Based on what we see across integrations and partner activity, capital is already moving as market structure evolves. And it seems like by the end of 2026, institutional investors will move quickly into digital assets as the market shifts toward greater regulation and more efficient capital use. In January 2026, the global ETP count climbed to 318 products, up from 312 in late 2025. Clearer regulations are encouraging more participation. With 65% of EU crypto businesses now MiCA compliant, the crypto market is becoming a more layered financial system. Because of this, institutions are relying more on infrastructure that supports efficient settlement and cross-border liquidity.
The Shift Is Execution
The main issue here is not whether consumers are moving into crypto. Instead, the focus is on strict execution standards. Professional investors need deep liquidity, low slippage, strong custody solutions, solid compliance tools, and integration with prime brokers.
As more institutions trade crypto, order books become deeper, and price discovery gets better. At the same time, counterparty risk goes down. Market operators like LMAX confirm that institutions want strong infrastructure for capital efficiency and secure, regulated trading. Institutions use smart order routing to reach deeper liquidity and improve trade execution.
Where the Broker Stack Breaks
Digital asset liquidity is spread across many separate exchanges.Top market participants want access to deep liquidity, but the broker stack struggles because the market is so fragmented. Unlike traditional markets, which have a few main venues, crypto lacks a single dominant platform for certain trading pairs or complex products.
Because of this, providers have to connect with a wide range of liquidity sources in order to expand access to digital assets and deepen liquidity for institutional clients to manage the problem. Just recently, March 23, Nasdaq announced they are integrating Talos to manage collateral across fiat and crypto.
But the real problem comes from the massive volume of fragmented endpoints. Connecting directly to all these markets is not practical, is technically complex, costs a lot, and does not scale well: not everyone is Talos, not everyone is Nasdaq on the market.
Trading desks have to deal with separate legal agreements, disconnected compliance checks, different risk management systems, and locked-up collateral. On top of that, fragmented access to venues often means capital is split across several margin accounts on different exchanges.
Rebuilding the Broker Function Through Infrastructure
To solve these problems, institutions are rebuilding the broker stack to free up trapped capital. Real market integration now depends on unified access to liquidity, collateral, execution, and settlement.
Ripple Prime recently added Hyperliquid to offer on-chain derivatives within a prime brokerage setup. This setup allows cross-margining across digital assets, FX, fixed income, OTC swaps, and cleared derivatives. Deep DeFi exposure is managed within a single portfolio and risk system. Regulated market infrastructure is following this trend. For example, LMAX uses RLUSD as a main collateral asset to enable cross-collateralization and margin efficiencies across spot crypto, FX, gold, perpetual futures, and CFDs.
As a result of these integrations, prime brokers now act as aggregators and risk managers, giving access to large exchange networks through one account. To get the best trade execution across different venues at once, algorithms use smart order routing.
So now, digital asset infrastructure becomes a fully layered financial system, where trading, custody, credit, and settlement are closely linked. At the same time, fintech platforms are building liquidity networks, execution routing, compliance tools, and settlement systems directly into their main software.
Infrastructure as a Service
When we work with partners, we often hear the same question as they grow: should you build your own exchange infrastructure or use external execution layers? This is a real challenge that comes up when teams start to hit the limits of current integrations, whether in asset coverage, execution quality, or how quickly they can expand.
Building from scratch might seem like a way to take back control, but it brings its own challenges. Connecting directly to different liquidity sources, managing routing, keeping up blockchain connections, and constant optimization all need dedicated teams and a lot of time. For most companies, this means slower market entry and money spent on infrastructure instead of improving the product.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure market is growing up. What once meant putting together several separate systems is now coming together into integrated execution layers. These layers offer custody, connectivity, liquidity access, and settlement as one service.
API-based models change things here. Instead of building everything in-house, platforms can tap into combined liquidity from different venues, advanced routing, and global markets through one integration layer. This makes it faster to launch, cuts down on operational work, and makes it easier for institutions to get started. Teams can then focus on distribution, user experience, and using capital more efficiently.
If you want to see how this model works in real situations, including how routing, asset coverage, and execution are managed, you can find more details on the ChangeNOW API page.
Competing vs Connecting
The main goal for the market is strong structural connections. Commercial banks are still important. Digital infrastructure now means that fiat off-ramping happens much less often. Since capital, collateral, yield, and settlements can stay within crypto systems for longer, these assets rarely need to move through traditional clearing systems.
This change shows a full convergence of infrastructure. Top institutions can now get deep decentralized liquidity while keeping strict centralized risk controls. As the technology supports more enterprise volume, the main challenge left is how fast it can be deployed. Crypto infrastructure is not replacing banks, but it does mean users need to rely on them less often. Capital can stay within crypto systems longer before moving to traditional ones.
Conclusion
The next phase of crypto adoption is likely to sharpen the infrastructure question. As digital asset markets become more regulated and connected, the focus is shifting from just gaining access to improving execution quality, using capital efficiently, and speeding up deployment.
Market participants don’t need to build everything themselves right away. Instead, they should figure out which parts of their systems slow things down, tie up resources, or could be handled by outside infrastructure. The industry is already heading this way, and long internal development cycles are getting harder to defend.
That’s why it’s important to keep a close eye on this space. At ChangeNOW, we often see the same operational challenges where Web2 systems connect with Web3 infrastructure. As more examples come up, it’s getting easier to understand this boundary in theory, but it’s also becoming more complex in practice. We’ll keep sharing our experiences as the market evolves.
Bio
Yana Mar
Yana oversees strategic business development at ChangeNOW, where she manages financial governance and operational efficiency. She applies her expertise in crypto finance and revenue infrastructure to drive sustainable growth through data based decision making. For over five years, she has also shared her industry insights and professional experience through the corporate blog. Her work focuses on expanding partnerships and optimizing monetization models while maintaining transparency in financial processes.
