Why Crypto Keeps Recreating Banks

Crypto, which was supposed to make financial middlemen optional, is today run by centralized exchanges, prime brokers, stablecoin issuers, and asset managers. This isn’t necessarily a failure of blockchain, but it reveals how global finance actually operates. Intermediaries exist because market friction does not vanish when transactions move on-chain. Trades still need deep liquidity, fiat must be converted to digital tokens, and someone has to handle credit risk, maintain servers, or resolve disputes when a deal fails. The key question isn’t whether crypto can operate without institutions.