TL;DR:
- Arc, Canton and Tempo collectively raised more than $1 billion, with valuations of $3 billion, $2 billion and $5 billion respectively.
- Hougan argues the GENIUS Act helped unlock institutional capital, while the pending Clarity Act could further support tokenization, DeFi and regulated infrastructure.
- Native transaction privacy and corporate backing from finance and technology giants signal a more competitive, institution-led phase for crypto infrastructure as market standards mature quickly from here.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan sees a new institutional phase forming in crypto after three enterprise-oriented blockchains, Arc, Canton and Tempo, collectively raised more than $1 billion. The timing is difficult to ignore. Arc, developed by Circle, raised $222 million at a $3 billion valuation. Digital Asset’s Canton Network is raising $300 million at a $2 billion valuation, led by a16z. Stripe’s Tempo raised $500 million late last year at a $5 billion valuation. For a sector often accused of cycling through speculation first and infrastructure later, the fundraising wave suggests capital is moving toward regulated rails, stablecoins and tokenization.
Legislation, Privacy and Corporate Competition Converge
Hougan’s first takeaway is that money follows legislation. All three raises came after Congress passed the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act in July 2025, a milestone he argues helped loosen the regulatory freeze that had kept institutions hesitant. The next question is whether the Clarity Act can do something broader for crypto market structure. Its final text remains unsettled, but tokenization and regulated financial infrastructure could be the clearest beneficiaries if the bill gives builders a firmer framework for assets beyond stablecoins, including DeFi and novel token designs.
The second signal is privacy, which may sound counterintuitive in an industry built around transparent ledgers. Arc, Canton and Tempo all include native support for private transactions, separating them from Ethereum and Solana in Hougan’s framing. That matters for mainstream commerce, where public visibility can become a liability. Businesses may not want trades, payroll or commercial flows exposed through a block explorer. In that sense, privacy is being recast as an institutional feature, not a concession against transparency, especially when corporate users need discretion to operate on-chain.
The third signal is who is now competing. Arc is being developed by publicly traded Circle. Canton’s backers include Goldman Sachs, Citadel, DTCC, Nasdaq, BNY Mellon, S&P Global and Virtu. Tempo is a Stripe and Paradigm project with design input from Anthropic, Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Shopify, Visa and OpenAI. Hougan still says his money is mostly on crypto-native projects, but corporate entrants are raising the execution bar. The perplexing part is also the point: crypto’s next growth phase may come from incumbents joining the fight. That could accelerate standards, liquidity and investor expectations across the market over the next cycle quickly.
