The latest crypto sell-off is forcing a valuation reset, and Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz says the market is finally repricing “empty shell” token models. In a recent interview, Rooz, the cofounder behind the privacy-enabled Canton Network, said he is not worried about the state of the market and that turbulence has not scared off his core customer base. He argues the new bid is moving toward chains with real business models where value flows to token holders and users, not intermediaries or speculative order flow.
He described the moment as a reckoning that separates utility from promotional tokenomics. He pointed to Canton Network and derivatives exchange Hyperliquid as where capital is gravitating. Canton’s cryptocurrency rose 25% in the past month and Hyperliquid (HYPE) climbed 28%, according to CoinGecko. Rooz says the industry is learning that narratives without durable cash flow mechanics eventually get priced like empty packaging in practice.
Bridges, fees and anonymity coins
Rooz said architecture and token design are what institutions price first, and he criticized bridges on public chains. “Bridges inherently are not interoperability,” he said, noting that bridges lock assets on an origin chain and release equivalent tokens on a destination, leaving value trapped in contracts that hackers target. He says institutions want privacy and predictable costs, not bridge risk packaged as innovation.
He added that regulators are scrutinizing bridges for security weaknesses and for obscuring transaction flows. Elliptic estimated that at least $21.8 billion in illicit or high-risk crypto flowed through decentralized exchanges, cross-chain bridges and swap services in 2025. He also said regulators are more uncomfortable with “anonymity coins,” making traceability and systemic-risk optics required. Rooz said clients such as Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and Euroclear need privacy, bridge-free interoperability and predictable costs, and that general-purpose public chains cannot deliver all three for institutional settlement at scale.
Public chains hosting institutional products
Even as Rooz questions general-purpose chains, asset managers are issuing tokenized products on Ethereum and other public networks. BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) launched on Ethereum in 2024 and later integrated additional networks. Franklin Templeton has tokenized a US government money fund on Polygon and Stellar, with BENJI tokens representing beneficial interests in the fund. The market reality is hybrid: institutions test public rails while also demanding privacy-first stacks.
Banks are testing that mix, with JPMorgan deploying JPM Coin on Coinbase’s Base network for institutional clients in November 2025 and planning to bring USD JPM Coin (JPMD) natively to the Canton Network in 2026. Rooz says clients are starting to view stablecoins like collateral, comparing risk across USDC, USDt, JPM Coin and other bank stablecoins before choosing a payment method. In his view, predictability and value capture will decide which token models survive this repricing in the cycle.
