New Rules, Better Tools: How Crypto Is Maturing Through Privacy and Regulation

Crypto is entering a steadier phase, shaped by clearer rules, institutional players, and systems built for transparency and trust. After years of hype and speculation, builders are seeing a turning point.

Speaking with Decrypt at Token2049 in Singapore last week, they described a push to rebuild credibility through stronger infrastructure, clearer rules, and more transparent markets.

“The level of institutional maturity in the industry is going way up, and enterprises and institutional investors are used to a certain standard of privacy,” Paul Brody, global blockchain lead at EY, told Decrypt.

This maturing condition has led EY to its “newfound focus on privacy,” Brody said, in which they recognized how it has moved beyond anonymity to become a baseline requirement for institutions.

With blockchain data becoming more traceable and composable, systems like their open-source Nightfall protocol aim to preserve confidentiality while remaining auditable to reflect how institutions “expect and require privacy.”

Brody added the shift indicates that traditional finance and crypto are starting to meet “right smack in the middle.” As banks adopt blockchain rails and crypto firms pursue deeper compliance, both sides are learning to operate under standards that are increasingly becoming more similar.

“Organizations that oppose each other eventually come to resemble each other,” he said, citing an adage.

Stablecoin 2.0

That same shift toward structure and shared standards is also reshaping how digital money itself is built. Reeve Collins, co-founder of Tether and now head of Reserve One, said his new venture, Stable (STBL), represents what he calls stablecoin 2.0—a model built around transparency and shared participation rather than centralized control.

“The people who put value into the network should be the ones who get value out,” Collins told Decrypt.

He added that stablecoins have “democratized and made easy access to dollars for everyone in the world,” with the next phase turning that access into ownership and delivering on the “promises” of a decentralized web where collateral, yield, and governance are visible and distributed on-chain.

Smarter money

Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, sees the same pattern of a maturing crypto industry is unfolding in markets, where deeper regulation and smarter capital are replacing speculative cycles.

“The money coming in the crypto for this cycle is smarter money,” d’Haussy told Decrypt.

He described the influx of institutional money as “more mature and sophisticated,” noting that large firms now analyze business models, buybacks, and token economics with a broader scope, instead of just chasing quick returns for each cycle, which shows how they have become “more thoughtful than the first generation of money in crypto.”