Money Printing Debate as Wall St. Goes Onchain

Crypto markets are increasingly being framed through macroeconomic lenses again, and speakers at Cointelegraph’s CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition during Korea Blockchain Week argued that loose monetary policy—rather than purely crypto-native adoption—could be a meaningful driver of digital-asset demand.

Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom, suggested that in the near term policymakers may have fewer options than to expand the money supply, particularly as governments juggle fiscal pressures and as AI-related infrastructure ramps up spending needs.

Key takeaways

• Arthur Hayes argued that policymakers could respond to AI investment requirements and debt pressures by effectively “printing more money,” which he believes could lift demand for scarce assets.
• Portal Ventures’ Catrina Wang said incumbent finance firms can win in onchain markets by leveraging existing customer relationships—an advantage that new entrants must overcome.
• R3’s Todd McDonald emphasized that public blockchains can also help institutions reach customers beyond their private network ecosystems.
• Franklin Templeton plans to position tokenized funds as a “yield layer,” while institutional investors still often rely on fiat ramps for subscriptions and redemptions.
• Crypto treasury strategies face a liquidity test: companies need cash they can commit for longer horizons without disrupting day-to-day operations.

Hayes ties crypto to money supply and AI spending realities

In a fireside chat, Hayes linked crypto’s outlook to policy choices he expects from the US. He argued that the scale of capital required for AI—particularly to fund data centers—runs alongside a broader environment in which traditional funding avenues may be stretched.

Hayes said AI firms “need trillions of dollars” to finance the infrastructure behind their services even as the market pushes prices downward. In his view, that mismatch narrows the set of options available to policymakers, leading to monetary expansion as a way to cushion fiscal and investment pressures.

“They’ve not really given themselves a lot of options other than print money and make it less bad,” he said.

Hayes also floated a potential shift in China from what he described as an “austerity lite” approach to more substantial stimulus. If such a pivot occurs, he suggested it could reawaken appetite for scarce assets—an idea that matters for crypto because digital assets have increasingly traded alongside broader liquidity expectations.

Europe was another focal point. Hayes said he was watching indicators of financial stress in France, including credit-default swaps referencing BNP Paribas and spreads tied to French government bonds.

“I think the money printing will essentially happen at some point, but that’s sort of a slow motion train wreck happening underneath the surface.”

Onchain finance may not eliminate middlemen—customer ownership matters

While crypto’s early narrative promised disintermediation, CONNECT panelists argued that onchain may simply shift where value accrues—especially to intermediaries that control customer relationships and distribution.

Catrina Wang, general partner at Portal Ventures, said that banks and asset managers can bring established customer bases into blockchain markets, giving them an edge over companies that must build investor trust from scratch. She summarized the logic with a variation of an “aggregation” theme associated with tech analyst Ben Thompson: whoever holds the customer relationship tends to capture the economics.

“Whoever owns the customer relationship owns the economics,” Wang said.

But the story is not purely about incumbents. Todd McDonald, co-founder of R3, argued that public blockchains can provide institutions a path to customers outside their existing private-network footprint. R3 previously centered its business on private financial networks through Corda, and later announced a collaboration in May 2025 to connect institutions and their assets to Solana’s public chain.

“You need to really go to where the customers are and where they will be in the future.”

Even once investors arrive, the panels suggested, the biggest friction may be where capital goes and how much risk counterparties will tolerate. Justin Kugel, executive vice president of growth at World Liberty Financial, said this creates demand for intermediaries—despite crypto’s goal of reducing reliance on traditional gatekeepers.

Kugel added that many users do not want to actively manage assets or perform deep risk assessment for each investment. He pointed to centralized exchanges as providing a level of perceived protection that can reduce the operational burden for non-experts.

“Maybe there’s a reason why there are so many middlemen in TradFi,” Kugel said.

Stablecoins, but with a clearer “yield” role

A separate panel explored how stablecoin rails fit into broader capital deployment, especially for tokenized funds that can generate income rather than merely move value.

Franklin Templeton’s Chetan Karkhanis, senior vice president of digital asset client engagement, said the firm has no plans to issue its own stablecoin. Instead, it wants tokenized money market funds to serve as the investment income engine—framing the offering as a “yield layer.”

“Let us be the yield layer,” Karkhanis said.

Karkhanis also noted operational realities: Franklin Templeton’s fund subscriptions and redemptions generally still require fiat. While he said some stablecoin-related conversions exist, he argued that these options need to be more broadly available across the industry to make stablecoin-based workflows practical at scale.

In June, Franklin Templeton announced a partnership with MoonPay enabling eligible institutional investors to move between supported stablecoins and its tokenized money market funds through onchain transactions, reflecting the industry’s push to reduce friction between fiat on-ramps and tokenized exposure.

Payment demand was another theme. Codex co-founder and CEO Haonan Li said stablecoin usage for payments is growing along trade routes between Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa (with Asia playing a role in the opposite direction of goods flows). He described the pattern as manufactured goods flowing east to west while funds move west to east.

This matters for market structure because it reinforces a use case where stablecoins function as settlement and value transfer instruments—while product design determines whether users earn yield or simply transact.

(For earlier context, Cointelegraph previously covered a regulatory milestone allowing Franklin Templeton funds to invest in an onchain money fund. The event discussed here included the firm’s approach to stablecoins and tokenized funds.)

Treasury strategies hinge on liquidity, not just long-term conviction

The conference also addressed corporate crypto treasuries and the practical constraints that often get overlooked when companies consider exposure to digital assets.

Ilya Podoynitsyn, co-founder and CEO of FinHarbor (a partner of CONNECT), said companies considering crypto treasury strategies need cash that can be committed for longer periods without disrupting everyday operations. Without that excess liquidity, he argued, firms should proceed carefully.

“If you don’t have that excess liquidity for doing that, you need to think very carefully before entering the market,” Podoynitsyn said.

He cautioned against copying a strategy from another company without adjusting for differences in balance sheets, liquidity needs, and risk tolerance. Even experienced finance teams, he suggested, may lack specific expertise in onchain liquidity and the transaction approval processes required for execution.

Panelists also discussed a scenario familiar to public-company investors: whether a listed treasury firm with spare cash should allocate it toward more crypto or instead repurchase shares trading below net asset value. Michael Camarda, chief development officer at Ethereum treasury company SharpLink, said increasing ETH holdings per share can be accomplished in two ways: buying back shares and purchasing more Ether.

He framed the distinction as follows: share buybacks spread existing Ether across fewer shares, while additional Ether purchases increase the total ETH held by the firm. Camarda said SharpLink’s investor base influenced which approach suited whom—institutional investors prioritized ETH holdings per share, while retail investors were more responsive to headline-driven announcements of large Ether purchases. SharpLink, he said, used both levers to appeal to each group.

This emphasis on liquidity and distribution underscores a recurring theme across crypto’s corporate adoption cycle: conviction about long-term upside is not enough unless firms can operationalize the strategy safely in real time.

Going forward, readers should watch whether policymakers’ stance on liquidity—especially any meaningful stimulus shifts—supports the macro tailwinds Hayes expects, while corporate treasury teams continue to refine how stablecoin flows and tokenized yield products can fit into real liquidity and compliance constraints.