Miami — Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is not dying but instead moving deeper into the financial mainstream alongside the rise of AI agents, crypto executives participating in the Securing the Next Decade of Decentralized Finance panel Thursday at Consensus Miami 2026.

“Crypto is absolutely hurtling into the mainstream,” said Hunger Horsley, co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management. “Stablecoins, tokenized assets and DeFi are part of that.”

The panel came weeks after a series of DeFi North Korean hacker exploits, including Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO, which resulted in roughly $600 million in losses, drawing criticism over the sector’s security.

DeFi is “an inevitable future,” said Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro,…