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Centrifuge COO Jürgen Blumberg: “DeFi Is Having Its ETF Moment”

2025-08-13 16:25:11

Centrifuge COO Jürgen Blumberg: “DeFi Is Having Its ETF Moment”

Main Idea

Jürgen Blumberg, COO of Centrifuge, compares the current state of DeFi to the early days of ETFs, highlighting its potential to bridge traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) through tokenization and on-chain infrastructure.

Key Points

1. Blumberg sees parallels between the early skepticism around ETFs and the current DeFi sector, noting that DeFi is a new technology addressing limitations of traditional finance.

2. He clarifies misconceptions about DeFi, explaining that its concepts (e.g., TVL, liquidity pools) are similar to TradFi but with different terminology.

3. Blumberg emphasizes that not all tokenized assets are equal, drawing a comparison to the ETF industry where structure, risk, and quality vary.

4. He highlights global regulatory progress, citing developments in the U.S., Europe (MiCA), and Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore), and notes Centrifuge's growth toward $1 billion in TVL.

5. Centrifuge is partnering with institutions like S&P and is positioned for further expansion, with Blumberg believing the next decade's financial innovation will come from startups, not incumbents.

Description

After more than two decades scaling exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and capital markets businesses at Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and BlackRock, Jürgen Blumberg has joined Centrifuge as chief operating officer. Centrifuge is a DeFi platform for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) and using them as collateral in decentralized lending. Blumberg believes the decentralized finance sector is now experiencing a turning point—one that mirrors the transformative rise of ETFs in traditional finance. From ETFs t...

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