Bill Barhydt, the CEO of crypto wealth platform Abra, says Wall Street's attention is moving away from bitcoin price swings and toward the tokenization of real-world assets.
Barhydt argues that the ability to tokenize assets, making them liquid, transferable, and usable as collateral through decentralized finance, is a more significant development than the debate over Bitcoin ETFs or market cycles.
"Everything is becoming tokenized and liquid via DeFi," Barhydt told CoinDesk. He believes this narrative resonates with institutional investors because it connects crypto infrastructure directly to broader financial markets. Anything that can be pledged as collateral in traditional finance, he says, can eventually be represented onchain.
Abra, which is preparing to go public through a merger with SPAC New Providence Acquisition Corp. III, will list on Nasdaq under the ticker ABRX, pending SEC approval. The deal values the company at $750 million.
Under its parent company, Abra Financial Holdings, the firm operates Abra Capital Management, an SEC-registered investment adviser serving high-net-worth individuals and institutions. Its tokenization arm, AbraFi, is creating products on the Solana blockchain, including a yield-bearing dollar asset called USDAF. The company plans to expand with BTCAF, a bitcoin-based yield product.
"The next generation of wealth management is onchain," Barhydt says.