TradFi's Web3 Push: Who's Making Money, Who's Losing?

1. One Week, Two Directions

On November 11, 2026, two things happened at once: Deutsche Bank officially launched institutional crypto custody (covering Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, EURC and AllUnity's euro stablecoin EURAU, under the MiCA and German regulatory frameworks) and signed an MOU with its asset-management arm DWS to explore tokenized products. The same day, Bloomberg reported that Nomura Holdings is in talks with potential buyers including Marex over the sale of its crypto subsidiary Laser Digital (no final decision has been made, and it may keep the business).

One entering, one exiting. This article doesn't retell the events; it does one thing: break down who made money and who lost, and distill the moves the winners have in common.

2. The Winners: How They Make Money

Here, "making money" means the revenue model sits on fees or flows, with disclosed revenue or a clear business model — not that each firm has disclosed profitability for the segment.

1. In August 2026, BlackRock launched digital share classes for six UCITS money market funds in its European ICS range (roughly $311 billion combined), running on Ethereum via JPMorgan's Kinexys. The assets didn't "become tokens" — the on-ramp was tokenized: fund fees don't shrink on-chain, while on-chain transfer opens a new distribution and settlement channel. The key move: plug a new interface into existing assets, rather than building a new asset.
2. JPMorgan's Kinexys processes about $5 billion in daily transactions (DL News), and management has said it hopes to lift that above $10 billion; in October 2026, JPMorgan extended its JPM Coin deposit token (JPMD) to Ethereum. This path needs neither a crypto bull market nor tokens being deemed securities — only that "settlement gets cheaper."
3. In September 2026, Citi expanded Citi Token Services to Japan and the UAE; the WSJ reports that major banks are planning a shared tokenized-deposit network. These businesses often don't charge directly — the payoff is deposit retention and client stickiness. It is defensive revenue, but it defends the most expensive deposits.
4. In 2025, BNY and Goldman Sachs launched a tokenized money-market-fund solution for asset-management clients (per BNY's press release, participants include BlackRock, Fidelity and Goldman Sachs Asset Management). What they sell isn't coins — it's the full stack that "lets your fund be held on-chain."
5. In April 2026, Morgan Stanley launched its own bitcoin ETF at a 0.14% fee — the cheapest tier among crypto ETFs at the time — drawing about $100 million in its first week. The economics are plain: fee times distribution, independent of where the price goes.
6. Deutsche Bank skipped trading and proprietary desks and started with custody, signing an MOU with its own asset manager on launch day to explore tokenized products — a classic "stake the ground first, expand products later."

The common thread: all six sit on fees and flows, and none of them makes money by holding token inventory.

3. The Losers: How They Lost

Here, "losses" refer to losses for specific periods disclosed in public filings or reports, and are not an assessment of any firm's overall competence or performance.

Founded in 2022, Laser Digital spans institutional trading, market making, asset management and venture investing, and turned profitable by 2024 (Ledger Insights). The turn came in October 2025: in the October 10 flash crash, altcoins fell 20%–27% within minutes, some nearly 70% (AmberData). In the quarter ended December 2025, Nomura booked a loss of roughly ¥10 billion outside its four core divisions (EMEA), which the company attributed to digital assets; the CFO said it had "tightened positions and risk exposure." On the European pre-tax loss basis, the quarters ended March and September 2026 showed ¥13.8 billion and ¥7.4 billion respectively. The two calibers cannot be read as one series, and Nomura has not disclosed Laser's share of its European results — "the sale is happening because Laser lost money" is an analytical judgment, not company language.

The mechanism is the crux: what market makers fear isn't falling prices, but inventory that can't be hedged on the way down — Laser's market making was not limited to Bitcoin and Ether, and when inventory is heavy in less liquid mid- and small-cap tokens and the market reprices in minutes, you're not earning the spread, you're catching the bag. A listed bank's quarterly mark-to-market, VaR limits and parent-level capital scrutiny offer exactly no room to "hold through the drawdown": this is a mismatch of business model and review cycle, not a team failure. The other half of the story matters too: Nomura's investment didn't stop (a new Japanese crypto-exchange license — the first in four years — and a preliminary OCC approval for its national trust bank application), and the quarter that disclosed the digital-asset loss was also a record-revenue quarter for the group.

In November 2022, ASX abandoned its blockchain rebuild of the CHESS clearing and settlement system after roughly seven years and about A$250 million. The failure wasn't technical infeasibility — it was treating an extremely complex institutional project as a routine tech upgrade. Reuters' verdict at the time: what burned was not just money, but market trust.

In November 2026, the OKX–ICE tokenized US equities scheme was slated to launch under the SEC's interim innovation exemption, triggering collective pushback from issuers: the objecting list grew from 22 to 67 names, and IMF research shows tokenized stocks are 1.5× as volatile as their traditional-market underlyings (all per Cointelegraph's roundup). This route has no disclosed losses — the point is that it is being repriced by the market. The more telling comparison: CoinDesk reported that B2C2, the benchmark crypto-native market maker (owned by SBI), was also in sale talks. If even "the people best at this business" are looking for an exit, the claim that "tradfi lost to the crypto natives" collapses — the inventory-risk business model itself has been repriced this cycle. Ownership isn't the variable; the business model is.

4. The Dividing Line: Four Revenue Models

Behind both lists is one sentence: where revenue comes from determines how much risk you carry.

• Model 1: management & custody fees (base = AUM) — BlackRock, BNY, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank custody; no directional risk, steadier at scale.
• Model 2: rails & settlement fees (base = flows) — Kinexys, Citi Token Services; can even be free, with the payoff in deposit retention and stickiness.
• Model 3: spread & inventory (returns from volatility, risk from the balance sheet) — market making, prop desks, OTC; the best business in good markets, with no floor on the way down.
• Model 4: asset appreciation (returns from the cycle) — crypto venture, token treasuries; sexy on the way up, ugly on the way down.

The first two earn tolls that others must pay you; the last two earn however much uncertainty you're willing to carry.

5. The Winners' Playbook

Read the winners' list backwards and it's one playbook. The following are general observations drawn from public cases — not advice:

• Set the revenue model before the tech stack — the fee basis (AUM or flows) comes first; technology choices follow.
• Match the review cycle to the business — a business that must survive a 40% drawdown usually doesn't belong in a quarterly mark-to-market P&L; either house it in a separate entity with long-term funding, or don't do it.
• Buy time, not pride — acquisitions solve "where capability comes from," not "who bears the risk."
• Capture mandates and registers, not matching — the tolls in tokenization sit in issuer mandates, shareholder registers and corporate actions; the 67-issuer objection list is the proof.
• Move with regulation and make compliance a moat — MiCA custody, Hong Kong's licensing regime and Singapore's licensing system all turn compliance from cost into moat.
• Write the exit script at kickoff — disposals with pre-set exit clauses and valuation anchors tend to end far more gracefully (this point is an inference from outcomes, not an established industry fact).

6. Three Back-of-Envelope Calculations

The following are illustrative calculations showing structural differences only — not forecasts, and not estimates of any institution's revenue or cost.

• $10 billion in custody at 5–10 basis points yields roughly $5–10 million a year; the value lies in zero directional risk, high stickiness, and stackable fees such as staking, settlement and FX.
• Revenue = AUM × management fee × share of economics. More distribution-dependent than custody — that's why firms with end-user channels can fight the fee war down to 0.14%, leaving latecomers almost no room to respond.
• With $1 billion of inventory at 3% daily volatility, one standard deviation of daily inventory P&L is roughly $30 million. Capital adequacy, hedging speed and risk limits decide whether market making is a money printer or a money shredder — precisely the three things banks find hardest to adjust.

In one line: the first two scale linearly with limited tail risk; in the third, return and risk come from the same variable and cannot be separated.

7. Hong Kong's Position

Hong Kong's choice is clear: make the institutions thick, not the leverage big. The VATP licensing regime, the Stablecoins Ordinance (Cap. 656) effective August 1, 2025, and the HKMA-led tokenized bond and settlement pilots together form a stack of "official register + regulated custody + local-currency settlement." In this article's taxonomy, Hong Kong has all but paved "selling the rails" into a highway: custody, settlement, issuance and secondary trading must all pass through licensed entities, while purely speculative paths are squeezed into minimal space.

That doesn't mean an absence of competitive pressure: as BlackRock puts $311 billion of money funds on-chain, JPMorgan extends deposit tokens to Ethereum, and Deutsche Bank productizes custody, the real test is getting these "rails" to plug their Asian nodes into this institutional framework rather than somewhere else.

(This section is a general description of Hong Kong's regulatory regime only; it does not describe or introduce the company's business, products or licensing arrangements.)

8. Conclusion

In Web3, the biggest winners have never been those who understand tokens best, but those best at collecting tolls. The past five years compress into two sentences: those selling rails are turning scale into a moat; those selling risk are turning volatility into a lesson. The next watershed isn't whose trading desk is faster, but whose register is thicker, whose custody more credible, whose settlement cheaper.

The reported sale talks are not surrender but potentially a graceful retreat; Deutsche Bank's launch is not a manifesto but a quiet takeover. History doesn't score ideological battles — it prices business models.

Sources

1. Bloomberg — Nomura Explores Possible Sale of Laser Digital Crypto Unit（2026-11-11）https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-11/nomura-explores-possible-sale-of-laser-digital-crypto-unit
2. Cointelegraph — Nomura explores sale of crypto unit Laser Digital（2026-11-12）https://cointelegraph.com/news/nomura-sale-crypto-unit-laser-digital
3. Ledger Insights — Nomura temporarily tightens crypto exposure at Laser Digital following losses（2026-02-02）https://www.ledgerinsights.com/nomura-temporarily-tightens-crypto-exposure-at-laser-digital-following-losses/
4. The Japan Times — Nomura stock hit after research affiliate writedown and Europe loss（2026-04-27，付费墙，单源未一手核实）https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/04/27/companies/nomura-shares-fall/
5. Bloomberg — BlackRock Launches Tokenized Money Market Funds in Europe（2026-08-03）https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/blackrock-launches-tokenized-money-market-funds-in-europe
6. Ledger Insights — BlackRock launches first European tokenized MMFs（2026-08-04）https://www.ledgerinsights.com/blackrock-launches-first-european-tokenized-mmfs/
7. DL News — JPMorgan expands digital assets push with Mitsubishi deal as it targets $10bn in daily transactions（2026-03-31）https://www.dlnews.com/articles/markets/jpmorgan-expands-digital-assets-push-with-mitsubishi-deal-as-it-targets-dollar10bn-in-daily-transactions/
8. The Block — JPMorgan expands 'JPM Coin' deposit token to Ethereum for institutional clients（2026-10-19）https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-10-19-jpmorgan-jpm-coin-deposit-token-ethereum-418874
9. PaymentsJournal — Citi Expands Token Services Into Japan and UAE（2026-09-30）https://www.paymentsjournal.com/citi-expands-token-services-into-japan-and-uae/
10. The Wall Street Journal — JPMorgan, Citi and Big Banks Plan New Tokenized Deposit System to Answer Crypto（2026-06-04，付费墙，未独立核实全文）https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/jpmorgan-citi-and-big-banks-plan-new-tokenized-deposit-system-to-answer-crypto-6b2d696b
11. BNY — BNY and Goldman Sachs Launch Tokenized Money Market Funds Solution（2025-07-23）https://www.bny.com/corporate/global/en/about-us/newsroom/company-news/bny-and-goldman-sachs-launch-tokenized-money-market-funds-solution.html
12. CoinDesk — The cheapest bitcoin ETF yet: Morgan Stanley uses 0.14% fee to draw $100 million in first week（2026-04-16）https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/04/16/morgan-stanley-s-bitcoin-etf-reaches-usd100m-in-first-week-marking-the-bank-s-strongest-launch
13. Cointelegraph — Deutsche Bank debuts digital asset custody services in EU（2026-11-11）https://cointelegraph.com/news/deutsche-bank-debuts-digital-asset-custody-services-eu
14. Reuters — Insight: Australian stock exchange's blockchain failure burns market trust（2022-12-19）https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/australian-stock-exchanges-blockchain-failure-burns-market-trust-2022-12-19/
15. CoinDesk — Crypto market maker B2C2 held sale talks with multiple potential buyers（2026-06-29）https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/06/29/crypto-market-maker-b2c2-held-sale-talks-with-multiple-potential-buyers
16. Cointelegraph — OKX/ICE tokenized stocks: blue chips push back（2026-11-12）https://cointelegraph.com/news/okxice-tokenized-stocks-blue-chips-push-back
17. CoinDesk — Circle overtakes BlackRock in tokenized Treasuries as market hits record $11 billion（2026-03-13）https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/03/13/circle-overtakes-blackrock-in-tokenized-treasuries-as-market-hits-record-usd11-billion
18. 香港证监会 — 虚拟资产交易平台发牌制度 https://www.sfc.hk/en/Welcome-to-the-Fintech-Contact-Point/Virtual-assets/Virtual-asset-trading-platforms-operators
19. 香港金融管理局 — 稳定币发行人监管制度 https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-functions/international-financial-centre/stablecoin-issuers/
20. 香港电子版法例 — 《稳定币条例》（第 656 章，2025 年 8 月 1 日实施）https://www.elegislation.gov.hk/hk/cap656
21. 香港金融管理局 — 债券市场发展（含代币化债券相关试点）https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-functions/international-financial-centre/bond-market-development/

Disclaimer

This content is provided for general market information and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, legal advice, compliance advice, trading advice, solicitation or recommendation. Digital asset prices are highly volatile; past performance is not indicative of future results. The business-model calculations herein are illustrative exercises only and do not represent the actual financials of any institution, nor do they constitute an estimate of any institution's revenue or costs.

Third-party media, research and official announcements cited herein remain the copyright and views of their original authors or publishers; this article merely relays and analyzes public information and has not independently verified every matter. Third-party targets, plans or guidance cited are forward-looking statements and may not be achieved.

This article does not constitute an evaluation, rating or investment judgment of any institution; institution names are cited solely as case-study subjects based on public information. The "playbook" described herein is a general framework distilled from public cases; it does not constitute, and should not be construed as, business, investment, legal or compliance advice, nor is it directed at the specific circumstances of any particular institution.

This article is general market-structure research, not a business introduction, product description or offer of any company, and makes no representation regarding licensing arrangements in any jurisdiction. Each case is governed by its local regulatory framework and cannot be extrapolated across borders.

Mainland China imposes strict restrictions on virtual-asset-related businesses; this article does not constitute an offer or solicitation to persons in the mainland. Readers should not make trading, product, licensing or other business decisions based solely on this content. For legal, compliance, tax or investment matters, please consult a qualified professional adviser.