Ishan | PennyPanda

We need more crypto challengers. Institutions and enterprises aren’t going to deliver on a silver platter the mainstream adoption many projects are hoping for. To be clear, I still believe crypto will take over institutional and enterprise finance in the long run. But I don’t see it happening through incumbents simply integrating crypto rails, no matter how much sense that may make over time. It’s like Revolut. Any bank could have offered cheap FX at interbank rates, and it was an obvious win for so many customers. But retail currency exchange was a highly lucrative, stable business. It worked just fine. Messing with it meant internal friction, stepping on other people’s toes, and creating a lot of unnecessary hassle for no obvious gain. Pushing for change from within was an almost impossible, thankless task. It took an outsider with no lucrative FX business to protect to turn cheap FX into a competitive advantage. That external push triggered an avalanche across the industry, and the rest is history. We need challengers like that with crypto. TradFi works just fine the way it is. But an incumbent’s soft cushion can be a challenger’s opportunity. Crypto rails can make financial services easier, cheaper, leaner, more transparent, and more capable. But that change won’t come from within, where every innovation threatens real humans down the corridor and looks like a risky business case overall. For some time now, I’ve been looking for examples of such challengers, even small ones, using crypto to gain a competitive edge in real-world markets. I’ll probably share some of their stories eventually. In the meantime, if any examples come to mind, pls DM me or share them in the comments.