That comes from The Financial Grid, Fireblocks' 2026 survey of 638 senior decision-makers at transaction banks, investment banks, commercial and digital banks, custodians, market infrastructure firms and their corporate clients, fielded in January 2026.
The gap is usually read as regulatory caution. The survey points elsewhere. 96% of respondents expect incoming frameworks, including MiCA and evolving US guidance, to be favourable or very favourable. The obstacles it identifies are internal: skills gaps, operating model readiness, governance, and core system limitations.
In our experience one of those internal obstacles is connectivity. A desk that wants meaningful venue coverage isn't integrating once. It's integrating per venue — separate authentication, separate margin and collateral conventions, separate rate limits, separate error semantics, and breaking changes arriving on someone else's release schedule.
The venue map also doesn't hold still while you build. In the 30 days to 28 August 2026, the top eight perpetual futures DEXs turned over $423 billion, up 9.1% on the previous 30-day period, with Hyperliquid accounting for 58% of that top-eight volume. Venue relevance moves faster than most in-house integration roadmaps.
Budget is no longer the binding constraint. Delivery is.
