Digital exchanges should start eating what they cook

"CRYPTO'S coming-out party" was The New York Times headline when cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase had its IPO about a year ago. Other exchanges - including Binance, the largest of them all - have since engaged with big institutional investors in private equity markets. Another, FTX, secured big-name funding from Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) earlier this month, following previous backing from Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

The logic here is that when a crypto exchange needs to raise significant capital, there's no alternative to tapping the "TradFi" public and private equity markets.

I don't believe this is true.