little to do with price predictions or technological breakthroughs.
It comes down to infrastructure: the custody solutions that satisfy bank auditors, the settlement systems that clear transactions in seconds and the compliance tools navigating fragmented global regulations. The challenge becomes apparent when examining network capacity. Ethereum processes roughly 15 transactions per second on its base layer. Visa, by comparison, handles approximately 65,000 transactions per second at peak capacity.
Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism improve throughput substantially, but they introduce complexity and fragment liquidity across multiple systems. This creates real operational headaches for institutions considering blockchain integration. Venture capital has consistently flowed more heavily into infrastructure companies than decentralised applications, recognising that infrastructure represents the bottleneck preventing wider institutional adoption.
Solving custody, compliance and settlement challenges creates defensible businesses with genuine revenue models – unlike many speculative token projects.
The institutional imperative Financial institutions entering digital assets face requirements fundamentally different from retail users.
When major banks develop custody services, projects typically require years of development – not because the technology proves difficult, but because integrating blockchain systems with legacy banking infrastructure, satisfying regulators and meeting insurance requirements demands extensive groundwork. The custody sector illustrates this maturation. Companies like Fireblocks provide enterprise
138 December 2025