SKN | ‘DeFi Is Dead’: Maple Finance CEO Says Onchain Markets Will Absorb Wall Street

Key Points:

• Onchain finance is evolving beyond “DeFi” as institutions move capital markets activity directly onto blockchains.
• Tokenized private credit, not treasuries, is expected to become the largest growth engine for onchain markets.
• Stablecoin payment volumes could surge to $50 trillion in 2026 as merchants and neobanks seek lower-cost settlement rails.

The phrase “DeFi is dead” sounds provocative, but for Maple Finance CEO Sid Powell, it signals not collapse, but maturity. In his view, decentralized finance is no longer a standalone category competing with traditional finance. Instead, it is becoming the underlying infrastructure through which global capital markets will operate.

“In a couple of years, institutions won’t distinguish between DeFi and TradFi at all,” Powell said in an interview. “Eventually, all capital markets activity will take place onchain.”

From Category to Infrastructure

Powell compares the shift to the rise of e-commerce. Consumers did not stop shopping when the internet arrived; shopping simply moved online. Finance, he argues, is on the same trajectory. Blockchains are becoming the settlement layer for loans, payments and securities, while the old labels fade into the background.

In this model, crypto is not an alternative financial system operating on the margins. It is the technology stack that replaces legacy clearing and settlement rails. Transactions still look familiar — lending, borrowing, payments, securitization — but they settle on public ledgers instead of siloed databases.

Private Credit Takes the Lead

Unlike much of the early tokenization narrative, Powell does not see government bonds as the main driver of onchain growth. The real opportunity lies in private credit.

Tokenized private loans, structured credit products and crypto-native debt instruments are better suited to blockchain rails, where automation, transparency and faster settlement materially improve economics. Powell expects debt markets to increasingly move onchain, including crypto-backed mortgages, asset-backed securities tied to digital loans, and securitized receivables from crypto-linked card issuers.

This shift, he argues, will be led not by retail users but by institutions — sovereign wealth funds, pension managers, insurers and large asset managers — quietly accumulating what he calls “onchain paper.”

The $50 Trillion Stablecoin Bet

The most aggressive forecast in Powell’s outlook centers on payments. He expects stablecoins to process as much as $50 trillion in transactions in 2026, driven not by speculation, but by merchant economics.

Retailers typically pay 2%–3% in fees to card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. Stablecoin settlement can sharply reduce those costs, returning meaningful margin to businesses operating on thin profit lines.

That incentive, Powell argues, will push adoption among small businesses, neobanks and fintechs. Traditional financial institutions are already moving in that direction. PayPal, Société Générale and major U.S. banks have either launched or signaled interest in stablecoins, while payment giants are building settlement rails rather than issuing coins themselves.

Powell likens large stablecoin issuers to insurance companies such as Berkshire Hathaway. Users deposit funds, issuers invest reserves in low-risk assets like Treasury bills, and the resulting “float” creates a negative cost of capital — a powerful compounding engine if managed conservatively.

A Trillion-Dollar Onchain Market

Today’s DeFi market capitalization sits near $70 billion, but Powell sees a path to $1 trillion within a few years. The growth, he says, is tightly linked to the expansion of stablecoin supply and the tokenization of real-world and crypto-native assets.

As more value migrates onchain, total value locked should rise alongside it. The process will not be linear and will remain sensitive to macro conditions, but the structural trend points in one direction: deeper integration with global finance.

Powell also expects stress along the way, including a high-profile onchain credit default. Rather than derailing adoption, he believes such events will force risk standards, pricing discipline and regulation to mature — much as defaults shaped traditional credit markets.

In that sense, the “death of DeFi” is not an ending. It is the moment when decentralized finance stops being a niche and disappears into the plumbing of global markets, quietly becoming how finance works.