America is rapidly emerging as the “crypto capital of the world” since Donald Trump won the presidential election and adopted pro-crypto policies. Such a crypto-friendly ecosystem is propelling American companies to further champion and develop innovative DeFi products and expand their investor base into larger pools of global institutional capital.
This week Congress approved the GENIUS Act, groundbreaking stablecoin legislation, by 68-30 votes, a convincing margin that signals a deeper than expected bipartisan support towards good crypto and digital assets legislation and signalling America’s political commitment to digital innovation in the finance sector.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and one of the key sponsors of the bill, said in a statement, “The GENIUS Act will protect consumers, enable responsible innovation, and safeguard the dominance of the U.S. dollar.”
It is considered by many market pundits that U.S. dollar backed stablecoins will defend and even extend the dollar’s dominance just as it is in the spotlight with central bankers from Europe to China expressing their views on new challenges to dollar dominance.
The prospect of the U.S. defaulting on its debt obligations has been mooted, and asset owners outside of the U.S. now publicly admit they have been overweight in their U.S. equity and debt positions for more that decade of solid U.S. market performance, driven by U.S. technology over the past 20 years like the MAG7.
Now, new digital assets innovators like are leading the way. Circle’s IPO earlier this debuted on NYSE at $31 and is now trading at over $200, a breathtaking performance, helping to break trail for crypto companies lining up to IPO including Kraken and Bullish.
The crypto treasury playbook, made famous by Michael Saylor at Strategy (MSTR) has also seen a number IPOs including Sol Strategies Inc. (HODL.CN), DeFi Development Corp. (DFDV), Upexi (UPXI), Metaplanet Inc. (MTPLF) and many more. These companies are a niche class of publicly-traded companies available to all investors which serve as proxies by investing in major tokens like bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.
Harnessing DeFi’s American Ideals
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Crypto Task Force organized its last roundtable on June 9, titled “DeFi and the American Spirit.” The SEC Chairman, Paul S. Atkins’s comments at the event have drawn widespread attention for aligning DeFi’s philosophy with American values.
Atkins said, “The American values of economic liberty, private property rights, and innovation are in the DNA of the DeFi movement, and importantly, the right to have self-custody of one’s private property is a foundational American value that should not disappear when one logs onto the internet.”
He further added, “I am in favor of affording greater flexibility to market participants to self-custody crypto assets, especially when intermediation imposes unnecessary transaction costs or restricts the ability to engage in staking and other on-chain activities.”
According to Statista, the United States generates the highest revenue in the DeFi market globally, with an annual growth rate of 3.59%. Atkins’s positive sentiment toward DeFi and positioning it at the core of America’s value system will provide a further boost to the industry.
Per Wendy Fu, CEO and Co-Founder at Momentum and a founding member of the Libra project at Meta said, “The SEC Chair’s statements at the roundtable have provided a much-needed regulatory clarity to DeFi protocols, but this is just the beginning. Atkins’s statements also reflect the SEC’s ‘century-old regulatory frameworks’ are out of sync with current innovations and require further updates to suit DeFi’s needs.”
Currently, the SEC’s rules are based on traditional “issuers and intermediaries, such as broker-dealers, advisers, exchanges, and clearing agencies.” The drafters of such regulations didn’t consider how self-executing software code like DeFi’s smart contracts would eventually displace the intermediaries.
Paul Atkins has asked the SEC staff to explore amendments, seek guidance, and frame rules that may be necessary for new companies to comply. This will “eliminate economic frictions, increase capital efficiency, enable new types of financial products, and enhance liquidity.”
The SEC’s DeFi roundtable has supercharged the DeFi sector with tokens like Compound (COMP), Uniswap (UNI), and Aave (AAVE) surging in prices. Besides DeFi’s bullish momentum, crypto companies and legacy firms are exploring IPOs and Bitcoin treasuries to diversify their balance sheets and onboard new investors.
Tapping Into Bitcoin Treasuries and IPOs
On March 6, 2025, US President Donald Trump passed an executive order for the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a United States Digital Asset Stockpile. This gave a massive boost to private companies to establish Bitcoin corporate treasuries (BCTs), functioning as acquisition vehicles and operating companies.
But companies must assess whether they want to accumulate USD or BTC to customize their trading and Bitcoin retention approach. Companies holding substantial BTC reserves diversify their offerings, such as Strategy rolling out debt and convertible instruments to address different capital markets investors.
A pubcos BTC company’s goal is to generate a strong derivatives market with sufficient volume to offer low-risk participation for institutional investors. For fixed income and private credit companies, a derivatives market facilitates purchasing debt and capturing delta using short futures and options to offset long exposure. For example, Strategy deployed this combination to ensure a fundraising success with 0% debt.
Similarly, companies like Nakamoto raised $710 million for their Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) because the company wants to launch more pubcos globally. Nakamoto follows Strategy’s business plans and has been involved with Metaplanet and other listed companies. This enables Nakamoto to offer efficient centralized services and tap into foreign capital markets that have limitations in accessing other BCTs.
Since adopting BCT, Strategy’s stock has gained 2,800% with a market capitalization of almost $102 billion. On the other hand, crypto-native companies like Circle have recently forayed into the public markets, making a strong debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on June 5, 2025.
Circle’s shares jumped 235% on the first trading session as the company’s market performance indicates a growing appetite for stablecoins. Amidst massive investor interest, Circle upsized its IPO to $1.05 billion and sold 34 million shares at $31 each.
Naman Kabra, Founder and CEO of NodeOps, reacted to the market performance, explaining, “Circle’s IPO success shows investors and users care about crypto’s real-world use cases and will actively participate if it makes sense to them. Thus, it’s our responsibility to build robust infrastructure, but abstract the technology away from users, so they can only focus on usability.”
Public markets are ready for crypto-native companies demonstrating strong revenue charts, robust compliance, and scalable infrastructure. It’s high time we focus on developing cost-efficient, low-latency infrastructure that suits the needs and demands of investors.
No wonder popular crypto exchanges like Kraken are preparing for their IPO in 2026 after the SEC dropped its case against them. But Kraken is already reaching out to retail investors by offering tokenized RWAs to US and non-US investors.
Leveraging Retail Capital Through RWAs
Since April 14, 2025, Kraken has enabled exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and tokenized stock trading to US clients from select states. But it is now planning to offer tokenized American stocks to non-US customers, thereby opening up investments in traditional assets via tokenization.
The RWA tokenization market has grown massively and is projected to reach $30 trillion by 2030. Kraken’s set of microservices aims to take on larger brokerages like Robinhood, as institutional and retail interest continues to surge.
According to a recent World Economic Forum report, Ripple and XRP Ledger (XRPL) will also play an important role in tokenizing private equity (PE). The report cites the $1 billion tokenized PE and debt fund launched on XRP Ledger by Aurum Equity Partners to demonstrate how tokenization will improve the efficiency and accessibility of traditional assets.
Per Unique Divine, Co-founder and CEO at Nibiru, “RWA tokenization isn’t simply theoretical. The RWA market has already grown from $8.6 billion in 2024 to over $24 billion in one year, driven by demand for more efficient access to yield-bearing assets. And giant institutions like BlackRock are taking it seriously.”
The U.S. federal government has already laid the groundwork to develop innovative crypto products with an accommodating and regulatory-friendly approach. With a new Markets Structure Bill in the making, the U.S. is likely to write the playbook for digital assets, and in a shorter period of time than other jurisdictions.
Now it’s time for crypto companies to leverage the opportunity and break out of their bubble to bring new investors into the crypto industry and greater market access to products that have shown a firm demand across all segments of the market.
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