Crypto companies are shifting their focus from building on-chain financial products to getting customers to use them regularly as the industry seeks to move closer to mainstream finance.

Asset managers have launched tokenized funds, exchanges are expanding into lending and payments, and blockchain networks are seeking institutional customers. The challenge is increasingly to demonstrate sustained usage rather than simply prove that the technology works.

For Coinbase, the priority is making crypto products useful for everyday financial needs rather than emphasizing the underlying technology, said Ben Shen, the company's head of financial services and loyalty products. That framing echoes mainstream consumer finance, where products compete on everyday utility rather than the technology running underneath.

Customers want to grow, hold, send, spend or borrow money, while the blockchain supporting those activities is often less important to them, Shen said.

Coinbase is seeking what Shen described as "magic moments" that immediately demonstrate a product's usefulness. The company views adoption as a cycle in which customers bring money onto its platform, have reasons to keep it there, and then find ways to spend, trade or make payments with those assets.

Rewards and other incentives can help persuade customers to move money onto a platform, Shen said. The goal, however, is to turn that initial incentive into longer-term use — the step that separates a one-time deposit from a lasting customer relationship.

"If you create the right magic moments across these three parts of the flywheel, then that'll get people to increasingly bring more and more money onto the platform," he said.

The same challenge applies to blockchain networks seeking institutional customers. Kevin O'Leary, chairman of O'Leary Ventures, said networks need to demonstrate that companies are using their infrastructure rather than merely testing it.

"The challenge you have is 'show me, show me adoption,'" O'Leary said at the Avalanche Summit in New York in September 2026.

Institutional customers, he said, want to see actual deals and adoption rather than tests of blockchain technology.

For asset manager WisdomTree, which oversees about $150 billion, expanding distribution is another route to adoption. The company has built tokenized funds including WTGXX, a tokenized money market fund with about $1.2 billion in assets, according to Will Peck, WisdomTree's head of digital assets.

WisdomTree is working to make its funds available through platforms beyond its own. A recent collaboration with MoonPay allows eligible U.S. retail customers to access WTGXX through MoonPay and buy the fund using stablecoins without separately onboarding with WisdomTree, Peck said — an example of how reach, not just product design, shapes whether tokenized offerings find repeat users.\nCoinbase is also exploring distribution through third-party platforms, including artificial intelligence tools. Shen said AI agents could eventually become another route through which customers access financial services.

How far distribution partnerships extend — and whether AI agents mature into a practical front door for financial services — are among the developments that could indicate whether crypto firms succeed in converting first-time users into repeat ones. As crypto firms increasingly compete with traditional financial companies, the focus is moving beyond whether products can be built to whether customers find enough value in them to keep using them.

Source: BitcoinKE