Even as Bitcoin (BTC) trades sharply below recent highs, institutional blockchain initiatives are accelerating rather than retreating, according to Ryan Zega, Head of Structured Finance at Aptos Labs.
“When I look at the market over the past six years… I think there’s a greater appreciation of the difference between structure and speculation,” Zega said in an interview with Yellow.com.
That distinction, structural infrastructure versus token price volatility, is central to Aptos’ (APT) institutional strategy.
While retail markets remain sensitive to drawdowns, Zega argues that asset managers, regulators and large enterprises are continuing to build.
“People understand the technology, understand the use cases, despite it being a bear market from the pricing perspective,” he said.
From Price Cycles To Payment Rails
Aptos traces its origins back to Meta’s Libra (Diem) project, which aimed to create global payment rails.
Zega says that heritage is shaping the network’s current positioning as a “global trading engine” focused on money movement and financial services rather than retail speculation.
The chain processes roughly $60 billion per month in stablecoin transaction volume, according to Zega, working with major issuers including USDT and USDC.
Its focus areas include cross-border settlement, tokenized money market funds and private credit products, sectors that are gaining traction among institutional allocators even as broader crypto markets fluctuate.
Institutional Tokenization Gaining Traction
Zega pointed to partnerships with major asset managers including BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform, Apollo and Brevan Howard as evidence that tokenized finance is moving from pilot phase to scaled deployment.
“These are money market funds, private credit funds. Good use cases, good partnerships,” he said.
In Hong Kong, Aptos has also worked with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on e-HKD initiatives and collaborated on research with Hang Seng Bank and BCG examining retail demand for tokenized funds.
The appeal, Zega said, centers on liquidity and settlement efficiency.
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Investors are interested in “instantaneous settlement” and broader secondary participation, features that blockchain-native infrastructure can offer more readily than traditional rails.
Liquidity Without Walled Gardens
Rather than building internal liquidity silos, Aptos is partnering with broker-dealers and secondary trading venues such as Republic to enhance access and regulatory alignment.
The network also offers a product called Namespaces, allowing institutional counterparties to customize validator subsets, fee structures and transaction parameters while remaining within the broader Aptos ecosystem.
“We’re a compliant counterparty that would love to take part in a lot of those efforts,” Zega said, referring to established players like Swift and the DTCC exploring Web3 integrations.
He rejected the idea that Aptos is simply building “faster databases for banks,” emphasizing composability and accessibility as long-term goals.
Structure Versus Speculation
For Zega, the defining shift is conceptual.
“There’s a greater appreciation of the difference between structure and speculation,” he said, noting that blockchain-based financial infrastructure is increasingly viewed separately from token price momentum.
Unlike previous market downturns, he said, institutional and regulatory initiatives are continuing to advance despite Bitcoin volatility.
“Not all blockchain is Bitcoin,” Zega said. “There are practical use cases.”
If that decoupling continues, Aptos is betting that stablecoin rails, tokenized funds and regulated capital markets infrastructure, not meme coin cycles, will define the next phase of blockchain adoption.
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