Bitwise: Why Are Top-Tier Capital Firms Going All-In on New Public Blockchains? The Answer Lies in These Three Points

By Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise

Translated by Saoirse, Foresight News

Industry news often arrives in clusters. Such moments warrant close attention—because major underlying trends are almost certainly unfolding.

Just this Monday, stablecoin issuer Circle announced that its new blockchain project, Arc, had raised $222 million in funding, achieving a $3 billion valuation. The investor lineup is elite: BlackRock, Apollo Funds, and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, among others.

The day before, Digital Asset—the developer behind the emerging blockchain Canton Network—announced a funding round led by a16z, raising $300 million at a $2 billion valuation.

Meanwhile, Stripe’s Tempo blockchain has long been leading the pack: it closed a $500 million funding round last December at a $5 billion valuation, followed by strategic partnerships with companies including DoorDash and Visa.

Arc, Canton, and Tempo are all public blockchains purpose-built for stablecoins and tokenized assets. This wave of concentrated fundraising has yielded three crucial insights about the crypto industry.

Capital Always Follows Regulatory Legislation

All these multimillion-dollar funding rounds occurred after the U.S. Congress passed the GENIUS Act in July 2025.

I’ve long believed that the sluggish pace of U.S. crypto legislation prior to the bill’s passage directly dampened investment enthusiasm across the industry. Major institutions were reluctant to launch business initiatives or build public blockchain infrastructure under ambiguous regulatory conditions. Now that clarity has arrived, the industry landscape is shifting.

No one can say for certain whether these projects would have secured their current valuations or completed such large fundraises without the protective framework of the GENIUS Act—but what is certain is that regulatory clarity played a pivotal enabling role.

For investors, the most important question is: What scale of opportunity will be unlocked if the comprehensive market-structure bill—the CLARITY Act—passes Congress?

The CLARITY Act has far broader scope than the GENIUS Act, and its final text remains undrafted—making precise impact forecasting impossible at this stage. But one thing is clear: asset tokenization and compliant financial infrastructure stand to benefit most. I also hope the final version supports decentralized finance (DeFi) and innovative token design—but we’ll need to wait for the official text to know for sure. The CLARITY Act deserves sustained attention from everyone.

Privacy Protection May Emerge as a Breakout Core Use Case

Arc, Canton, and Tempo share one defining trait—and a key distinction from Ethereum and Solana: all three natively support private transactions.

As crypto assets increasingly integrate into mainstream commercial use cases, this design logic aligns closely with real-world needs. Public blockchain transparency—long considered foundational to trust—is ironically becoming a liability in business contexts.

Enterprises don’t want every pending transaction broadcast publicly; professionals don’t want their salary details queryable by anyone via a block explorer. Here, transparency ceases to be an advantage—and becomes a tangible pain point.

Even the most ardent advocates of blockchain transparency must concede: the commercial world inherently requires appropriate privacy and confidentiality. These three new blockchains embed privacy at the protocol level—precisely addressing institutional demand. Their recent rounds of high-value financing confirm: this direction is unequivocally correct.

Traditional Giants Have Officially Entered the Arena

What makes Arc, Canton, and Tempo truly distinctive is their backing by top-tier enterprises and financial institutions.

• Arc is spearheaded by publicly traded Circle;
• Canton’s backers include Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs, Citadel, DTCC, Nasdaq, BNY Mellon, S&P Global, and Virtu;
• Tempo is jointly developed by payments giant Stripe and crypto VC Paradigm, with Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Shopify, Visa, and OpenAI all contributing to its architectural design.

By contrast, legacy public blockchains tell a different story: Ethereum was launched by a 19-year-old dropout on a Bitcoin forum; Solana originated from a flash of insight by a Qualcomm engineer.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee traditional incumbents will prevail—in fact, I remain longer-term bullish on crypto-native projects. Yet it’s undeniable that banks and large tech firms bring deeper capital, stronger execution capabilities, and more rigorous operational standards to the sector.

Healthy competition drives growth. I believe that, through dual-track rivalry between incumbents and native builders, the entire crypto industry’s pace of innovation and scope of development will expand further.

After all, steel sharpens steel—only competition and collaboration spur progress.