Columbia professor: XLM fits global finance, ETH does not

Austin Campbell, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, has argued that Ethereum (ETH) is unsuitable as a global financial infrastructure for tokenizing real-world assets (RWA), following the selection of Stellar (XLM) for a project by the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Writing on X, he stated that censorship-resistant money and the mainstream global financial system are incompatible, adding that decentralization comes with real costs that often far outweigh its benefits. Campbell explained that Stellar was chosen because it offers open access while using a trust-based consensus algorithm, which allows financial institutions to select their partners directly. He also noted that its Layer 1 supports control functions like asset freezes, seizures, and whitelisting. To become mainstream financial infrastructure, he argued, a ledger must be open but also possess censorship capabilities to block malicious actors. The DTCC recently announced plans to tokenize its custodial assets on the Stellar network, with a target launch in the first half of 2027.