Institutional adoption of digital assets is already in motion, not just on the horizon, according to Cassie Craddock, Ripple's managing director for the U.K. and Europe. In an April 20 post on X, she stated the shift is visible across multiple Paris-based industry events.
Focus Moves From 'If' to 'How'
Craddock attended the Ripple Roadshow Paris, Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Mastercard Crypto Day at the Eiffel Tower, and a Société Générale-FORGE event at the French Ministry of Finance. She noted that conversations no longer question whether institutions will engage with crypto. Instead, banks, asset managers, fintechs, and regulators are all discussing infrastructure, deployment standards, and real-world use cases that can operate at scale within regulated frameworks.
“The debate has moved on. The focus is on infrastructure and real-world use cases. And the people I was fortunate enough to spend time with this week are the ones building it,” Craddock wrote.
Structured Buildout Takes Center Stage
The executive referenced speakers including David Durouchoux, Myles Harrison, and Frédéric Dalibard. She said the mix of participants—spanning banks, asset managers, fintechs, and regulators—shows that multiple parts of the financial system are aligning on questions of scale and execution. Rather than dwelling on abstract potential, the Paris gatherings zeroed in on how to build and apply digital asset systems in a structured manner.
“The energy was real, the momentum even more so,” she concluded. These remarks suggest that institutional interest has shifted from long-term expectation to active development, with Paris Blockchain Week serving as a concrete signal of accelerating adoption in mainstream finance.