Injective Labs' Business Institutional Lead Cooper Emmons believes that crypto's next major leap isn't another memecoin cycle — it's the migration of global financial markets onto the blockchain.
In a recent interview with The Roundtable host Alp Gasimov, Emmons highlighted how tokenized traditional assets are now taking shape in decentralized ecosystems.
"I would say that global markets kind of coming on chain has really been the largest theme of this year," Emmons said.
According to Emmons, Injective has been leading that charge by offering blockchain infrastructure that allows users to access legacy financial instruments — from U.S. Treasurys to pre-IPO company shares — directly on-chain. One of the most recent innovations, he noted, came from the Helix app, which launched perpetual futures for private companies such as OpenAI.
"This is the first time traders can access perpetuals on a pre-IPO firm like OpenAI," Emmons said.
He explained that the process involves private market data being delivered through an oracle feed to a decentralized exchange, where institutional liquidity providers then use that information to hedge positions or offer exposure to new on-chain participants in the crypto market.
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'WordPress for finance'
Emmons said Injective's long-term vision is to become the foundational layer for all decentralized financial applications, a kind of "WordPress for finance."
"Whether it be an asset issuer, a developer looking to offer a perpetual exchange to their local audience in their region, or whichever the case may be, we want to offer that infrastructure such that these users can go out and build their applications on-chain," he added.
Related: What is blockchain? Explained
Initially incubated by Binance Labs, Injective has spent more than seven years refining its ecosystem. Its native token has been live for four of those years, and the platform now supports a variety of decentralized apps and financial products designed to bridge the gap between crypto and traditional markets.
The rise of tokenization
Tokenization, the process of converting real-world assets into blockchain-based tokens, has emerged as one of the hottest narratives in crypto this year.
Stocks, real estate, commodities, or intellectual property are converted into digital tokens recorded on a blockchain. Each token represents ownership or a share of the underlying asset, enabling faster, more secure, and transparent transactions.
Related: Why real world asset tokenization is the next big thing in crypto
By digitizing traditional assets, tokenization reduces friction in trading, improves liquidity, and allows fractional ownership, meaning investors can buy smaller portions of high-value assets. It also enhances accessibility by opening global markets to participants who previously faced geographic or regulatory barriers.
Emmons noted that while more than 300 million people worldwide have already used blockchain networks to access digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL), the same infrastructure is now being used to bring traditional financial products, including U.S. equities and pre-IPO company shares, on-chain.
"It is what this infrastructure was built to truly deliver. So I'm excited to see that really coming to fruition," Emmons said.
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Nov 4, 2025, where it first appeared in the Business News section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
