Over the years, blockchain and traditional finance (TradFi) have been regarded as two contrasting worlds. When Bitcoin was conceived in 2009, it was positioned as a decentralized opposition to the world banking system. It is a network that cannot be censored, is not controlled by the central party, and is meant to transfer values across different borders. There were fears that it would upset or even destroy the banking sector.

However, the situation in 2025 turns out to be very different. The border between these two worlds has been softened. Major financial institutions are now exploring blockchain technology, not merely in the permissioned form. They are increasingly turning to public blockchain networks.

In recent years, other players worldwide, such as HSBC, Bank of America, and Euroclear, have experimented with Solana after forming partnerships with R3. Superficially, this is a pilot scheme in the use of technology. It indicates a more structural change in finance worldwide.

Over the years, blockchain and traditional finance (TradFi) have been regarded as two contrasting worlds. When Bitcoin was conceived in 2009, it was positioned as a decentralized opposition to the world banking system. It is a network that cannot be censored, is not controlled by the central party, and is meant to transfer values across different borders. There were fears that it would upset or even destroy the banking sector.

However, the situation in 2025 turns out to be very different. The border between these two worlds has been softened. Major financial institutions are now exploring blockchain technology, not merely in the permissioned form. They are increasingly turning to public blockchain networks.

In recent years, other players worldwide, such as HSBC, Bank of America, and Euroclear, have experimented with Solana after forming partnerships with R3. Superficially, this can be seen as a pilot scheme in the use of technology. It indicates a more structural change in finance worldwide.

Why the Move, From Private to Public?

In the initial phases of using blockchain, the banks favored private (permissioned) blockchains where entry and subsequent transactions could be covered and made in a closed ecosystem. This was understandable in terms of compliance and security. Nonetheless, these systems pose a limitation, hampering access to global capital markets and liquidity.

Conversely, public blockchains are open networks. Tokens representing assets, such as stocks, bonds, and other digital securities, can be traded by participants on a global basis 24/7. This is especially desirable in the developing tokenization market, which is expected to scale to a volume of up to $16 trillion in a decade (Boston Consulting Group).

Liquidity is not the only advantage. The time taken to settle money can be reduced to a few seconds instead of days, lowering the cost of operation. Near-instant on-chain settlement can be used instead of manual reconciliation, using many intermediaries and complex clearing. In the case of mega financial transactions, such efficiency is worth saving millions a year.

The other driver is transparency. The blockchain ledger guarantees that all transactions will be permanently documented and makes auditing easy. This aligns with an increasing regulatory need to report and comply in real time. Such features are becoming strategic advantages in regions like the EU, where the MiCA regulations are being introduced, and in jurisdictions like Hong Kong or Singapore, where they smoothly run tokenization and stablecoin pilots.

Solana in Context: An Example Among MANY

Although Solana's ability to support high-throughput and low-cost transactions has gained institutional pilots, it is not the sole one being researched by banks. Ethereum has the most developed smart contract ecosystem, Polygon specializes in scalability solutions, and Avalanche provides opportunities to customize subnets dedicated to specific financial products.

The network is selected based on technical merit, compatibility in regulatory terms, and the ecosystem's maturity concerning integration capabilities. The adoption of public blockchain in the financial sector will probably be multi-chain, with interoperability between networks being a fundamental part of the future infrastructure.

Tokenization: The Great Margin Between TradFi and Blockchain

Tokenization is the digital analog of a real object or financial asset managed through a blockchain. It is used on anything, be it real estate, fine art, sovereign bonds or corporate share issues. Such tokens may be traded on a public blockchain in real time, fractionally owned, and transferred anywhere in the world almost instantaneously without the need for traditional intermediaries.

To banks, tokenisation opens access to novel asset categories, investor types, and revenue streams. It also enables cross-border blockchain payments that skip the legacy settlement system, such as SWIFT, settling in seconds instead of days. This would be revolutionary to emerging markets, where an efficient global payment infrastructure was not accessible in the past.

Challenges Ahead

There are some hindrances to adoption. There is still uncertainty about regulation. The regulatory status of digital assets is not entirely unified in the U.S. between the SEC and the CFTC. There is neither a single nor a unified regulatory framework worldwide. There is also cybersecurity; public blockchains are open, and they need strong security methods within institutions. The volatility in the price of on-chain assets also threatens institutions that are not used to such rapid fluctuations in the market.

Nonetheless, the trend is shifting public blockchain from the periphery of the financial world towards its centre. Private system experiments are slowly being replaced by actual experimentation in open networks, and Solana and others can be considered live testbeds. In the long term, the emergence of hybrid structures is possible; the controlled world of the private ledger will be smoothly integrated with global networking.

Looking Forward

It is absolutely possible that many publicly traded equities will be on blockchains in tokenized form five years from now. This shift would accelerate the settlement process, increase market accessibility, reduce the entry threshold for smaller investors and increase transparency in the financial ecosystem.

The story has been altered. Blockchain can no longer be called the alternative to banking — it is becoming part of the future infrastructure of banking.

Whether or not banks will implement blockchain is a matter of secondary importance to the question of how pervasively and quickly it will be integrated. Will it mark when a simple technological upgrade finally happened, or will it be seen as the beginning of a radical redesign of the global financial system?