Legacy crypto on-ramps and bridges will disappear as payments become invisible, Fun CEO says

Legacy crypto infrastructure such as standalone on-ramps and blockchain bridges is destined to disappear as digital asset applications adopt unified payment systems that make moving money onchain largely invisible to users, according to Fun CEO Alex Fine.

Rather than forcing users through separate funding, bridging and conversion steps, Fine said the next generation of crypto applications will embed payments directly into the user experience, abstracting away the underlying blockchain complexity. The shift, he argued, mirrors traditional Web2 payments, where consumers rarely think about the infrastructure processing their transactions.

"The age of on-ramps will be completely dead and the age of external bridging sites will be dead," Fine told CoinDesk in an interview. "Nobody wants to use a bridge for the purpose of using a bridge. They want to use an application."

Fun is a payments infrastructure company that builds the backend technology connecting traditional payment systems with blockchain networks. Rather than operating as a consumer-facing exchange or wallet, it provides APIs that allow fintechs and crypto applications to embed deposits, withdrawals, settlement and checkout directly into their products, abstracting away the complexity of moving funds between fiat currencies, stablecoins and blockchains.

Building the plumbing behind crypto apps

The comments come as prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, along with tokenized equities platforms, continue to attract growing numbers of users and trading activity.