“DeFi is dead.” This is how Maple Finance CEO and co-founder Sid Powell sums up what he sees coming for crypto over the next few years.
However, this does not mean the end of decentralized finance; rather, it is the end of treating DeFi as something separate from traditional markets.
“In a few years, institutions won’t differentiate between DeFi and TradFi at all,” Powell explained to CoinDesk in an interview. “Eventually, all capital market activity will take place on the chain.”
Think of it this way: Before the Internet, people bought goods and services the traditional way—by going to physical stores. After the internet and e-commerce revolution, people still shop, but the majority is done with just a click or two.
In Powell’s view, blockchains will play a similar role in the financial sector. Onchain finance is simply the next layer of technology that global markets will settle on, just as the Internet changed how people do business.
Most people and businesses now rely more on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Alibaba to buy their goods and services because it is an easier, efficient and sometimes cost-effective way to find the best product or value.
Powell anticipates a similar shift in the legacy financial services sector, where crypto becomes the infrastructure for capital markets, where the majority of transactions clear and settle using public finance instead of legacy systems. He also sees more debt capital markets adopting crypto-native structures, including BTC-backed mortgages and other asset-backed securities linked to crypto loans, as well as crypto card issuers whose receivables can be securitized and sold to the capital markets.
Of course, a proper legislative framework must be established before this turning point occurs.
And who will use this new financial system? Sovereign wealth funds, pension managers, insurance companies and large asset managers, or “the executive class that controls the world’s financial markets,” as Powell puts it, will be the primary holders of this new “onchain paper.”
This is what Powell means when he says “DeFi is dead,” with blockchain technology becoming the dominant infrastructure layer without even thinking twice about people using a new technology to conduct their daily financial transactions
The reason for $50 trillion
Although the overall overhaul may take time, signs of such a change are already being felt throughout the system.
Take stablecoins for example. Following the passage of the GENIUS Act, financial giants are adopting or considering their use en masse. PayPal has launched PYUSD, Société Générale has issued euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins via its crypto unit, and Fiserv has introduced FIUSD for use across payment networks, while Wall Street giants including Bank of America ( BAC ), Citi and (C) Wells Fargo ( WFC ) have signaled interest in following suit.
Visa ( V ) and Mastercard ( MA ) are not issuing coins, but are building stablecoin settlement rails that could accelerate adoption and intensify competition with tokenized deposits and other bank-led digital money.
This is where Powell’s most aggressive prediction about the new shift in the financial system comes in: stablecoins could process $50 trillion in transactions by 2026, eclipsing major card networks.
He frames stablecoins as a powerful but still underappreciated tool for merchants and small businesses. Retailers already operate on thin margins, paying 2%-3% to Visa and Mastercard on card payments.
Using stablecoins for settlement can significantly reduce these costs, effectively returning several percentage points of revenue to merchants.
The financial incentive, Powell argues, will push small businesses to quickly adopt stablecoins, while neobanks and eventually traditional banks directly issue and support them.
He even went so far as to compare major stablecoin issuers to insurance companies like Berkshire Hathaway, as they benefit from a negative cost of capital. Users deposit dollars, and issuers park those funds in safe assets, such as Treasury bills, earning a return while paying no interest on their liabilities. If they operate carefully, the spread between what they earn and what they owe becomes a powerful engine for compounding returns, similar to how Warren Buffett exploited insurance float.
Trillion dollar market
What does this mean for the DeFi market as it exists today?
It could hit as much as $1 trillion within the next few years, Powell says. The space is cyclical and macro-dependent, but he says it is growing faster than traditional finance and is closely linked to the trajectory of stablecoins and tokenized assets. The total market capitalization of DeFi is currently around $69 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
As the circulating supply of stablecoins grows and more real-world and crypto-native assets are tokenized, he expects the total value locked in DeFi to increase in tandem.
In his view, the growth of DeFi is ultimately “a function of the market value of stablecoins and tokenized assets.”
Taken together, Powell’s vision is less about crypto versus traditional finance and more about how fully traditional finance becomes crypto-native. If he’s right, the “death of DeFi” won’t just blur the distinction between DeFi and TradFi; it will disappear into plumbing in a new, blockchain-based market infrastructure.
