As stablecoins dominate regulatory headlines and tokenization moves closer to institutional reality, the real work of bringing traditional assets onto the chain is quietly unfolding in the background.
Dave Hendricks, founder and CEO of Vertalo, has been building that infrastructure for years. Hendricks, a serial entrepreneur with previous exits including LiveIntent and CheetahMail, and experience at Oracle and Arthur Andersen, is leading Vertalo’s push to modernize transfer agency and real-world asset tokenization at scale.
In this Q&A, he cuts through the noise around crypto policy, explains why stablecoins became the on-ramp in 2025, and outlines what it will take for tokenized securities and private assets to reach their next phase.
when we spoke for the first time in 2023you offered a reaction to PayPal launch of a new stablecoin built on the Ethereum blockchain. Fast forward to this month, and Visa is launching an advisory on stablecoins. What is your opinion on how far we have come when it comes to RWA, tokenized securities, stablecoins, etc.?
hendricks: Obviously, we have come a long way since the beginning of 2023. Three years ago, talk about stablecoins was still rooted in the previous cycle’s usage model within the DeFi lending/lending protocol, while now, in recent times, stablecoins have emerged as the most contentious topic in crypto, specifically in the wake of the genius lawthat prohibit banks from paying interest on Stablecoins.
RWAs have come a long way, but they are still a small fraction of addressable markets, with vigorous activity in the shoulder categories, which I classify as Institutional (Treasury and authorized private REPO and other similar activities) and Marginal (L1s issuing non-recourse tokens with no underlying collateral).
Institutional RWAs are leading the way, but most of this is federated and privately permitted and not accessible or investable to the vast majority of the market that RWAs address, i.e. RIAs or individual investors. I would say that most of the Marginal RWA is accessible to anyone who knows a wallet, but I wouldn’t consider these products investable for anyone looking to protect capital or secure stable returns.
While tokenized stocks will likely be a much bigger story in 2026 (thanks to the SEC and the upcoming Clarity Act), stablecoins have become the big story in 2025 as the easiest way for large institutions (banks and non-banks) to enter the so-called crypto market thanks to Genius. Given that banks focus on deposits and payments, their attraction to stablecoins is not very surprising, but interestingly, they now find themselves excluded from issuing yield-producing stablecoins. Ironic considering many believed the Genius Act was a gift to the banks and their lobbyists.
Vertalo maintains a warehouse of ETH to pay fees related to creating ledgers of tokenized shares on Ethereum. What has changed for the company over the past year?
hendricks: As one of, if not the only, true software company focused on digital transfer agency and integrated tokenization, Vertalo continues to apply a different market approach than most so-called tokenization companies. Because Vertalo is not a stockbroker and we do not produce investment instruments on our own (only for our clients), we have seen a massive influx of incoming interests who do not want to work with a company that could trade against them. Customers come to Vertalo with specific problems that third-party websites and consulting companies can’t solve, and when customers work with us they can rest assured that, as a software company, we’re not eating into their fees by accepting BPS on every transaction.
We have not given up on this approach since embarking on our enterprise software approach in mid-2022.
What current trends are you interested in for 2026?
hendricks: The most interesting trend is the renewed interest in tokenizing and packaging private equity. As a company primarily focused on transforming illiquid investments into tradable and transferable (and fractional) instruments, we are encouraged that the market is finally seeing what we saw almost 10 years ago, namely that distributed ledger technology is a revolutionary functional improvement for asset and wealth management, and specifically for the transfer and distribution of these novel financial instruments.
This year, White House announcements related to cryptocurrencies—a bitcoin federal reserve (that didn’t go anywhere), a end of SEC oversight of cryptography, digital assets in 401(k)s—They have nothing to do with the main mission of Bitcoin or other blockchain networks. Has the sector lost its way?
hendricks: Every two years the ‘cryptocurrency’ industry loses its collective mind over something new, everyone abandons what they were doing, the ape, the space fills up, some people rekt, some names are called and people complain that things are different than when they started, so they are not happy. This happens every cycle and this one is no different. The administration is helping to normalize normal activities and incomplete players will continue to rise and fall. Nothing new!
