block by block
Crypto’s next breakthrough isn’t a coin - it’s settlement
Author
Gabriella Pellagatti
Publishing date
A block by block conversation with Austin Campbell
In the latest block by block episode, Denelle Dixon sits down with Austin Campbell, founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting and a professor teaching digital assets at NYU Stern. Campbell’s background spans TradFi and crypto, including leading portfolio management at Paxos and time at JP Morgan and Citi. He brings a perspective that is equal parts practical and blunt.
Campbell introduces himself with a level of honesty that frames the entire conversation. He says a friend once described him as “a grouchy fixed income person,” a label that points less to personality and more to how he thinks about money. Fixed income is the part of finance obsessed with settlement, risk, liquidity, and what breaks when systems fail. It is the world of balance sheets, margin calls, and liquidity flows.
That background shapes how Campbell came to crypto. “I didn’t get in through Bitcoin. I didn’t get in through speculation. I got in because I was trying to solve the problem of instant settlement,” he says. He wasn’t focused on price. He cared about whether money actually moved, and what broke when it didn’t.
That background shapes a discussion that stays focused on how real-world value moves onchain. Let’s get into it.
Stablecoins are not just “crypto dollars”
Campbell frames stablecoins as a structural upgrade, not a new wrapper on old systems. “Stablecoins essentially create what I’m gonna call a third form of money,” he says, arguing they sit alongside physical cash and bank deposits (or stored value products). The shift he cares about is mechanical: “Stablecoins allow you to separate the act of investment from the act of transfer.”
That separation matters because today’s financial system ties movement to unwinding positions. Money sits idle, liquidity is trapped, and settlement introduces risk and delay. Stablecoins change that dynamic. Value can move while capital stays put, reducing friction and making it easier to support higher transaction volume without holding excess reserves.
Velocity is about trapped capital
The conversation moves from volume to velocity, and Campbell explains why velocity matters economically. If money can move more often, less idle capital is required to support the same activity. But he also draws a key distinction between velocity and capacity. “You can drive a fast car slow, but you can’t drive a slow car fast,” he says. Systems built for instant settlement create flexibility, while slower systems lock participants into timing constraints that limit how value can circulate.
RWAs: solve a real problem or don’t bother
When the conversation turns to tokenized treasuries, credit, and real estate, Campbell pushes back on the idea that putting an asset onchain is, by itself, meaningful progress. Simply moving something from one ledger to another does not change how it behaves. If access is still restricted, liquidity is still limited, and settlement still looks the same, then very little has actually improved.
What he looks for instead are projects that break open closed markets. As an example, he points to Etherfuse, which tokenizes non-U.S. sovereign debt from countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. These instruments have traditionally been local products, available only to investors with the right bank accounts and intermediaries. As Campbell explains, “what they’re doing is taking what was a very local - do I have a Mexican peso bank account - type situation and turning it into something that’s distributable to more people.”
That difference matters. In Campbell’s view, successful RWA projects are not about digitizing assets for convenience. They are about opening access, increasing circulation, and changing who can participate. Without that shift, tokenization risks preserving the same constraints under a new technical label rather than creating new financial capabilities.
Openness, privacy, and what actually blocks progress
After velocity and access, the conversation turns to the conditions under which value is allowed to move. On openness and privacy, Campbell challenges the assumption that public blockchains are inherently less suitable for serious financial activity.
In his view, most financial data in traditional systems is already widely exposed, and the real concern for institutions is not consumer privacy but competitive visibility and control. The question is whether a system can support legitimate activity without leaking sensitive information — which he sees as a design challenge, not a limitation of public infrastructure.
Where progress slows is adoption. Campbell points to “banking regulators” as the primary constraint, largely because understanding and implementation lag the technology. Until that gap closes, public blockchains will likely continue to be judged on assumptions rather than their actual capabilities.
The word for 2026
When Denelle asks what term will define 2026 the way “stablecoins” defined 2025, Campbell’s answer pulls the conversation together: “settlement.” He frames it as the basic problem of exchange — who goes first — and why solving it matters. Faster settlement increases velocity. Clear delivery-versus-payment makes real-world assets usable. And open, programmable rails make it possible to coordinate all of that without layers of intermediaries.
It may sound like unglamorous work, but Campbell sees settlement as the real upgrade. When value, assets, and rules can move together and resolve at the same time, financial systems become simpler, more reliable, and easier to scale.
Listen to the full episode
This episode is dense in the best way - it connects stablecoin mechanics, velocity, real-world assets, openness, privacy, and where the next layer of financial infrastructure is heading. If you want to learn more about what enterprises optimize for, or what builders can unlock with open rails, it’s worth the full listen.