For most of the history of the cryptocurrency industry, lawyers have played a familiar role: identifying risks, interpreting regulations, and telling companies what they can’t do.
but Mike Katzpartner in Manat Financial Services Groupsaid PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster Ryan RougeGlobal Head of Digital Assets TTS, CityHe believes that this era is over.
“Operators and business people want a decision. They want a recommendation. They want to understand what they need to do,” Katz said during the latest episode of the podcast.From the mass“You need to have perspective. You have to have a point of view.”
Having spent years on both sides of the table, as the chief legal officer within a cryptocurrency-focused venture capital firm and as an attorney advising digital asset companies, Katz has watched the industry mature from a largely speculative ecosystem to one focused on building durable financial infrastructure.
He said this shift requires a different type of legal advisor.
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“I’ve been the client for four years,” Katz added. “When you’re on the business side and when you’re sitting at the table around business and operational leadership, you get a different experience than you get when you’re a lawyer at a law firm.”
This does not mean reducing the risks. It means putting it in context. Often, lawyers provide lengthy memos that carefully outline all potential risks without clearly indicating what the company should do next.
“This is what I recommend based on the context, the facts, the law and the regulations,” Katz said. “And by the way, here are the risks associated with this decision.”
It’s a philosophy that reflects how operators themselves make decisions: incomplete information, limited time, forward motion. This perspective has become even more valuable as stablecoins, token assets, and digital payment rails move from experimentation to regulated infrastructure.
View from both sides of the crypto table
Digital asset regulation remains a moving target. Companies are being asked to make five- and ten-year strategic investments while the fundamentals continue to evolve.
“It’s almost a full-time job to keep up with all the changes on the legislative front, on the regulatory front, on the technology front,” Katz said.
Against this backdrop, the future of the industry will depend less on technological breakthroughs and more on whether companies, regulators and institutions are able to work together to create systems that people trust.
“It’s not like saying, ‘This is how the regulator has interpreted this for the last 40 years.’ It’s more like these rules aren’t final yet, but we think they’re headed in that direction,” Katz said, adding that contrary to popular stereotypes, most companies aren’t looking to race ahead recklessly.
The passage of the GENIUS Act furthers this transformation. While rulemaking is still ongoing and questions remain about broader market legislation, the law provides a foundation on which companies can begin to plan. Many are already moving quickly enough to seize the opportunity, but carefully enough to avoid becoming a cautionary tale.
Speedboats, barges and the future of finance
For most of its history, the digital assets industry has been consumed by one question: Can blockchain technology transform financial services?
Today this question has been largely settled. The technology is working, and it actually has transformative potential. The most pressing question now is whether the industry is able to build a regulatory and operational framework capable of supporting mainstream adoption of digital assets while scaling enterprise blockchain integration.
There are two operational models coming to grips with the possible answers to this question. On the one hand, there are the startups – fast-moving, opportunistic, and willing to transcend ambiguity. On the other hand, there are global financial institutions that carry decades of regulatory expectations, risk management obligations, and customer trust.
During the discussion, Citibank’s Ryan Rogge described the contradiction through the lens of corporate responsibility, noting that large financial institutions cannot afford experiments that compromise safety.
“We take this very seriously,” Rogge said of protecting client assets. “Whether it’s traditional assets, decentralized finance (DeFi) or cryptocurrencies, it doesn’t matter.
“We want to make sure that not only are we adhering to the regulations and rules, but that what we are doing will be 100% safe,” she added.
“The system is strongest with large enterprises, startups and new entrants who drive innovation in a different way,” Katz said. “I think they complement each other.”
The metaphor that emerged during the conversation, which describes startups as speedboats and big banks as battleships, is a telling one. Speedboats chart new routes. Battleships institutionalize them. Both are necessary if digital assets are to become part of the mainstream financial infrastructure.
Why protection barriers and universal acceptance are more important today
Perhaps the most telling moment came near the end of the conversation, when PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster asked Katz what lessons the industry should learn from past failures.
After nearly a decade of watching boom-and-bust cycles, enforcement actions, bankruptcy and regulatory investigations, Katz’s answer is remarkably practical.
“You realize how important good guardrails are,” he said, noting that America’s historical advantage in capital formation stems from trust, transparency and regulatory reliability — not from an absence of rules.
As US banking regulators work through implementation of the Genius Act, financial institutions face the practical question of where competitive advantage will actually be if stablecoins become largely interchangeable products.
Treasurers, CFOs and corporate finance teams do not want separate operating groups for digital assets. They want to seamlessly integrate digital assets into existing treasury management systems, ERP platforms, accounting workflows, and risk frameworks.
“What is not talked about enough in the market is backward compatibility with traditional assets,” Rogge said. “If they had to create a separate wallet, manage the keys, manage the node, manage the assets, and do all the calculations around it, it would be very complicated.”
The goal, according to Rogge, is to create an environment where companies can move between traditional money, token assets and stablecoins without fundamentally changing the way they operate.
“How do we make it fully backward compatible for our customers?” I asked.
After all, as Webster pointed out, digital assets face a unique competitive challenge in that they are trying to replace a payment system that already offers near-frictionless experiences for most consumers.
“You don’t even think about it,” Webster said of paying with cards and digital wallets. “You have no idea what’s going on under the hood. But you know it’s absolutely flawless. It works every time.”
“If the products were interchangeable, you would win by being the default choice within the apps people already use,” Katz said.
