Crypto industry shifts focus from building products to keeping users engaged

Crypto companies spent years building tokenized funds, lending products and institutional blockchain rails. The industry’s next test is not whether these products exist, but whether customers and institutions actually use them and keep coming back.

• Coinbase frames user adoption as a three-part flywheel: money arrives on the platform, customers have a reason to hold it, then they spend, trade or borrow against it.
• WisdomTree’s tokenized money market fund, WTGXX, holds about $1.2 billion in assets and is now accessible through MoonPay.
• Kevin O’Leary says blockchain networks courting institutions need to show signed deals and real usage, not just pilot programs.

• $150B WisdomTree’s total assets under management as a firm
• $1.2B Assets held in WisdomTree’s tokenized fund WTGXX

The crypto industry spent years building the infrastructure for tokenized funds, lending platforms and institutional blockchain rails, according to reporting by CoinDesk. Asset managers now have tokenized funds live, exchanges have pushed into lending and payments, and blockchain networks are actively pitching institutions. The question executives describe is no longer whether these products can be built, but what will make customers and institutions choose to keep using them.

Coinbase chases ‘magic moments’ to build a spending flywheel

Ben Shen, Coinbase’s head of financial services and loyalty products, says the industry has historically been too focused on the technology itself. Customers care about growing, holding, sending, spending or borrowing against their money, he said, not whether a blockchain sits underneath the product.

Shen described adoption as a cycle with three stages: money comes onto the platform, customers have a reason to hold it there, and then they find ways to use it, whether through a paycheck deposit, earned rewards, or spending and trading. Rewards and temporary incentives can help “break inertia” and move money onto Coinbase in the first place, he said, though the company does not want that money to leave as soon as a promotion ends.

The bet, according to Shen, is that once funds are parked on the platform customers will find other uses for them beyond the initial incentive that drew them in. He also pointed to trust as a factor separate from product design: hearing that someone else has used a service reliably carries weight in financial services, he said, calling it “a social proof thing.”

WisdomTree puts its $1.2 billion fund inside MoonPay

WisdomTree, a $150 billion asset manager, has built a suite of tokenized funds including WTGXX, a tokenized money market fund with roughly $1.2 billion in assets, according to Will Peck, the firm’s head of digital assets. Rather than requiring customers to come directly to WisdomTree, the firm is now pushing distribution outward to platforms where customers already hold accounts.

WisdomTree recently struck a collaboration with MoonPay that lets eligible U.S. retail customers access WTGXX through MoonPay’s own interface. Customers who have already provided identification to MoonPay can buy the fund using stablecoins without separately onboarding with WisdomTree, Peck said.

“You don’t need to just come to WisdomTree,” Peck said. “There’s going to be other access points that you can go through, where you’re effectively coming to WisdomTree, but through a different front end.” Peck said MoonPay is not meant to be the only outside channel for WisdomTree’s tokenized products, and Coinbase’s Shen said he similarly expects most firms to maintain their own apps while also distributing through AI agents and other third-party tools.

O’Leary tells blockchains: show deals, not just tests

Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank investor and chairman of O’Leary Ventures, raised a related complaint about blockchain networks pursuing institutional business. Speaking at the Avalanche Summit in New York last month, he said technologists at major companies may understand a chain’s technical merits, but that is not enough to win adoption.

“The challenge you have is ‘show me, show me adoption,'” I get it, but what I want to see, and everybody else, is you got to get some deals, and you got to get adoption, not just tests.

Kevin O’Leary, chairman, O’Leary Ventures

O’Leary added that landing one large institutional client makes the next one easier to win. “The most powerful marketing tool of technology is word of mouth between competitors,” he said.

The BlockWest read. The pivot from building to retention is a balance sheet problem as much as a product one. Firms like WisdomTree and Coinbase are effectively buying distribution, trading fee share and margin for access to pre-verified users on platforms like MoonPay. For allocators, that means tokenized fund growth will increasingly track partnership counts, not just assets under management headlines.

WisdomTree has not disclosed whether additional distribution partnerships beyond MoonPay are planned, leaving open how quickly WTGXX’s $1.2 billion asset base could scale through third-party channels. Coinbase’s Shen said the company is still working on connecting its services to third-party AI agents, a channel he expects to become another route for adoption alongside its own apps.

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