The autumn conference season in the U.K. continued last week with Blockwork’s Digital Asset Summit (DAS) London 2025 leaving its indelible mark on the city.
With over 150 speakers, 2,500 attendees, 45 sessions, the three-day summit is at the crossroads of TradFi and Defi and focused on topics like institutional crypto adoption, ETFs, tokenization, stablecoins, and regulatory frameworks. It was a suit with no tie meets hoodies event with no dinosaurs.
Speakers included a blend of TradFi and DeFi rockstars including, Matt Kunke – Blackrock, Mathew McDermott – Goldman Sachs, Jeffrey Kendrick – Standard Chartered, Danny Masters – Coinshares, Simon Taylor – Tempo, Catherine Chen – Binance, Chuck Mounts – S&P Global, Mark Jennings – Gemini, Laura Navratnam – Crypto Council for Innovation, Dan Moorehead – Pantera, Sandy Kaul – Templeton, Mara Schmiedt – Alluvial, Dave Cunningham – Citi, Samantha Bohbot – RockawayX, Victor Jung – Hamilton Lane, Ryan Hayard – Barclays , Peter Left – Lloyds, Matt Hougan – Bitwise, Antaoly Crachilov – Nickel, Chris Tyrer – Bullish, Baron Holmes of Richmond – U.K. House of Lords, and many more HERE.
Nigel Farage, U.K, Reform MP, was the keynote politco speaker and claims he was on his best behavior meeting the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, a few weeks ago and chimed in on the bank’s proposed individual stablecoin limits, making the point that limits were not required and only referring to Bailey as a dinosaur once during the meeting.
DAS London’s big takeaway was, “The integration is further deepening at the crossroads of TradFi and DeFi.”
Mark Jennings, Gemini’s head of Europe, said, “DAS has shown that the demand is there to integrate digital assets into traditional finance, whether that’s holding bitcoin in their treasuries, trading derivatives or accessing DATs.
“This is certainly fueled by the regulatory clarity from the first pro-crypto U.S. Administration, the implementation of MiCA in Europe, and the regulatory roadmap outlined by the U.K. government in their ambitions to become a global crypto hub.
Keep Calm And Carry On
The big talk at the summit was of the previous Friday’s crypto flash crash where over $19 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out within hours. The liquidations were nine times larger than any previous single-day total, marking the largest deleveraging in market history.
Insights VC notes bitcoin fell about 14% from $122,000 to $105,000 and Ether dropped 12% to $3,436. Major altcoins saw extreme intraday losses with Solana falling over 40% at one point, Toncoin briefly trading at $0.50 (−80%), and Worldcoin loosing 70% of its value before partial rebounds.
Uber analyst, Blockworks Byron Gilliam in his daily mail The Breakdown, elegantly walked us through “auto-deleveraging” (ADL), when leveraged crypto options or “perps” on the wrong side of the trade unwind at such a velocity, margin rapidly deteriorates, and liquidity dries up resulting in ADL liquidating positions on the right side of the trade.
Notes Gilliam, “Sometimes, however, no one has any margin left, so there’s no one to sell a losing position to. In that case, the only thing left to do is close the seller’s bet as well, because the game is over, for everyone. Closing a winning bet is called “auto-deleveraging” (ADL) and it’s what caused nearly all of crypto to crash on Friday.
Gilliam notes, “You and I are not the only ones who had never heard of it [ADL] before then. ADL is a way of kicking people off the perps market,” and refers to Doug Colkitt’s comments to Empire, “It happens infrequently enough that even seasoned perps traders are often barely aware of it.”
The pithy Gilliam quotes Gordon Gekko on markets, “It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses. Money isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred.”
Arguably, with ADL kicking in, everyone is a loser.
On a positive note, by the start of DAS on Monday, many crypto prices were recovering with bitcoin hitting $115,000 and finding support around $110,000 for the week.
Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and founder of the crypto fund Nickel Digital Asset Management, noted in his DAS panel that his fund endured the market stress event quite well and even ended the weekend positive.
“I think this reflects the important saturation of the industry where more and more sophisticated pod shops like Nickel will enter the crypto market and the market structure will mature significantly, said Felix Jauvlin, on The Breakdown daily mail, filling in for Gilliam.
While a number of centralized crypto exchanges experienced outages and delays, Hyperliquid, an on-chain perp DEX, saw over $10 billion of positions force-closed, the highest of any venue, as its transparent on-chain engine liquidated positions to avoid any bad debt, triggering its first ADL event in over two years.
Adds Jennings, “Whilst DAS’s timing was shortly after the market downturn experienced on Friday, volatility is one aspect that comes along with the crypto market, bringing both opportunity and risk for investors.
“Nevertheless, reliability is a key function that builds trust on centralized exchanges, and we have many guardrails in place to ensure we can offer the same market execution and functionality that our customers depend on, regardless of market conditions, which is what institutions expect.”
Elise Soucie, executive director of Global Digital Finance, called in her analysis of the crypto crash to the Bloomberg Opening Trade from DC Fintech Week, “This is not actually a crypto specific event, it is a policy-induced crypto liquidation cascade in a market already nervous about the dollar, interest rates, the private credit market, and the deficit.”
Soucie notes that it was not until Trump’s Truth social posts on Chinese tariffs at 4:30 in the afternoon on Friday that the crypto market, which was already selling off and in decline on Friday, went into a liquidation cascade.
The crypto crash was a as big a discussion focal point during DC Fintech Week as it was at DAS London, especially in the policy community – market analysts and traders should take note, with crypto trading 24/7/365, it looks like the new canary in the coal mine for headlines on emerging policy and macroeconomic uncertainty.
Crypto market infrastructure builders now have their head buried in work, as always after a volatile event with unintended consequences, and are focused on building the next generation of market circuit breakers and liquidity lifelines to avoid the future ADL of positions that are in the money.
The TradFi DeFi Crossroads
Nothing exemplifies the TradFi DeFi crossroads as well as the strategic partnership announced between S&P and Chainlink to deliver S&Ps Stablecoin Stability Assessments (SSAs) on-chain.
Chuck Mounts, chief DeFi officer at S&P Global said, “The launch of SSAs on-chain through Chainlink underscores our commitment to meeting our clients where they are.
The collaboration provides real-time access to S&P’s comprehensive stablecoin evaluations, enhancing transparency and empowering investors with critical data within the evolving digital asset landscape.
And how cool is it that financial institutions like S&P have a chief DeFi officer.
Adds Mounts, “By making our SSAs available on-chain through Chainlink’s proven oracle infrastructure, we’re enabling market participants to access our assessments seamlessly using their existing DeFi infrastructure, enhancing transparency and informed decision-making across the DeFi landscape.”
Samantha Bohbot, partner a chief growth officer at RockwayX highlights, “Last week’s DAS conference highlighted what many industry insiders have known for quite some time: this cycle was marked by institutional adoption. This was underscored by the event’s attendees and topics of discussion.
“Clear areas of industry growth were highlighted; for example, liquidity in on-chain private markets, but now that the industry is gaining institutional attention, there needs to be a shift towards further innovation.
“Blockchain’s advantages for traditional finance have yet to be fully realized. One area that has drawn institutional interest is tokenization, and yet so far, tokenization has been simply taking what was there and putting it on-chain. The next cycle will be dictated by structured products that are blockchain native and uniquely on-chain, rather than copy and paste.”
Mara Schmiedt, co-founder and ceo of Alluvial says, “RWA tokenization was a key DAS theme and discussion topic with issuer-led demand, institutional infrastructure readiness and regulatory clarity improving, Larry Fink’s “tokenization as the future of financial markets” feels more real and tangible now.
“DATs (Digital Asset Treasuries) were another subject of debate after amassing billions of dillars in the first half of this year, as public companies and treasurers pivot away from passive BTC holdings towards productive and stakeable assets including ETH, SOL and others.
“Tons of chatter around Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) as a new form of yield-bearing collateral supporting DeFi money legos and as a viable liquidity solution for ETFs given expanding ETH staking queues and with staking-enabled ETFs in the US (Grayscale leading) hitting the market this month.”
Danny Masters, chairman of Coinshares, a European crypto ETP pioneer, had a message about its recent U.S. public markets debut that European markets should pay attention to: European markets under-value digital assets public companies.
Masters didn’t move Coinshares to the U.S. market to raise money in the capital markets but rather to focus on achieving market multiples as high as 25x achieved by companies Coinshare’s U.S. peer group, versus 2x in Europe.
Masters is a poster child for the TradFi DeFi crossroads, like many former Tier 1 Wall Street traders who bring their capital markets experience to crypto to strengthen market conduct and deploy their own time and capital founding innovative businesses.
At one of my Association dinners a few years back, Masters told the story of how his then European-based regulated investment management business dealing in crypto was being persecuted by a European regulator. In trying to do the right thing and work with regulators he was also personally persecuted – no respect.
It is easy to understand the popularity of the U.S. Administration’s approach and why European fintech firms are flocking to the U.S. – you are a digital innovation hero in the US – respect.
The Final Word
The final day three of DAS closed with a panel on Goldman Sachs play book with a perennial London conference favorite, Mathew McDermott, Goldman Sachs digital assets czar, in a fireside chat with Blockworks with Blockwork’s Michael Ippolito.
No grey hair on this youthful 20-year GS veteran who looks like he could be starring in a Hollywood movie about Wall Street’s digital space race. McDermott points to the rise in stablecoins and tokenized money market funds that will drive greater collateral mobility, a killer app if not the holy grail in the TradFi and derivatives space. Watch the full panel session HERE.
The final word goes to Baron Holmes of Richmond, MBE, the U.K.s digital champion in the House of Lords (U.K Upper House of Parliament). He could not have summarized DAS London 2025 better.
“There’s been great conversations at DAS and that’s what we need more of,” said Holmes, “more conversations, connections, and public engagement for this digital asset space.”
My only disappointment with DAS London 2025 was mot meeting Byron Gilliam, he didn’t make it to London – I was even wearing my Hermes tie! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for DAS NYC 2026.