Key takeaways:
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Power in crypto has shifted from traditional players to five forces driving onchain finance and control.
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These forces are stablecoins, ETFs, base-layer upgrades, blockspace security and high-throughput execution.
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Traditional gatekeepers like exchanges and regulators now play a lesser role.
Power in crypto today revolves around five levers: dollar liquidity (stablecoins), capital markets (ETFs and tokenization), base-layer roadmaps, blockspace security markets and high-throughput execution.
Since 2024, the balance of influence has shifted away from the old “exchanges vs. regulators” dynamic to a new center of gravity.
Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) now funnel mainstream capital at scale. For example, IBIT by BlackRock alone holds about $85 billion in assets under management (AUM).
Stablecoins, meanwhile, have become the fastest dollar settlement rail and, after the introduction of the GENIUS Act, now operate under a federal framework in the US.
On the tech side, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade (with Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7702) is reshaping wallet UX, Solana’s Firedancer client is approaching rollout, and EigenLayer has transformed staked Ether (ETH) into a rentable security market with live slashing. You can expect visible moves on each of these fronts in the months ahead.
How we defined “power” in our top five
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Direct control over capital flows or block space
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Ability to set and ship roadmaps others must follow
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Credible and announced next steps landing in the next few quarters.
1. Larry Fink (BlackRock)
BlackRock now controls the largest spot Bitcoin ETF and the most prominent institutional tokenized cash fund. IBIT leads the ETF pack by assets, while BUIDL turned tokenized Treasuries into a mainstream product for qualified investors, and it’s no longer tied to a single chain.
BlackRock has also signaled interest in broadening its crypto ETF lineup beyond BTC and ETH.
Power in practice
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IBIT: Around $85.4 billion in net assets (Aug. 20, 2025) — the de facto TradFi on-ramp that sets flows and fees across the segment.
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BUIDL: >$1 billion AUM (March 2025). No longer Ether-only — BlackRock and Securitize have rolled out new share classes, including on Solana (SOL), to expand distribution and composability.
What Larry Fink is planning next
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More crypto ETFs: BlackRock is weighing additional listings, subject to demand and regulatory approval.
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Deeper tokenization plumbing: Expect BUIDL and successors to integrate further with BlackRock’s Aladdin system (its portfolio and ops backbone) and push multichain access where counterparties need it.
One player at the center of ETF flows and tokenized cash can direct where liquidity concentrates and who captures the revenue on- and offchain.
Did you know? IBIT was the fastest ETF in history to hit $10 billion, reaching the mark in just 34 trading days after launch.
2. Paolo Ardoino (Tether)
Tether’s USDt (USDT) is the digital dollar that underpins most of crypto, powering centralized crypto exchanges, onchain markets and cross-border payments.
Tether’s scale gives Ardoino direct influence over the price and availability of dollar liquidity.
He has also been redeploying profits into hard infrastructure (Bitcoin mining, energy and privacy-focused AI), positioning Tether as a critical operator in the stack.
Power in practice
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USDT market cap: Around $167 billion (Aug. 21, 2025), the largest in crypto and the benchmark for onchain dollar liquidity.
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Energy and mining build-out: New Bitcoin mining data centers are underway, including a Brazil biogas project.
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US strategy push: Tether hired Bo Hines, formerly tied to the White House’s crypto advisory group, to shape its US posture.
What Paolo Ardoino is planning next
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Expanding its hard-asset footprint in energy and mining, plus building an AI/edge-compute stack for privacy-preserving services.
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Deepening payments and remittance flows, with a focus on emerging-market USD corridors where stablecoins already dominate.
When a single issuer controls most of the crypto-dollar supply, its reserve choices, compliance stance and infrastructure spending can move the whole market.
That shifts spreads, settlement times and which chains gain users. With new US stablecoin rules, scrutiny will rise even as demand for dollar stablecoins grows.
Did you know? In 2024, Tether was the seventh-largest net buyer of the US Treasurys, ahead of several countries.
3. Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum)
Ethereum’s May 2025 Pectra upgrade (now live) shipped EIP-7702, which lets regular externally owned accounts (EOAs) act like smart-contract accounts. This account-abstraction step cascades into wallets, layer 2s (L2s) and payments.
Pectra also raised validator limits, altering staking economics and node operations. Buterin’s influence (through writing, research and core-dev work) continues to shape what gets “enshrined” next.
Power in practice
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Pectra live: EIP-7702 allows EOAs to temporarily execute code (session keys, social recovery, batched actions) while staying compatible with ERC-4337, unlocking a smoother wallet UX.
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Validator/staking updates: The maximum effective balance per validator jumped from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, consolidating stake and lowering consensus overhead.
What Vitalik Buterin is planning next
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History expiry (EIP-4444): Partial expiry rolled out in July 2025, shrinking disk requirements and paving the way for lighter nodes. Further iterations are expected.
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Verkle trees and statelessness: Ongoing research aims to shift Ethereum to a Verkle-based state, enabling stateless clients and reducing hardware barriers.
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Enshrined PBS (ePBS): Active work continues on embedding proposer-builder separation to harden censorship resistance and streamline maximal extractable value (MEV) flows.
Ethereum still sets norms for L2s, wallets and onchain finance. Buterin’s roadmap will directly influence costs, performance and the developer experience across the wider ecosystem.
Did you know? Buterin’s Balvi fund has funneled multimillion-dollar gifts into air disinfection and pandemic prevention research — $9.4 million USDC (USDC) to the University of Maryland and around $5.3 million to UNSW’s EPIWATCH.
4. Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana)
Solana’s mix of high throughput and low fees has made it a hub for consumer-facing apps and fast USD settlement. Stablecoin activity has surged on the network in 2025.
Yakovenko’s biggest swing is Firedancer (an independent validator client built by Jump to boost resilience and capacity). If successful, it would end Solana’s reliance on a single dominant client and lock in true client diversity.
Power in practice
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Firedancer progress: Testing accelerated in 2025. Early “Frankendancer” hybrids shipped, while the full client has replayed mainnet blocks and hit seven-figure transactions per second (TPS) in controlled tests — a major milestone toward production.
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Stablecoin scale: By H1 2025, Solana’s daily active stablecoin addresses consistently topped the multimillion mark, with float rising rapidly.
What Anatoly Yakovenko is planning next
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Phased Firedancer rollout: Watch validator diversity metrics as Jump moves from test performance to production hardening through late 2025.
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Payments and decentralized physical infrastructure network focus: Expect continued emphasis on payments UX and real-world networks (e.g., Helium’s business-onboarding model), as Solana competes directly with Ethereum L2s on speed and cost.
If Firedancer delivers, Solana’s execution economics and resilience will shift dramatically: reduced tail risk from client bugs, higher capacity for throughput-heavy apps and a sturdier base for global USD flows.
That combination gives Yakovenko significant influence over where the next wave of consumer payments settles.
Did you know? Yakovenko has said the proof-of-history idea arrived during a late-night coffee binge, leading to the 2018 white paper.
5. Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer)
EigenLayer transformed Ethereum’s stake into a marketplace for security. Actively validated services (AVSs) can now “rent” Ethereum’s trust instead of building their own validator sets.
With slashing live and a new multichain verification feature that allows AVSs to run on L2s while still anchoring to Ethereum’s security, Kannan effectively coordinates an emerging layer that many projects already depend on.
Power in practice
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Slashing shipped (April 17, 2025): Misbehavior can now be penalized, completing EigenLayer’s original design. At launch, billions in restaked assets and dozens of AVSs were already participating.
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AVSs on L2s: Multichain verification lets services execute on L2s while verifying against Ethereum, providing scalability without sacrificing trust.
What Sreeram Kannan is planning next
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Institutionalizing risk: Expect movement toward standardized AVS risk models, insurance and coverage tools and operational frameworks that can meet institutional requirements. Analysts note these are essential for wider adoption.
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Broader verification footprint: Continued expansion of L2-native verification and cross-domain services, plus developer tooling such as EigenCloud to make “verifiability-as-a-service” more accessible.
If more of crypto’s infrastructure rents security through EigenLayer rather than launching its own token and validator set, Kannan’s roadmap will influence who gets secured, how risk is priced and where developers choose to deploy.
The ripple effects extend to L2 design, miner extractable value (MEV) markets and institutional participation.
Did you know? A16z bought around $70 million of EigenLayer (EIGEN) tokens to back the EigenCloud launch, a notable VC show of confidence in “verifiability-as-a-service.”
Cross-currents: Why not regulators or exchange CEOs?
Regulators and exchange leaders still matter, but 2025’s decisive levers are elsewhere. Richard Teng (Binance) channels large liquidity flows and listings; Jeremy Allaire (Circle) secured a fully regulated Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) track for USDC in the EU.
Yet compared to Tether’s dominance of crypto-dollar supply, BlackRock’s ETF and tokenization pipelines, base-layer roadmaps (Ethereum and Solana) and EigenLayer’s new security market, their reach looks narrower this cycle.
For a broader anchor, look to derivatives: Perpetual futures accounted for around 68% of BTC trading volume YTD 2025. This demonstrates that the real tone-setters are those who control flows (ETFs, stablecoins, execution layers and now restaking).
What to watch next
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Tokenization pace: BUIDL has more than $1 billion in AUM, now with a Solana share class, and is accepted as collateral across multiple venues, signaling where onchain cash will actually settle.
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Stablecoin infrastructure: With the US GENIUS Act live, Treasury rulemaking and bankruptcy-priority rules could reshape issuer banking access and risk.
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Ethereum post-Pectra: EIP-7702 is live, and partial history expiry is rolling out. The next flashpoint: enshrined PBS.
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Solana execution: Firedancer’s rollout and payments integrations will show how much headroom Solana gains on throughput and resilience.
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Restaking maturation: After slashing and multichain verification, the next milestones are standardized AVS risk models and procurement frameworks for institutional adoption.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.