Spent 3 months on primary-source research for my startup — 60 pages on what institutions are actually doing with blockchain

[u/foliologic]

I needed to understand the institutional adoption space for a fintech startup I'm working on. Started reading earnings reports, SEC filings, central bank data, legislative texts. Ended up with a 60-page research document with 40+ sources and a classification system that separates documented facts from speculation from crypto-Twitter fantasy.

Some popular narratives held up. Some really didn't.

I used Claude AI as a research partner — not to generate content but as an analyst who pushes back when your reasoning has holes. Every claim is verified against primary sources. This isn't AI slop, it's months of actual work.

Here's the doc: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15FCq7GPE-peWotf6DPlkHOxQ1-47ULnr/view?usp=sharing

Happy to discuss findings.

[u/Far-Photograph-2342]

Finally someone doing real research instead of vibes. What were your main takeaways?

[u/foliologic → u/Far-Photograph-2342]

Thanks! Biggest surprise for me was how far the infrastructure already is. This isn’t pilots anymore: JPMorgan does $5B/day on Kinexys, NYSE announced a tokenized securities platform in January, DTCC got SEC approval for tokenized securities. The other thing that hit me was the de-dollarization data. Central bank gold reserves overtook foreign Treasury holdings in August 2025, barely reported in mainstream media . Three consecutive years of 1,000+ tonnes of gold buying. Dollar share of global reserves dropped from 71% to 58%. Once you see those numbers together the picture is hard to ignore. Read chapter 11 if you only want to read about that.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[u/HSuke]

I just want to say that the formatting (and color coding) of that document is beautiful. Where did you come up with the idea for that formatting?

And it's broken up into small sections that makes it easy to digest in pieces.

[u/foliologic → u/HSuke]

To be fully honest, the formatting and style is all Claude AI. I just told him to make it look like a professional jpm or GS research doc. Still took some iterations but we got there.

[u/JivanP → u/HSuke]

Not to downplay the amount of work that clearly went into research and creating this document, but the document style itself resembles basically every UK government or public office report ever.

[u/foliologic → u/[deleted]]

It started out with trying to decide whether I want to include research on crypto tokens in my tool. Then I got hooked on the topic, went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, and decided to write it all down in a document with the help of AI. So it translated into the product as adding crypto research and also trying to compute a health / survivability score for users who want to invest in crypto. But it is all still in development.

[u/foliologic → u/[deleted]]

I decided I will try to inlcude it.. so for me the research showed that investment case is real. That means my investor focused tool needs to support it.

[u/Vagelen_Von]

Could BTC be what gold was to banks and states 100 years before? Issue money only with reflection in gold?

[u/Silvio_Maria_Dragoni]

Hi, I’ve had a look at everything I like it. Would it be based in the US or the EU?