I spoke at the Blockchain Association Singapore panel yesterday —always useful to pause and exchange views with builders, policy folks, and institutional voices all in one room. The topic: Digital Asset Investing—what’s real, what’s narrative, and what’s next.

The discussion was wide-ranging—tokenized RWAs, regulation, derivative sophistication across regions, and there were a great set of speakers. For me, a few ideas stood out that I’ve been thinking about more deeply while building aarnâ’s AI-driven crypto structured products, or âtv vaults.

🧩 Market signals are noisy, but the trend is clear

A lot of the conversation began with short-term volatility—macro pressure, the U.S. election cycle, and Trump’s renewed crypto stance.

My take: Trump is both catalyst and chaos. He signals political mainstreaming of crypto, but also increases short-term volatility and uncertainty. It adds energy to the space but not clarity. This won’t impact the long arc of institutional adoption—it might accelerate it, in fact—but it introduces noise in Q2–Q3 of 2025.

What’s more interesting is what we’re seeing firsthand. Since launching our AI quant vault (âtv 802), there’s been steady inbound—asset managers, family offices, even DAO treasuries. Many are still “in explore mode,” sitting on the fence. But the groundwork is being laid. The shift will likely happen in a way that looks sudden, but really has been building quietly for months. (Slowly, then all at once.)

💡 Native tokens vs. RWAs — we’ve skipped a step

I brought up a structural problem I keep seeing:

> Before solving the challenge of risk-managed, informed access to native crypto tokens, we’ve leapt into tokenizing real-world assets.

It’s like skipping steps. RWAs have promise—but in terms of liquidity, auditability, enforcement, they introduce legacy frictions. Meanwhile, native digital assets (L1s, L2s, DeFi tokens) are programmable, composable, and ready now—but we haven’t cracked how to structure portfolios around them that actually work for serious investors.

This is where I see onchain asset management stepping up.

Why Crypto Structured Products (CSPs) Are Set to Scale

We’re moving beyond the “degen” phase of DeFi. Investors don’t want to piece together 12 protocols and 4 chains to deploy capital with leverage and hedging—they want access to strategies, not systems.

Here’s where structured products in the form of vaults come in:

• Quant vaults (e.g., aarnâ AFI 802) using AI to rebalance token portfolios dynamically

• Yield-optimised vaults sourcing real yield across multiple DeFi protocols

• Long-short vaults that can hedge downside and capture directional movement

These are already being built. The market just hasn’t priced them in yet.

Challenges to resolve:

Liquidity Fragmentation

• Even with high market-cap tokens, onchain liquidity is fragmented across DEXs and L2s.

• Our âtv vault filters down to ~40–50 tokens not just by market cap but actual liquidity footprint.

• We need aggregation infra that doesn’t introduce new attack surfaces.

User Experience (UX)

• DeFi UX is still built for insiders.

• One-click DeFi structured products with full strategy abstraction are key. Think: structured yield for stablecoins, automated quant for token exposure.

Regulatory Frameworks

• We don’t need full regulation to start—we need credible, transparent self-compliance

• Clear protocols on key ownership, vault governance (e.g. [Safe multisigs] disclosures.

• The path forward is composable legal primitives—see OpenLaw or LexDAO as early examples.

Tipping point for institutional adoption?

No single spark will do it.

The tipping point will be when three layers converge:

1. Clear frameworks for how custody, compliance, and strategy risk are managed onchain

2. Simple UX that doesn’t feel like protocol-hopping

3. Real performance from onchain products (not just airdrop farming or meme cycles)

We’re not there yet—but we’re close.

One closing idea I shared on the panel:

>Focus on signal, not speculation.

>The noise is back—meme coins, 1000% APYs, pump narratives—but under it, real rails are being built.

>CSPs are that quiet build. They're what ETFs were to mutual funds in 2001. Not loud, but inevitable.

Let’s see where things head as we get into H2.