Brickken CEO Edwin Mata’s pitch is simple. He says European Union regulation is choking local startups, so the U.S. and “automated AI tools” will end up running the next wave of tokenized finance.
Mata’s argument appears in a CoinDesk report on June 9. The headline claim goes further, with Mata saying Wall Street will be “entirely onchain” by 2030. But the regulatory angle is the part that explains why he thinks that timeline plays out.
The core complaint: EU rules choke startups
According to CoinDesk, Mata argues that EU regulations create too much friction for emerging companies building tokenized finance products. His framing is that compliance burdens and regulatory constraints don’t just slow development. They shift power away from smaller regional builders.
That matters because tokenized finance startups need runway for experimentation. If regulation makes experimentation expensive or slow, fewer firms survive long enough to become mature infrastructure providers.
Who gets the room to build
CoinDesk reports Mata’s view that this regulatory squeeze leaves more room elsewhere. In his telling, the U.S. environment and “automated AI tools” are better positioned to drive adoption.
This is an implicit thesis about who wins in regulated tech. If incumbents and highly automated systems can absorb compliance cost faster, then the “center of gravity” moves. Mata is betting the future pipeline of tokenized products will be built with less dependence on local, small-footprint teams.
The “onchain Wall Street” bet
Mata’s 2030 claim, as reported by CoinDesk, is that major financial activity will be run entirely on-chain by then. That’s the type of statement you can’t validate from a single interview. Still, the reasoning he offers points to a mechanism. If tokenization and onchain settlement keep spreading, the likely beneficiaries will be those that can scale under regulatory constraints.
The risk for investors in any tokenized asset is obvious even without a price forecast. Assets tied to tokenized finance infrastructure are still exposed to policy swings, technology failures, and market liquidity shocks. “Onchain” changes the plumbing. It does not remove counterparty and execution risk.
What to watch next
If you take Mata’s argument seriously, the real deadline isn’t 2030. It’s the next set of regulatory enforcement signals and rulemaking outcomes that determine whether EU startups can operate without constantly redesigning their business models.
CoinDesk’s report gives one useful lens for tracking that. Watch whether compliance burdens get eased for smaller firms, or whether the cost of operating in the EU keeps rising relative to competitors in the U.S. Automated AI tooling can help with scaling. It can’t repeal regulation.
For readers tracking tokenized finance, Mata’s claim boils down to a contest over operational latitude. In regulated markets, whoever can ship the product while meeting the rules tends to capture mindshare. If EU rules reduce that latitude, the race will simply move location and pace.