From Wall Street to the World Wide Web and Beyond?
Finance is moving beyond banks and trading floors. From embedded payments to DeFi and AI agents, financial infrastructure is being rebuilt across everyday digital platforms.
As technology becomes embedded in everyday life, financial services are increasingly being offered through businesses and platforms that were not traditionally associated with finance. The shift is changing not only how finance operates, but who builds it, who uses it and who influences its direction.
Recent discussions at Korea Blockchain Week and TOKEN2049 highlighted the growing intersection of traditional finance, blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. On October 8, 2026, Citrini Research published a report titled “Breaking the Wall,” with the opening sentence “The wall between traditional finance and crypto is starting to come down.” The author argues that blockchain infrastructure could become increasingly relevant as traditional financial assets move onchain and AI agents begin conducting transactions alongside human users.
What might such a financial system look like, and what role will traditional institutions play in it?
According to Cointelegraph on X, TRON founder Justin Sun said at TOKEN2049 that banks would “gradually exit” the market because people born after 2000 won’t “waste their time on banks anymore.”
The shift is already visible in the growing number of businesses incorporating financial functions into their existing platforms. On TikTok, users can discover and purchase products through TikTok Shop, while Starbucks customers can store funds and make purchases through the company's app. Even gaming platforms have developed their own virtual economies, allowing users to purchase digital goods and, in some cases, earn income from creating and selling digital content. For businesses, platforms such as Shopify also offer financing to eligible merchants. Together, these examples illustrate how payments, financing and other financial services are increasingly becoming part of everyday digital experiences.
Decentralized finance introduces another dimension to this shift by allowing developers and organizations outside conventional banking to build financial applications on shared blockchain networks. These applications can provide alternatives to certain banking functions without necessarily replacing traditional institutions. As Citrini Research noted in its October 8 report, blockchain networks could provide programmable financial infrastructure for AI agents to conduct transactions and interact with tokenized assets onchain.
At Korea Blockchain Week, Hyperliquid Labs CEO Jeff Yan discussed the benefits of onchain financial markets, arguing that their advantages extend beyond 24/7 trading. According to Yan, the most important distinction is self-custody, which allows users to retain control of their assets rather than relying entirely on centralized intermediaries. According to The Block, Yan stated:
“Onchain finance really, at its core, means that users have still retained control and custody of their funds. I think that’s the number one thing. It does matter during critical moments when there are issues with counterparties, intermediaries, and custodians.”
The changes extend beyond how financial markets operate to who can participate in building them. For decades Hollywood portrayed the financial world through figures such as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Today, that image increasingly includes technology entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk of PayPal and X, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Block, alongside independent developers and open-source contributors working from home in their pajamas.
Open-source blockchain networks, publicly available code and online tutorials have lowered some of the barriers to developing financial applications, allowing people outside traditional financial institutions to participate in building financial infrastructure. While control over financial services remains concentrated in many areas, the process of developing them is becoming more open to participants regardless of their professional backgrounds or geographic locations.
At TOKEN2049 Singapore, Formula 1 drivers Max Verstappen and Lando Norris were among the conference's featured speakers, illustrating how crypto industry events are bringing together participants from finance, technology, sports and popular culture.
As finance moves into other industries, businesses outside traditional finance are also entering the financial sector. These changes can occur alongside continued reliance on traditional institutions. The conference discussions suggest that the future of finance may be defined less by whether banks or crypto prevail and more by how financial functions are reorganized across institutions, decentralized networks and everyday digital platforms.
The evolution of finance is not only about who controls the money, but who builds the systems that move it and who, or what, uses them.
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