Wall Street Could Be Fully Blockchain-Powered by 2030, Says Brickken CEO
The boundary between Wall Street and blockchain technology is closing faster than most people realize. Edwin Mata, CEO and founder of Barcelona-based tokenization platform Brickken, says Wall Street will be entirely onchain by 2030, and the shift is already well underway.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Mata said industry buzzwords like “Web3” are fading into the background as major banks quietly adopt blockchain for everyday financial plumbing, settlements, payments, recordkeeping. “The merge between Wall Street and technology is going to dissipate,” Mata said. “We’re not going to talk anymore about blockchain. It’s merging into fintech.”
The momentum behind this view is hard to dismiss. Institutional interest in tokenizing real-world assets has surged, with moves like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund signaling serious intent from the top of the financial food chain. Meanwhile, Bullish’s $4.2 billion acquisition of transfer agent Equiniti is designed to ensure shares are issued and recorded directly on-chain from inception, no synthetic wrappers, no legacy middleware.
Brickken itself, which has helped bring $500 million in real-world assets onchain for over 200 clients, is now integrating AI agents to automate asset onboarding and liquidity sourcing. Mata believes the next frontier of Wall Street onchain by 2030 won’t be powered by human analysts staring at dashboards, it will be driven by AI responding to simple chat prompts. “The decision-maker is not going to be us anymore. It’s going to be AI,” he said.
But while the U.S. races ahead, Mata issued a sharp warning about Europe. He criticized the EU’s MiCA regulatory framework, arguing it has become a moat for legacy banks by burying small startups in expensive, slow-moving compliance requirements. “It can take you nine months to get a license, and if you’re a startup, nine months without monetizing, you’re dead,” Mata said. He suggested that startups unable to navigate these barriers may relocate to the UAE or Southeast Asia rather than grind through Brussels red tape.
His criticism echoes that of Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet, who told CoinDesk that Europe’s strict new crypto rules are unintentionally crushing small startups while handing an advantage to established financial institutions.
Despite the regulatory noise in Washington, Mata remains bullish on American dominance in the space. The U.S. controls the world’s largest capital market, he argues, and that alone ensures it will remain the engine of crypto and tokenization innovation regardless of short-term political friction.
For Mata, the destination is clear: Wall Street onchain by 2030 is not a distant dream, it is the direction every major institution is already quietly heading toward, whether they say so publicly or not.
