The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin's Next $4 Trillion Catalyst - Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

When BlackRock needed to tokenize their first fund, they called Securitize. When the New York Stock Exchange decided to trade stocks 24/7 on-chain, they called Securitize. In this interview, CEO Carlos Domingo reveals why the DTCC is repeating the same fatal mistake the telecom companies made when WhatsApp arrived, why the banks actually need the Clarity Act far more than crypto does, and what happens when AI agents start trading tokenized assets in real time. Carlos breaks down the Jump Trading partnership, how atomic swaps are replacing T+1 settlement, why BlackRock choosing Securitize changed everything for institutional adoption, and his vision for a future where tokenized stocks, ETFs, and AI-powered portfolios all live in one wallet — and you don't even know you're using a blockchain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When BlackRock needed someone to tokenize their first fund, they called him. When the New York Stock Exchange decided to trade stocks 24-7 on chain, they called him. When jump trading, the largest crypto market maker on Wall Street needed a partner the morning of this interview, they called him. Carlos Domingo built securitized from nothing into the company that every giant in finance now depends on to move real-world assets on chain. Today, Carlos reveals why the DTCC is repeating the same fatal mistake, The telecom companies made when WhatsApp showed up.

The DTCC model is just about preserving the existing market structure. Same market structure, same market participants, same T plus one settlement. Kind of feels that they're not going to take advantage of the power of, you know, public wealth chains. Why the banks need the Clarity Act far more than crypto does. Crypto people have been doing whatever they want, no matter how much they'd be complaining,

and maybe they have to file one or two lawsuits here and there, but institutions are very conservative. Without 100% regulatory clarity and making sure, and making sure that they're not taking any risk. They're not going to do it. What happens when AI agents start trading tokenized assets? You have the agents that can actually trade in real time, but you also have assets that are on chain that move in real time,

how that could transform capital markets. It's very interesting. And much more. Let's go. I decided to do three minutes of prep. I do a quick Google search and see what's the cure that ties up to today. And in the last four or five hours, I think I had to scroll three pages just to see the news. tokenization is absolutely exploding.

It is finally happening, yes. Finally happening, but you were far ahead of the curve. Does it surprise you even how fast it's happening? It surprised me it didn't happen before because this is kind of like the most obvious use case for crypto and for blockchain, right? But it also surprised me how it didn't happen for a long time and now it's like really exploding. Like there's literally every single company, even companies that were not doing tokenization,

like this morning, we announced that they are for inequity that they're getting, you know, into the space. So the announcement I saw this morning was with jump. That's the announcement we did, yes, with jump trading. Okay, so what is it? These days, it seems like you have a new partnership every day. So what is that announcement specifically?

So one of the things that we are pushing towards is what we refer to as native tokenization of stocks. There's some tokenized stocks out there that are like derivatives or price swaps and there's like five different versions of the same tokenized Tesla and all of them representing actual equity in Tesla. So we've been pushing for the model where the token does represent the same instrument, the same security, the same QSIP, the same rights, the same dividend, you know, voting rights, whatever.

And then when you tokenize things, the number one question is, why are you going to do with the tokenized stocks? You put them on the blockchain for what, right? So, and obviously what one of the things that people want to do is to make them liquid on the blockchain, make instant settlement, trading 24-7, etc. And that involves two different things, or three different things. involves one is the trading infrastructure on chain that uses permission and its infrastructure for trading, you know, permission assets because securities are permission.

It requires market makers. And it also requires, you know, a flow of like they say, crypto people that can actually access that, right? So today we announce a partnership between us, which are the main, you know, tokenization platform, but we're also a regulated broker dealers. We can actually trade stocks. Jam trading, who is the largest crypto market maker by a mile. and it's probably one of the most influentials also propped trading firms in in ball street and they've developed something called a prop a mm which is like an on-chain proprietary amm for trading you know any sort of crypto but they can also extend to

stocks and the third leg of the partnership is jupiter who is the largest if you want defy up and on solana that is going to bring the audience so recently the sc issue an objection letter saying that you know front hands like they say jupiter or metamask or phantom they can actually you know, send trades to a broker deal as far as the broker deal is the one doing the trades for tokenized securities. So, so we're taking advantage of that no action letter. Then, you know, the partnership we jam as a largest market maker and you prefer to create the audience and us, you know, dealing with the rest. So I think we're in the first inning still, right, of tokenization, even with all of this news and everything that's happening,

this is the first iteration of what's possible. Is that accurate? I mean, I guess stable coins are the first iteration of what's possible? Stable coins are probably the most successful tokenized asset. There's no argue about that. They're like more than $300 billion, there's 10 times bigger than the rest of the RW space. I think that Chair Atkins at a conference a few weeks ago, he said something that we are at the end of the beginning.

And it kind of resonates with me because it felled away in tokenization. We are, we finished the beginning. So I think all that stuff that we needed to do in terms of getting infrastructure, licenses, regulatory clarity, et cetera. And then the first kind of like the institution coming on board.

But now the next journey is to actually make this a reality and grow it to like a trillion dollar in Berlin. You said regulatory clarity. You didn't say legislative clarity. How important is that? Because tokenized securities are securities, right? So for you, it's the SEC. Yeah, we don't need to.

It's a misperception about what Congress needs to do versus the SEC. I think the SEC has a lot, you know, room to do things without having to go to Congress. Of course, if certain things are absolutely new, like stable coins are new, right? So going to Congress to just, putting in on legislation so nobody can actually change them after that.

It's probably a good idea. But in the case of tokenized securities, there are securities, right? So the SEC has all the, you know, room to maneuver to basically allow people to use crypto infrastructure in a regulator matters. Is there anything that we still need to see from the regulatory side to open more avenues for you or do you have all the clarity you need? We have enough clarity to do a ton of things, but there is more things that I would like to. So a lot of the regulations are actually not built for a digital.

So like we are a transfer agent, which is basically the SSE register entity that takes securities and puts them on a ledger and we put them on a public distributed letter and on a blockchain. But transfer agents have very all outdated regulations in terms of how they need to deal with shareholders. They need to know their physical addresses. Well, if I have their wallet and the email, then I can communicate with them. I don't want a physical address.

I don't want to mail proxy votes and paper or like. So there's a lot of like small things that are not designed for a, you know, pure native digital world that we will like to modernize. We submitted a very long letter to the SEC to the Crypto Task Force with like one by one regulation, 14, six, seven, like whatever. It's like very complicated. All the things that we want to modernize on transfer agency. The second thing I think is that the, you know, tokenized stocks trade under traditional market structure, right? You have a DTCC as a clearinghouse, T plus one settlement, the national exchange, the record dealers and they have things like the best price, best execution that everybody has to comply with. Once you move them on the

blockchain, some of those things that probably don't need them and not using them actually will provide more flexibility in terms of trading. So I mean, it's so ridiculous to even think about T plus one. I know. How about T plus zero seconds? This is T plus block, right? So every block you can actually settle a trade. We actually announced this week that we got a license from the SSEM that allow us to do custody

of tokenized securities with our broker-dealer, but it allows also to do atomic swaps between stable coins and tokenized securities. And that means that we could actually settle the trade in a block. Like every time the blockchain, you know, it's a new block that could include a trade that has settled in that particular incident. So, yeah, it's pretty amazing if you think about it. Yeah. I mean, one of the stories this week with the DCCC saying that they're going to run a pilot,

basically, in July of tokenized equities. I believe I saw your name in there among the 50 institutions. We were actually not there. Participate. I think that this is the DTCCC is we're not, we're proposing a different model and I think they probably, if you think if you look at who was not there, super state was not there, we were not there, sent your future was not there, all the transfer agents, computers here. Why is that?

Because the DTCC model and obviously all the respect for them for trying to innovate and do new things, that's great, but it's just about preserving the existing market structure. So I'll give you like a similar so you can understand that. I come from, I used to work. in telecommunications many years. And then when WhatsApp came, the Telcos, instead of trying to build a WhatsApp, which is open, anybody can download it, anybody can communicate with anybody's on the

open internet, it's, you know, free, whatever. They were trying to improve SMS. Because SMS is where the Telcos make money and then they're trying to kind of maintain the incumbency position, they're trying to add features. There's kind of feels a little bit like what the DTCC is doing. It's a bit of that, right? Like same market structure, same market participants, same

T plus one settlement, the tokens is not clear, but it doesn't seem that you would be able to take those tokenized entitlements that don't do native tokenization and put them on a self-cost your wallet of an individual investor and then take them to a Dify protocol and borrow against them. So it kind of feels that they're not going to take advantage of the power of, you know, public blockchains and it's going to be kind of more operational improvements into the existing market structure, which, you know, it's less interesting in my opinion. It's interesting in that they're adopting a technology to replace the dinosaur technology, but it doesn't really resonate with, I think, the broader audience

or retail because it's just plummet. They are actually not replacing their underlying infrastructure. They're kind of like layering up on top of it. So DTCC still will keep the securities on a centralized database, you know, with T plus one settlement, et cetera. They're only going to give you instead of like an entry in a database, they'll give you a token with an entry on a blockchain on the side. So it's, yeah.

Doesn't that somewhat speak to, or it's like a, cautionary tale, I guess, about the decisions and institutions have to make right now, like whether to build this out themselves or try to keep it within some sort of walled garden or to go to an Ethereum or a Salana, something permissionless and open. Basically a battle between the crypto incumbents and them just co-opting the technology and doing it in their existing system. Look, in innovation, there is a very famous book by a guy that unfortunately passed away like around 10 years ago called Platon Christensen.

is called the Innovator's Dilemma. And it talks about how an incumbent in an industry, what is trying to do with the new technology comes, is trying to serve better their existing customers and not try to serve the underserved customers. So if you think about what DTCs is doing, it's just it will help the broker-dealers that connect there. It will maybe help these changes,

but it's not going to serve, you know, a crypto guy with a Jupiter app and a wallet that wants to trade a tokenized stock and then borrow and a DFI protocol. That's not their target customer. Right. So it just feels that is a little bit this innovator's dilemma that they have to adopt some of this technology

because it's coming and they know. But usually people that go underneath and build something from scratch that leverage 100% of the power of new technology end up winning one of the time. When speaking to the big institutions, how do you convince them that working with you is the right path to take?

Because you've secured some of the largest names out there, obviously. So it's getting easier because two or two years ago, or maybe three years ago, It was more about like why tokenization, why securitized, etc. I think now about it's more about when and what do we do. Because obviously I think everybody at this point is convinced that tokenization is unavoidable, that is coming. All the institutions are embracing it one way or another. They've also seen, as you said, some of the biggest names already doing things and most of them fortunately doing with us.

So we can't check the box that I remember when when I won the BlackRock deal, which was very complicated, to be chosen by them. Rob Bolstein, their chief operating officer, and he told me, like, we're going to give you a hard time making sure you're up to the BlackRock standards, but when you're up to the BlackRock standards, then nobody's going to question you. Ever.

And that's exactly what has happened. It was very hard, very complicated. We had to do a lot of things in proving the company policies and procedures and infrastructure, but now we're there, and that's really typically not the discussion. It's more about, okay, we want to do an organization. What do we do? At what time, maybe which blockchain do we do in Solana?

We do with an Ethereum and things of that nature. With a company like BlackRock, everybody's sort of seen their public evolution. You know, you sort of watched Larry Fink seemingly get orange-billed in real-time on Bitcoin ETFs. But quietly, when everybody was talking about the ETFs, the same annual letters were talking about tokenization years ago. I always found that fascinating because everybody was so focused on the ETF race and it was such a good media story.

But he wrote more about tokenization of everything. And that was three or four years ago. So I think that first, you're going to give them a lot of credit because now everybody talks about tokenization. Now we have a friendly SEC. Now we have like a lot of like regulatory clarity that has come in the last few months from the SEC. But when they did it was two years ago. It was in March 2024. They didn't have that environment and they still decided to go for it.

They were very convinced as you're saying. They're founder and CEO openly talking about it. And in the annuals, hold a letter in CNBC, etc. So I think that if you can see that company like Lago, which is a very convinced that company like Lerger, which extremely large and accompanying within the industry that they took this very earliest step. I think it was a great thing that helped the entire industry, but obviously help us the most, but I think it moved the entire industry because once you see BlackRock coming then nobody else's questions. Say, say, wait, one securitized got the

stamp of approval from Black Rock that's the same for the whole industry. It's correct. It just validated that tokenization was a real use case, that there was a way to do it in a regulated way without getting into corruption with the regulators and that you could actually do it successfully because people don't remember. but the like black group the product that they did is Biddle which is the tokenized treasuries right when we launched Biddle that the whole tokenized treasury space was like three four hundred million dollars yeah it was frankly I remember when I hit a billion and we were celebrating and then he hit a billion when Black

rog entered then BlackRock hit first half 500 million then a million a billion then two billion now is about two billion and the entire industry is like now 11 billion and that growth has been driven you know primarily because of Black BlackRock entry in the space and not there's a ton of other people that are trying to do the same thing 11 billion is still is nothing dropping the bucket

Only BlackRock on the cash management part of the business which is where they sell treasury-based products and I don't want to get it wrong but I think they manage around

$2 trillion just BlackRock Right And then what's Black Rock's total assets underrated? 11 trillion 12 trillion I mean so when you look at these small numbers

you have to imagine that now that Black Rock also has internally accepted this as legitimate and the future that they have internal plans to do quite a bit more. I cannot speak on behalf of BlackRock, but... Can you speak on behalf of... Okay, so let me give me that non-specific to BlackRock on their plans.

I think it was just the idea that if they've done it and it's working, now you're going from them looking at this, you know, very cute, small thing to maybe having exposure to the full 11 trillion in their assets. I mean, that's what their CEO keeps saying, right? So it's not speaking on their behalf, but he's definitely passionate about it. And it definitely has the right vision of all these tens of millions of people with digital wallets, and digital native. They behave differently than other people that don't necessarily have access to the same

commercial services products that most of the professionally invest in Trump. And that's one of the things that tokenization solves, the democratization of access, which I think for a firm like Blackgrover and a lot of the manager, which is hugely important. So at the end of the day, they want more AUM. They want more customers using their products. And most of those will just be AI agents, right? Or maybe be agents, yeah. We don't need people.

When the organization is taking off, then we can have like AI, like hitting on the other. Do you have a plan? Is AI deep thought of part of your thought process? First, we've adopted AI a ton internally in our company for, not just all for programming. Obviously, all our developers have a lot of AI infrastructure. I use it myself all the time. It's just like a much more efficient way of producing. content creating, you know, summaries of meetings, you know, marketing materials,

what I want to cost. I just research topics. It's just a much more efficient. And we've published some articles about agentic trading and how when you have the two legs, like you have the agents that can actually trade in real time, but you also have assets that are on chain that move in real time, tokenized securities alongside tokenized dollars, stable points, how that would be to transform capital markets is very interesting. Yeah.

I find it fascinating. I think that that's, it's just mind-blowing how many transactions, even just in stable foines, are going to be done by agents. I mean, the numbers I see projected. I believe, because if you look at how quickly dollars move in the traditional industry for payments and stuff like that, securities move a lot more, right? Because first, the market is, you know, 50 times bigger and there's a lot more assets that trade, you know, a lot of every day.

So a lot of that is already automated, but it's not driven by AI, right? So that's kind of like the next evolution. Let's fast forward into the future. Your perfect vision for five years from now, what am I doing as an individual with a portfolio using tokenized assets? I think you have an app that the app has connectivity towards a bunch of different trading facilities

that you can buy and sell different tokenized assets with instant settlement, et cetera. And then you have an AI agent that works alongside you, gets to know you, understands your priorities life or you want to save money for retirement or you want to buy a house or you want to speculate with a portion of your assets, et cetera. And the more it learns like how your meets are, it just basically creates this portfolio that it's updated in real time. So that's actually a reality. I think that's definitely going to happen in five years. And is that the same wallet that I'm using

for all of my daily transactions and to buy coffee and to send my family a remittance to a foreign country? This is all one place. I think that this definitely has to be a convergence of kind of like the digital wallets that people use or the apps that people use with the crypto apps. Because part of the friction today to use crypto is the fact that, you know, they're disconnected. You have to create a new app. You have to maybe, I don't know, the wallet's the user experience that become better. But we still have to make blockchings a bit more transparent, right? Like that you're using a blockchain without knowing you've used in a GEPG.

I always talk about the same year. I'm younger than me, but when I started using internet, you have to download TCP IP software into your computer. you have to have a physical modern art side dial-up then you're connected then when you finish your session you disconnect from the internet today you open your phone you're open your laptop you're on the internet you don't even think that you're on the internet right so i think that the blockchain and and tokenized dollars and tokenized assets will break through the mainstream when that happens right that you use them transparently and the day that we don't talk about tokenized finance we just talk about finance they're the same way that today you don't talk about you're an internet

company. Yeah, they're just assets. They're not tokenized assets anymore. They're just assets. You know, 30-40 years ago, people say, I'm an internet company and they put a dot-com in their name. Nobody will do that today. What I find surprising, we talk about how fast all this adoption has been.

One thing that's been very slow, in my opinion, is the UXUI making, you know, because of private keys and because of all the things. My theory is that it's partly the fault of, without offending anybody, the VCs. Because VCs have been pouring money into infrastructure. obviously infrastructure with the whole token play and stuff like that from an investment perspective became a much more profitable business and then

if you build a consumer app and you hire a bunch of like you know UX designers and the UI developers etc how you're going to monetize that the first probably don't need a token and second how you're going to monetize that is just clear right so I think that if I look at the and then there was this this fat protocol thesis thing that happened

like you know eight years ago and a lot of the money pour into the infrastructure layer and a lot less money put into the app and the UI layer. Yeah. And I think that that's a reason why that part of the industry has developed less than the rest, right? Because at the end of it is a factor of how many companies

are working on solving a problem. It's obviously the biggest problem. It is the biggest problem. 100%. It's the old, you know, can grandma use it? It's exactly. It's definitely the biggest problem, in my opinion. How we simplify user experience,

so you don't have to think about past prices, you don't have to think about private keys. You know, when you don't have to sign transactions. Like, there's so much stuff that you do when you interact with a wallet and a crypto protocol that the normie is not going to be able to do it. Right, so I wonder if any of the sort of crypto-native wallet providers will end up winning, or if it's just going to be Schwab comes out with an app and... I don't know if Schwab.

Well, I mean, that's it. Maybe like Google or Apple or... I think it would be Coinbase. Yeah, I think Amazon and Apple. Yeah. So people that are like good at designing consumer and modern experience, right? Like they say Apple every time. Yeah, in your Apple wallet.

Even simple things. Like I use the Apple wallet. with a credit card. I mean, things that you will think that there's no room for improvement, right? So how I pay my credit card with my phone? They've actually... They've actually improved it, right?

So I think we need that kind of mentality coming into crypto, for sure. How far do you think we are from that? I think we're going to get close. I think that the fact that now token prices for companies are kind of depressed is going to move people more into thinking about equity value for companies

and then these companies that are more equity-based, say like a company at least, and then use their app. etc. are going to start getting more funded. And at the end of this, a factor of how many, how many people are solving in a problem to get solved, right? And then if the fact that now crypto is becoming regulated, hopefully the Clarity Act passes, etc,

I think that some of these more traditional providers, like I say Google or Apple or Amazon, that has been kind of a bit of on the sideline that they haven't actually done anything really in the crypto spaces, like maybe providing infrastructure, kind of enter the space and that helps, you know, accelerate. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I had a conversation with Chris John Carlo

was the ex-commissioner of the CFDC and he said something to me I hadn't really thought about. We were talking about the Clarity Act and he said, well, the banks need the Clarity Act much more than the crypto industry does. 100%. I think that's not the public perception. Everybody thinks the crypto industry needs clarity on what they can do, but they're doing everything

and the banks can participate because they don't have the clarity of what they can do. I do agree with that statement. I think crypto people have been doing whatever they want no matter how much they'd be complaining and maybe they have to fight one or two lawsuits here and there, but crypto has been moving forward, right? But institutions are very conservative. So without 100% regulatory clarity and making sure that they're not, you know, taking any

risks, they're not going to do it. And it's understandable, right? Like, it's kind of, we're talking about like a week four, but if you manage $12 trillion and you're going to make an asset that is a few billion dollars, you're not going to risk your own, you know, business by this thing that you think that maybe 10 years from now is going to be 50% of my business, but today is not, right? So I think for a lot of the banks and for everybody is kind of the same. But it's going to force its way to those levels and then they're going to have to do it.

So you're going to have this blockbust, I always joke, but the blockbuster Netflix situation where anyone who sees Netflix coming now, even if it's a few years away and adopts will survive, Visa, for example, right, the very heavy stable point volumes. They know exactly who's coming to eat their lunch. But if you wait until it's that day. If you wait until it's too late, it's too late. But look, if you look at the banks, with all the, you know, crypto people always complain about Jamie Diamond because he doesn't like Bitcoin, but if you think about the bank

that has historically always had the biggest team on blockchain, it's been actually JP Mark. From the very big, actually, Olli Harris was there at the Quorum team before even Kinesis, which is their blockchain business existed. He's just to come back to JPMorgan, which I think is a great thing for the industry and for him. But now Morgan Stanley invested in our company in 2021 and they've been in my board since 2021 and they didn't have anybody in charge of digital assets. that position didn't exist. And now recently, they appointed, I mean, older birds is great.

She's now driving like a ton of different initiatives across the business. He moved into the head partners, they're forced to hide us. That's what we need, right? Like somebody with a top-down mandate saying, this is an important thing that we can no longer ignore that now has regulatory clarity

and therefore the bindings not to get into. Jamie Diamond is so interesting to me because he's so dismissive of it, but you can see exactly what they're doing. But he's great also. The way he talks about everything. Is he trying to delay it? until they can have, you know, until they are completely built.

But I do believe you're starting to speak very positively, though, outside of Bitcoin. Yeah, I think he's never been a fan of Bitcoin because he's a traditional finance guy and doesn't see the value and a value that, you know, when I say that he's not backed by anything, right? But look, Morgan Stanley just really is a Bitcoin ETF. That's very interesting. Because Morgan Stanley arguably, it's a better bank for a Bitcoin ETF because they have a bigger wealth management, you know, arm. They have 16,000 guys out there telling you buy my product. So I think that in terms if you want to drive new money to Bitcoin, obviously like you're

huge, but Morgan Stanley pretty big in my opinion. Yeah, I thought that that was the biggest announcement we've seen in months that nobody understood Bitcoin related 100%. Yeah, 100% agree. Because not only did they basically open, clearly they want to make money on the product so they're going to be incentivized to have their advisors go out and sell it. They also came in at 10 bips under everybody else, which means they do want to compete in the in the new. business. Yeah.

And this is the most crowded space there is, whether 9 or 10 Bitcoin Spot ETS already. Yeah, I don't know how many are relevant. Probably BlackRock Fidelity Fuelers that take 90% of the volume. So I think, and then if you think about ETF space, there's many ATFs that have 10 or 15 different versions. Well, you'll have tokenized versions of these ETSs. And we hopefully will have tokenized versions of ETS. Yes, definitely TOTX is something.

TokenO's Bitcoin Spot ETFs are going to crush it in the market. The whole way like full circle. You take Bitcoin, put it on a traffic wrapper, and then tokenize it back into blockchain. And the Bitcoin Maxis will lose their minds. I thought they'll be so confused. So what do you think comes next in the process now? So maybe we get regulatory legislative clarity. I have my doubts, to be quite honest, it doesn't matter for you.

But we've seen the tokenized treasuries. We've seen the proliferation of stable coins. Is it the whole stock market next? I think tokenized stocks and stocks and ETFs, if you think about it, from a size perspective, is probably the biggest opportunity because just the New York Stock Exchange that we recently announced the partnership for they're going to be trading tokenized stocks 24-7 in a digital ATS and we're going to be the record dealer, the transfer agent, worked very, you know, involving that project. Just, you know, if 1% of that moves, it's $4 trillion.

It just kind of triples the size of the crypto industry today. And one person. I know one person is nothing. Now, these things always, the harder are the first ones. Like which one is going to be the first, like, mega company that is going to go and say, I'm going to tokenize. It's going to be Tesla. It's going to be invidio like Apple.

Then when you get the first, then getting the second is easier, the third and the 10th and the hundredth. And then that's when it explodes, right? So I think that the announcements of, you know, transfer agents coming into space, computer shares with us, and our affinity with bullies. I think, you know, New York Stock Exchange announcing that they're going to, you know, going to be trading those things, which is obviously the most legit, you know, trading venue that's going to be on-chain, all the projects like the one where, you know, we dump, etc. I think that is getting the issuers more interested in doing native tokenization to start coming

on-tail. So, and the one that happens, I think that's when this explodes. I don't even understand how markets can go 24-7, 365 for these stock traders and hedge fund guys, and they're going to die. or they have AI agents trading. Welcome, welcome to being one of us. But I mean, these guys are used to working, you know, seven to eight hour days and going to the Hamptons. But keep in mind, there's people sitting in different parts of the world, right?

So there's people in Asia. I mean, if this is... But they're going to have to hire three to four times more stuff. I don't know, but doesn't crypto trade 24-7? Yeah. And it's not a problem, right? It's always liquidity because when the liquidity is not here in the U.S., it's coming from Europe or is coming from Asia. So liquidity is always there because it's a 24-7 market.

And it trades on the news as well. like whenever happens something on the weekend, stock markets are closed, but cryptos are open. So crypto always reacts to news faster than the traditional markets. I think there's no question that traditional markets will move 24-7. I think they'll move on chain first, but I'm pretty sure that the rest of the market infrastructure, the DTCC is overall. They'll eventually do 24-7 in the next coming years. Of course, it will take them longer to upgrade the technology. But we'll live in a 24-7 world.

It's going to be automated. It is all Algo trading, AI agents, etc. Is there anything that stops this? Any big obstacles you see? Any black swan? To be honest, we haven't been in crypto already for many years. I think my main concern is some regulatory blow up with somebody doing something stupid. That's what we do.

We're the kings of the own goals. Exactly. So I think the fact that I keep seeing crypto people, crypto companies, I'm not going to mention anybody that do things that are questionable for me. a regulatory perspective the same way that in 2021 you could tell Celsius blockfi fdx is something obviously some of them like block try they were fine by the SEC so we're clearly doing something illegal but like um you know like seeing all these people that take regulatory risk just because now there is a more friendly SEC that is going to be less aggressive going after them

but that those regulatory risks means that that they can grow up at some point or they can do something that happens the same thing happened on defy in the last few weeks which has really damaged if I in my opinion. The same thing happened on the token is the space is going to scare the Trotsified people because the Trotsified people are going to be very, very careful.

I do remember, as I mentioned to you, in 2021 Morgan Stanley invested in our company. At that time, we did the first tokenized fund with a large asset manager was KKR. From page of the Wall Street Journal, I still have a copy of the physical page of the Wall Street Journal with a picture of me I've never been in the Wall Street Journal.

It was my first time. Now I've been many times. And I was like, well, that's it. We've made it. KKR comes. and then everybody called me, like, we want to do tokenized funds, and then FDX happened.

Yeah. I lost all the business overnight. Every single company on the pipeline said, like, we don't want to do. It was not just some. It was some, and it was this and that, and Celsius and Terra Luna. They were the straw that broke a very large,

but the whole industry was very frothy. There was a lot of people doing also shenanigans, and there was going to blow out one way or another one piece of it. So, and I'm tokenized, assets, if something like that happens, then it's pretty bad because it's going to scare the traffic people that we need coming here together with the crypto people to grow the pies. Well, let's not let that happen, man.

Thank you so much. I'm glad we finally got a chance to sit down and really appreciate the conversation. It's a very, very long time. Awesome. Me too. This podcast is sponsored by weeks and was recorded live at Consensus 2026. You can find out more about what they have to offer by clicking on the link down below in the description.

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