The Fed Opens the Door to Crypto at an Unprecedented Washington Summit

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

When the Fed Reaches Out to Crypto Assets

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

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

The program looks ambitious. Starting at 9:20 AM, Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, will open 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 debate their business models. Strategic timing, as the Fed has just criticized flaws in the GENIUS law intended to regulate these digital assets.

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

BlackRock, the Catalyst of a Historic Transformation

This conference is part of a momentum started in January 2024, when BlackRock changed the financial game with the launch of its Bitcoin ETF IBIT.

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

The domino effect started quickly. US banks, long reluctant, have gradually integrated digital assets into their offerings. The SEC itself had to adapt. Under Trump’s presidency and with Paul Atkins at its head, the Commission abandoned its combative stance inherited from the Gary Gensler era.

The Fed, unlike the SEC, had never really confronted the crypto sector. It had simply ignored it. 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 largest fortunes, and blockchain is transforming payment infrastructures.

BlackRock is especially pushing for tokenization. The asset manager is preparing its own dedicated platform. Its presence at the conference’s final roundtable is no accident. It demonstrates a convergence of interests between traditional finance and blockchain innovation.

This Fed opening is much more than a simple 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 engage with a sector it had previously 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 as of Q3 2025. Institutional adoption is no longer a hypothesis, it’s a reality.