Crypto.com institutional adoption is entering what the exchange’s new Managing Director calls a defining phase, as Iskandar Vanblarcum takes charge of its institutional strategy with a mandate to build the on-chain infrastructure that traditional finance increasingly expects.
Vanblarcum joined Crypto.com Exchange after more than two decades spanning investment banking and financial market infrastructure. His CV includes senior roles at the London Stock Exchange Group and Barclays, followed by a stint at OKX, where he worked on global regulatory and business development before making the move to Crypto.com. Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com’s CEO, described him as ‘the perfect choice to lead our growing product offering and expand our client base as more institutions look to access on-chain assets.’
The CFTC Licence Stack That Sets the Stage
Vanblarcum’s arrival comes on the back of a regulatory milestone that underpins much of what he wants to build. On 30 September 2025, Crypto.com announced it had secured a full stack of US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) derivatives licences through its affiliate Crypto.com Derivatives North America (CDNA), becoming the first major cryptocurrency platform globally to hold all three: an FCM (Futures Commission Merchant), a DCM (Designated Contract Market), and a DCO (Derivatives Clearing Organisation) licence.
The CFTC’s DCO filing registry shows CDNA received its registration order on 26 September 2025, with permission to clear margined futures alongside fully collateralised futures, options on futures, and swaps. The amended DCM licence extends that reach further, allowing CDNA to offer margined derivatives trading across cryptocurrencies and other asset classes, in addition to fully collateralised products through its prediction markets.
For Vanblarcum, this is the regulatory foundation that makes the rest of the strategy viable. ‘Prediction markets are rapidly becoming one of the most in-demand financial instruments available,’ he says. ‘We’re at a similar stage to where derivatives were in the 1980s.’ Institutions, he argues, already understand the instruments; what they need is a regulated, compliant venue to access them.
Crypto.com Institutional Adoption: BlackRock, Securitize, and the Collateral Shift
The CFTC licences are only part of the picture. On 18 June 2025, Securitize, the tokenisation platform behind BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, announced that BUIDL would be accepted as margin collateral on both Crypto.com and Deribit simultaneously. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said: ‘With BUIDL now accepted as collateral on Crypto.com and Deribit, the fund is evolving from a yield-bearing token into a core component of crypto market infrastructure.’
The mechanics matter for anyone thinking about what this means in practice. A tokenised fund (one where ownership is recorded on a blockchain rather than in a traditional register) can now sit as collateral in a trading account, earning yield while simultaneously backing live positions. That removes what Vanblarcum calls ‘the friction of idle collateral.’ According to Crypto.com’s own announcement, access is restricted to qualified institutional clients and advanced traders.
Deribit, which joined Crypto.com in the announcement, is the largest crypto options exchange by volume, having recorded over $1.1 trillion in trading volume in 2024. Coinbase was in the process of acquiring Deribit for $2.9 billion at the time of the June 2025 announcement, according to Forbes. The involvement of that platform, alongside a $29 billion tokenised fund managed by the world’s largest asset manager, illustrates the calibre of counterparties now engaging with on-chain infrastructure.
The Securitize announcement framed BUIDL’s shift from a yield product to a collateral instrument as a structural evolution rather than a one-off arrangement. Vanblarcum positions the BUIDL integration as a starting point, not a destination. The next phase, he says, involves bringing perpetual markets for real-world exposures, including equities, commodities, metals, and pre-IPO assets, on-chain with round-the-clock access.
On the broader tokenisation opportunity, industry estimates cited by Vanblarcum place tokenised digital securities at a potential $16 trillion market by 2030, growing to $19 trillion by 2033. The assets in scope stretch well beyond what most ISA holders would associate with crypto: bonds, real estate, commodities, and funds are all candidates for on-chain representation.
For retail investors watching from the sidelines, the question is whether any of this filters through into products accessible below the institutional threshold. Vanblarcum’s two-year target is to establish Crypto.com Exchange as the platform institutions trust as financial markets move on-chain. If that infrastructure matures as planned, the products built on top of it may eventually reach a broader investor base. The approval of Bitcoin ETFs in the US was, by his own account, only the beginning of that journey.
