Traditional finance systems, which are central to global economies will inevitably be replaced by blockchains, but what does this major infrastructure shift mean for the future of finance, markets and economies at large?
According to a report from Coindesk on August 04, 2025, 90% of surveyed finance leaders expect blockchains to make a major impact on finance by 2028. Interestingly, the report also highlights that the banks have invested over $100B across 10,000+ deals when it comes to blockchains with 345 deals through 2020-2024 in relation to payments, tokenization and custody.
Traditional finance relies on layered intermediaries including banks, clearinghouses, custodians, so it makes sense that an industry that has largely relied on siloed systems is getting replaced and that their response is investing in niche solutions closely related to their traditional core product suite.
Payments
There's an impending collapse of cost structures in global finance.
Blockchain compresses cost across payments, settlement, reconciliation and compliance.
Peer-to-peer transactions means that a significant amount of fundamental costs associated with moving money around gets eliminated.
Even through limited applications, studies have shown efficiency gains in the banking sector through the adoption of blockchains.
The economic implication of this is that lower transaction costs across all parties involved leads to higher economic velocity.
Economic velocity, sometimes referred to as the velocity of money is simply the rate at which money exchanges hands within an economy. When the finance infrastructure shifts to a peer-to-peer solution that significantly reduces costs, money is expected to move more often.
The closest comparable instance for what's coming is how the internet reduced distribution costs in media and commerce.
Tokenization
The tokenized assets market, which generally includes traditional assets turned into digital tokens on blockchains, is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2028. The effects of this is partly similar to blockchain's effects on payments.
Illiquid traditional assets becoming liquid tradable tokens with fractional components means increased capital efficiency. As access becomes democratized, markets become fast.
This means that not only is markets becoming cheaper for current participants, it becomes more accessible for everyone. More people gain access to not just the ability to transact globally but also access to a vast number of investment products.
Big picture: the new economic system
When blockchains become the fundamental finance infrastructure, they themselves become the new economic system, this is what you expect in the long term.
In essence, this means that what was once considered the parallel economy to traditional economies will become the basic layer powering real-world effective independent and sovereign economies with owned native currencies, economic policies and governance systems.
This is the rise of non-state financial systems with real world impact.
All of global trades comes on-chain and economies become more accountable. The programmability of the new financial layer makes way for money, contracts, and assets to become automated, composable and interoperable.
Capital flows become faster, cheaper, and borderless and economic power shifts from centralized institutions to decentralized or at least "distributed" protocols, networks, and platforms running on decentralized infrastructure.