Bitwise CIO: Compliance ICO will become a core theme in 2026, transforming encryption into the fourth major pillar disrupting TradFi.

On November 12, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan stated that the newly launched token sale platform by CEX marks a strong return of crypto-based capital formation methods. Compliance ICOs are expected to be a core theme in 2026, reshaping the financing model for startups and becoming the fourth pillar of how Crypto Assets disrupt traditional finance, following the first three pillars: Bitcoin's reshaping of gold, stablecoins' reshaping of the dollar, and tokenization's reshaping of trading and settlement. Matt Hougan noted that early ICO experiments demonstrated that Blockchain technology can connect entrepreneurs and investors faster and at a lower cost than traditional IPOs, even though the previous boom failed. The key distinction this time lies in regulation and structure, with the current Chairman of the SEC, Paul Atkins (who co-chaired the crypto advocacy organization Token Alliance that supported ICOs and served on the board of the tokenization company Securitize), recently calling for new rules and a safe harbor mechanism to support compliant token issuance, and CEX's new platform is the first significant practice in this direction.