Patrick Witt Sees Bitcoin (BTC) and Traditional Finance Merging at Upbit's UIS 2026

One Financial System

Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House President's digital asset advisory committee, told a Seoul audience on September 29 that digital assets and traditional finance are on course to merge into a single financial system — not two markets competing for share, but one in which assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) settle alongside conventional instruments. His remarks came at the Upbit Institutional Summit (UIS) 2026, hosted by Dunamu, the operator of the Upbit exchange, at the Grand Walkerhill in Seoul's Gwangjin-gu district; the company's official announcement confirms Dunamu declared the summit successfully concluded on September 30.

In a fireside chat with Dunamu chief brand impact officer Yoon Sun-joo, Witt centered on the blockchain industry's most contested US legislative file: the CLARITY Act, the pending market-structure bill that would define which federal agency supervises spot trading in digital commodities. He argued that despite the bill's stalled legislative progress, Washington's digital asset policy direction has not changed, and that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's authority over digital-commodity spot markets and the scope of banks' digital asset activities still require further legislation to clarify. On the economics, Witt said digitally verifiable on-chain assets and new forms of collateral can improve transaction and settlement speed and liquidity, expanding payments and financial access while reducing inefficiencies in the legacy system. On Korea, he was direct: with market conditions stable, now is an important opportunity to weigh the issues carefully and build an appropriate institutional framework — and countries that build rules in which innovation can grow will capture the resulting opportunity.

Treasury Aide and Asian Regulators

The summit's guest list underscored how far the policy conversation has traveled. Jonathan Hurowitz, special advisor at the US Treasury's Office of Digital Asset Policy, attended alongside officials from major Asian financial regulators and domestic and international finance and digital asset executives. On the political front, Korean lawmakers Kim Sung-won of the People Power Party and Min Byung-deok of the Democratic Party delivered on-site congratulatory addresses, while US Representative Bryan Steil sent a video greeting.

The program dug into the mechanics of the new rulebook. Former CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz and Harry Jung, previously deputy director of the White House digital asset advisory committee, examined how the stablecoin market has shifted since the GENIUS Act and where CLARITY-driven market-structure discipline is headed — with the open question being how regulation actually translates into institutional participation and new financial services. A tokenization and institutional finance session featuring Caroline Pham, former CFTC acting chair, and Robinhood's Johann Kerbrat weighed what markets need for tokenization to move beyond experiments into real asset issuance and distribution, including trading through decentralized exchange infrastructure. Regulators from Indonesia's financial supervisory authority, Malaysia's Securities Commission and Thailand's securities regulator shared each market's development stage and regulatory direction, discussing how national regimes might interlink. A session on the on-chain transition of Korean finance brought together Dunamu's Choi Won-seok, Hana Financial Group's Eum Tae-sung, Samsung Financial Networks' Hwang Sung-won and Hanwha Investment & Securities' Ahn In-sung. Dunamu also presented its own infrastructure: the GIWA Chain blockchain network, the Dojang on-chain verification system and the Bojagi privacy technology. The discussion now continues at Korea Blockchain Week 2026, where Dunamu is a presenting partner from September 30, opening with CEO Oh Kyung-seok's keynote on building financial infrastructure beyond digital asset trading — work that spans PayFi and on-chain payments. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

CLARITY Act's Path Ahead

COINOTAG's reading: only one of the two frameworks anchoring Witt's visit is actually law. The blockchain sector's stablecoin statute, the GENIUS Act, binds permitted payment stablecoin issuers to reserve backing and redemption at par, phasing in within 18 months of enactment or sooner once final regulations issue; the CLARITY Act, by contrast, remains a pending proposal — no statutory CFTC spot-market jurisdiction exists yet. That gap is exactly why Witt pointed to further legislation for the CFTC's spot authority and banks' digital asset scope, and why he framed Korea's current stability as the window to legislate.