Over the past few months, three blockchains built specifically for stablecoins and tokenization, backed by corporations, have raised over $1 billion in funding. Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, believes this pattern is no coincidence, but rather sends three clear signals about the future direction of cryptocurrency.
These blockchain projects include Circle’s Arc, which raised $222 million in a token presale at a $3 billion fully diluted valuation, with support from BlackRock, Apollo, and Intercontinental Exchange; and The Block.Reported
Another company, Canton Network, reportedly raised $300 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $2 billion valuation, according to Hougan. Memorandum and Stripe’s Tempo blockchain, which raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation last year, has since ... additional partnerships with companies such as Visa and DoorDash.
Three signals
Arc, Canton, and Tempo all prioritize native transaction privacy, whereas Ethereum and Solana have never done so. Hougan believes this difference is intentional. For businesses that expose their transaction flows before execution, or employees whose payrolls are publicly visible on block explorers, blockchain transparency becomes a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Hougan states that institutional demand for confidentiality is fundamentally shaping these blockchains.
Hougen believes the second signal is regulatory.
All three funding events occurred after Congress passed the GENIUS Act—a cryptocurrency-focused legislation signed into law by President Trump in July 2025—Hougan believes the act may have spurred funding activity by reducing regulatory uncertainty.
He noted that before the GENIUS project launched, institutional investors were reluctant to fund companies built on unclear legal foundations. However, after the GENIUS project launched, fundraising became rapid and substantial. Clarification Act legislation on the broader market structure for cryptocurrencies is the next variable to consider.
Since the final text of the bill has not yet been finalized, Hogen has withheld specific details, but he stated that tokenization initiatives and regulated financial infrastructure stand to benefit the most. He also added that there is a possibility of support for DeFi and new token designs, though this has not been confirmed. “We’ll have to wait and see what the outcome is,” he wrote.
The third observation focuses on competitive dynamics.
Canton’s supporters include Goldman Sachs, Citadel, DTCC, BNY Mellon, S&P Global, Nasdaq, and Virtu. Tempo was incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, with design support from Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Shopify, Visa, and OpenAI. Arc is developed by Circle, a publicly traded company and the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin.
The strong institutional backing of these three stands in stark contrast to the origins of mainstream public blockchains, especially considering that Ethereum originated from a Bitcoin forum, while Solana emerged from a late-night engineering breakthrough.
Hogan cautiously did not announce the winner.
“I primarily favor crypto-native projects,” he wrote, viewing these newcomers as catalysts rather than threats to Ethereum and Solana, believing that these new projects will elevate competition across the entire space. Hogen believes this will ultimately attract more capital into new products and blockchain startups.