I’ve been thinking about on chain neobanks lately, and I feel like a lot of people are underestimating how big they could get.
There’s data showing the neobank market might grow from roughly $150B today to several trillion over the next decade. A big part of that seems to be the move away from traditional banking rails toward systems that are fully built on-chain.
What stands out to me is that on chain neobanks aren’t just “apps on top of banks.” Their core infrastructure lives on blockchains. Payments don’t stop on weekends, cross-border transfers don’t need multiple intermediaries, and most of the process is software-driven instead of tied to physical branches and slow back offices.
So it feels less like a user growth story and more like a structural change in how banking could work in a digital first world.
If this keeps moving in that direction, do you think on chain banking could actually become core financial infrastructure one day, or will it stay niche?
Are on chain neobanks being underestimated?
byu/Ok-Doughnut5042 inCryptoMarkets
Posted by Ok-Doughnut5042
2 Comments
Generally (with many things in crypto) the fundamentals are underestimated but the values are still overestimated. I am an avid DeFi user and love seeing new products emerge, and at the same time don’t see any of the tokens as real growth investment opps. Not just because of how much they are worth but the underlying use cases (really none outside of voting).
I think on-chain neobanks are underestimated, but not because they’ll “replace banks” overnight.
The key difference is that they’re not just fintech apps sitting on top of legacy rails. Their core settlement layer lives on-chain, which is a structural shift: 24/7 payments, instant finality, fewer intermediaries for cross-border transfers, and much lower operating costs.
That said, banking isn’t only a tech problem. Regulation, trust, UX, and integration with the existing financial system (salaries, taxes, credit) still matter a lot. That’s why I don’t see pure on-chain banks fully taking over in the short term.
The most likely outcome is a hybrid model: blockchains become the underlying financial infrastructure (settlement, payments, programmability), while user-facing layers and compliance evolve gradually.
Similar to how the internet didn’t kill companies but changed how they operate, on-chain banking probably won’t eliminate banks — but it will force them to adapt.