The Fed opens the door to cryptos in an unprecedented summit in Washington

It's historic. Today, October 21, in Washington, the American Federal Reserve welcomes the elite of the crypto sector for an unprecedented conference on payments innovation. Sergey Nazarov of Chainlink, the bosses of Circle, Paxos and Coinbase: all will be in the front row. Stablecoins, tokenization, AI… An agenda that says a lot about the new era that the Fed seems ready to embrace.

When the Fed reaches out to crypto assets

This Tuesday, October 21, the American Federal Reserve reached a historic milestone by organizing a conference dedicated to the innovation of digital payments, explicitly mentioning cryptocurrencies for the first time.

The Payments Innovation Conference will be held at Fed headquarters in Washington. An unprecedented event that officially welcomes the giants of the crypto ecosystem alongside traditional financial institutions.

The program looks ambitious. Starting at 9:20 a.m., Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, will open the ball with a roundtable titled “Connecting traditional finance to the digital asset ecosystem.”

He will be joined by executives from BNY Mellon and Fireblocks. A strong signal: the Fed now recognizes blockchain as a legitimate component of the modern financial system.

Stablecoins will also take center stage. Charles Cascarilla from Paxos and Heath Tarbert from Circle will discuss their business models. Strategic timing, as the Fed has just criticized the flaws in the GENIUS law supposed to regulate these digital assets.

The afternoon will feature two other major panels. Alesia Haas, CFO of Coinbase, will discuss artificial intelligence in payments alongside Cathie Wood of Ark Invest. The day will close with asset tokenization, with Rob Goldstein from BlackRock and representatives from Franklin Templeton and JPMorgan.

BlackRock, the catalyst for a historic transformation

This conference is part of a dynamic that began in January 2024, when BlackRock changed the rules of the financial game with the launch of its IBIT Bitcoin ETF.

By publicly validating exposure to bitcoin, the world's largest asset manager offered cryptos institutional legitimacy that regulators could no longer ignore.

The domino effect began quickly. American banks, long reluctant, have gradually integrated digital assets into their offering. The SEC itself has had to adapt. Under the Trump presidency and with Paul Atkins at its head, the commission abandoned its combative posture inherited from the Gary Gensler era.

The Fed, unlike the SEC, had never really confronted the crypto sector. She had simply ignored him. This indifference is coming to an end. The institution must now deal with a reality: stablecoins facilitate billions of dollars in daily transactions, tokenization attracts the biggest fortunes, and blockchain is transforming payment infrastructures.

BlackRock is particularly pushing for tokenization. The asset manager is preparing its own dedicated platform. His presence at the final round table of the conference is not insignificant. It demonstrates a convergence of interests between traditional finance and blockchain innovation.

This opening of the Fed represents much more than just an event. It marks the entry of cryptocurrencies into the American financial mainstream. The central bank, guardian of the dollar and pillar of global monetary stability, now agrees to dialogue with a sector that it has until now kept at a distance.

And the consequences could be global. If the Fed validates certain uses of digital assets, other central banks will follow. One figure illustrates this dynamic: 172 companies now hold 1.02 million bitcoins in the third quarter of 2025. Institutional adoption is no longer a hypothesis, it is a reality.