Claim OwnershipRebank: Fintech Analysis
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Financial innovation, technology advances, and social changes are sending shockwaves through the financial services industry.
In an age of increasingly rapid change, important questions, debates and developments are unfolding before our eyes. These ideas, and the choices we make in response to them, will shape our future.
Technology is vastly powerful, creating new industries in response to – or sometimes in anticipation of – changing customer expectations.
Rebank explores the trends, developments and challenges that define our age and shape the future role of money, banking and financial services.
In an age of increasingly rapid change, important questions, debates and developments are unfolding before our eyes. These ideas, and the choices we make in response to them, will shape our future.
Technology is vastly powerful, creating new industries in response to – or sometimes in anticipation of – changing customer expectations.
Rebank explores the trends, developments and challenges that define our age and shape the future role of money, banking and financial services.
254 Episodes
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Nikhil Raghuveera is the Co-Founder and CEO of Predicate, a company building on-chain policy infrastructure that enables organizations to set programmable, enforceable rules for transactions within blockchain-based financial systems. Predicate's technology underpins compliance and policy enforcement for next-generation stablecoins, privacy protocols, and real-world asset tokenization platforms. Before founding Predicate, Nikhil was Head of Strategy and Innovation at Celo, where he led many of the blockchain's early Web3 deployments and helped shape its evolution from a Layer 1 to Layer 2 network. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, focused on digital asset policy and the future of global financial systems. Earlier in his career, Nikhil worked in economic and management consulting, including at BCG, advising on securities, antitrust, and financial innovation. Bridging deep technical expertise with a sophisticated understanding of regulation and markets, Nikhil is helping define how institutions and fintechs operate on-chain as blockchain becomes a global financial settlement layer. Please enjoy the following insights from Nikhil Raghuveera.
Matt Homer is the Founder and General Partner of The Venture Dept., a venture capital firm investing at the intersection of fintech, digital assets, and regulation, with a particular focus on stablecoins and stablecoin infrastructure. Before founding The Venture Dept., Matt was a regulator at the FDIC and then the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), where he helped design and oversee some of the earliest digital asset frameworks in the U.S. He later joined Nyca Partners, a leading fintech venture firm, where he developed its digital asset investment strategy. Matt also serves on the boards of Gemini and Standard Custody (acquired by Ripple), bringing a unique blend of regulatory insight, fintech experience, and early-stage investing to one of the most rapidly evolving sectors in finance. Please enjoy the following insights from Matt Homer.
Will Peck is the Head of Digital Assets at WisdomTree, a $130 billion asset manager and ETF sponsor and a pioneer in tokenized assets. Over his 11-year tenure at WisdomTree, Will has helped the firm navigate the evolution from ETFs to tokenized assets, stablecoins, and on-chain investment infrastructure. WisdomTree is at the forefront of innovation, applying lessons from ETFs—transparency, liquidity, tax efficiency, and standardization—to build scalable, accessible tokenized products for both institutional and retail investors. With ongoing regulatory developments and growing adoption of digital assets, WisdomTree is well positioned to expand its tokenized ecosystem.
Raghu Yarlagadda is the Co-founder and CEO of FalconX, the leading institutional digital asset prime brokerage. In the last year, FalconX has done $1 trillion in trading volume across spot and derivatives. FalconX is an incredible success story, starting early and growing alongside broader institutional adoption of crypto and digital assets. With current regulatory tailwinds, the company is extremely well positioned to accelerate growth even further. FalconX has raised nearly $500m, most recently at an $8 billion valuation, from investors including Accel, GIC, B Capital, Altimeter, Thoma Bravo, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Wellington and many more. Please enjoy today's conversation with Raghu Yarlagadda.
Today we're joined by Bhaji Illuminati and Jürgen Blumberg. Bhaji is CEO of Centrifuge, one of the original players in the RWA space. Jürgen is a former Goldman ETF exec and, as of recently, COO of Centrifuge and CIO of Anemoy, it's asset management arm. In this conversation, Bhaji, Jürgen and Will Beeson dive into the evolution of investment management toward an on-chain markets future. We discuss the early growth of the tokenized financial asset market, similarities with the early days of ETFs, current on-chain investment capital pools and investor demands, the interplay between stablecoin growth and tokenized assets, use cases and distribution strategies for assets across the risk curve, the relationship between DeFi and TradFi, future market expectations, and much more.
Chris Yin is the co-founder and CEO of Plume, a crypto-native RWA blockchain. Real-world assets, RWAs for short, are financial assets implemented in token form. Alongside stablecoins, these assets are at the heart of the transition of financial markets onto upgraded settlement rails in the form of blockchains. Chris brings an interesting perspective to the RWA conversation. Whereas some firms, including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, are focused on building institutional-grade offerings that mirror traditional financial products, Plume takes a different approach. Pointing to the success of crypto-native markets, Plume's ecosystem bridges speculative retail users and experiences with yield from traditional financial assets, on the premise that crypto energy is the source of the demand that will pull finance on-chain. In this conversation, Chris and Will Beeson discuss the state of the RWA market, what's real and what's hype, the importance of crypto-native users, why there are multiple successful approaches to bringing finance on-chain, and what it takes to build and scale a thriving RWA ecosystem.
Sandy Kaul is the Executive Vice President and Head of Innovation at Franklin Templeton, the OG global asset manager when it comes to tokenization and digital assets. In this conversation, we dive into the newly passed GENIUS Act and what it means for stablecoins, banks, and the future of cash. We explore Franklin Templeton's journey launching BENJI, their tokenized money market fund, way back in 2019, long before most firms were paying attention to digital assets. We also dig into Sandy's views on consumer accounts, payments, and investments in an on-chain world.
Kirill Gertman is the founder and CEO of Conduit, a leading B2B cross-border payments platform powered by stablecoins. Conduit leverages stablecoins to allow businesses to move money faster, cheaper and more transparently than legacy platforms such as SWIFT. In 2024, Conduit grew transaction volumes 16x year-on-year, surpassing $10 billion in total volume. In May 2025, Conduit raised a $36 million Series A, co-led by Dragonfly and Altos. In this conversation, Kirill and Will Beeson discuss the true economics of stablecoin versus traditional payments, when stablecoin payments make sense, and when they don't, how corporates use stablecoin payments alongside traditional payments in practice, what needs to change for stablecoin payments companies to win more use cases, how the stablecoin issuance market will evolve post GENIUS, and much more.
In this episode, we're joined by Luke Voiles, the CEO of Pipe — an embedded finance platform offering credit, cards, and other financial products to a range of B2B2B partners. Founded as a revenue-based financing business, Pipe pivoted into a platform business under Luke's directly when he took the reigns in 2023. Prior to joining Pipe, Luke was the GM of Banking at Square and previously head of QuickBooks Capital, Intuit's SMB lending offering. Luke has nearly 10 years of embedded finance experience, especially in lending, and has shaped Pipe's offering based on his extensive learnings. In this conversation, Luke and I discuss what makes a good embedded finance offering, the opportunities and challenges in credit, including the economics, cyclicality and risk management considerations, Pipe's distribution strategy, scaling a fintech platform business internationally and much more.
Mark Garabedian is the Director of Digital Assets and Tokenization at Wellington, a leading US-based, global asset manager with approximately $1.3 trillion in AUM. Mark has wide ranging experience in trading and financial markets and brings a highly informed perspective to the topic of financial market innovation through digital assets and blockchain. I find Mark's views to be particularly valuable, because they skew heavily toward the practical, as opposed to the theoretical, informed by decades of hands-on markets experience. In this conversation, Mark and Will Beeson discuss the transformational benefits of digital assets and tokenization in investments and markets, step function improvements DeFi has delivered and the implications for traditional finance, the specific projects Mark and Wellington are working on today, the path that Wellington, a nearly 100-year-old asset manager, has taken so far on its digital asset journey, and much more.
Alex Gluchowski is the co-inventor of ZKsync and co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. ZKsync is an advanced Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain network offering privacy and scalability using zk proofs. In this conversation, Alex and Will Beeson discuss the benefits of zk technology for financial use cases, architectural considerations in building blockchain networks for complex industries like finance, optimal infrastructure for tokenized financial assets and workflows, ZKsync's trustless network + shared liquidity vision and more.
Kevin Miao is one of the most insightful practitioners at the intersection of traditional and on-chain finance. Until recently, Kevin was General Partner of BlockTower Credit, a $1.9 billion AUM private credit fund that leveraged public blockchains, stablecoins, and tokenization to maximize capital efficiency. Prior to BlockTower, Kevin managed a Structured Credit trading desk at Citigroup, focusing on consumer credit, esoterics, and distressed crisis-era securitizations. Currently, Kevin leads growth at Steakhouse Financial, a DeFi-native advisory and technology business that helps manage the biggest DAOs in web3. In this conversation, Kevin and I explore the theory and practice of running an on-chain credit fund, the benefits and challenges versus the traditional model, current limitations in on-chain investment management, and potential paths to upgrading finance with blockchain rails.
Steven Goldfeder is the Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, one of the leading blockchains. Arbitrum's flagship blockchain, Arbitrum One, is a leading Ethereum L2 in terms of TVL and liquidity and supports applications across DeFi, DePIN, AI, gaming, RWAs and other verticals. In this conversation, Steven and I discuss Arbitrum's origins, the use cases that have driven its success so far, and expectations for Arbitrum's role in the transition of regulated financial activity onto blockchain rails.
Laszlo Szabo is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kiln, a staking infrastructure provider backed by 1kx, Crypto.com, Wintermute, GSR, Kraken Ventures, Consensys and others. Diana Biggs is a partner at 1kx, a crypto VC that has led rounds in companies including Arweave, Pudgy Penguins, Rarible, Wallet Connect and many more. In this conversation, Laszlo, Diana and Will Beeson break down the staking opportunity and Kiln's view of the space and also use it as a jumping off point to explore 1kx's investment strategy. Specifically, we discuss staking as a crypto primitive, its potential to supercharge consumer and institutional crypto use cases, the investment thesis behind staking infrastructure, technical considerations and more.
Luca Prosperi is the founder and CEO of M^0, a stablecoin issuance protocol reimagining how money is created. We first connected with Luca in May 2023, shortly after M^0's seed round. Fast forward a year, and the company has now raised $60 million, launched on mainnet and facilitated the issuance of over $40 million in stablecoins with its initial network participant. In this conversation, Luca and Will Beeson discuss his vision for a new money creation paradigm, institutional product/market fit in stablecoins, why crypto finance is different from blockchain for banks, overcoming the cold start problem in stablecoin distribution and network creation, the direct parallels between traditional finance and the use cases M^0 is building and more.
Nick van Eck is the co-founder and CEO of Agora, a US-based stablecoin issuer backed by Dragonfly, General Catalyst, Galaxy, Consensys, Wintermute, Flowdesk, Kraken Ventures and more. Agora's strategy is to build distribution through B2B partners via a revenue sharing model, in which all parties that contribute to Agora's stablecoins' success share in the upside. Prior to founding Agora, Nick worked at General Catalyst, a leading Venture Capital firm. Nick's grandfather started VanEck Global, a US ETF and mutual fund manager, in 1955, which informed much of Nick's thinking about markets and the economy. Today, VanEck Global manages $100 billion across a range of products, including recently launched Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. In this conversation, Nick and I discuss crypto as an asset class and parallels to gold and other investments, the current state of the stablecoin industry and its future trajectory, Agora's thesis vis-à-vis incumbent stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether, Agora's business model and the details of its go-to-market, and much more.
Lex Sokolin is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Generative Ventures, a crypto and AI focused venture firm. Lex also publishes research and analysis at Fintech Blueprint, one of the best fintech, crypto and emerging tech newsletters out there. In this conversation, Lex and I discuss his thesis at Generative Ventures, which invests in the financial infrastructure powering the machine economy. Lex is a deep thinker focused on the leading edges of what's currently possible. We're lucky to welcome him back on the podcast. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Lex Sokolin.
Bhanu Kohli is the co-founder and CEO of Layer2 Financial, a B2B payments company leveraging stablecoins for faster, cheaper payment processing. Mike Giampapa is General Partner of Galaxy Ventures, focusing on the intersection of crypto and financial services, security & DeFi applications, and developer tooling. In this conversation, Bhanu, Mike and Will Beeson discuss real economy applications of stablecoins, including payments. We compare Layer2's performance, economics and business model with traditional payments companies and look at potential applications for stablecoins in financial markets more broadly. This conversation was a fantastic look at a rapidly scaling, real-world use case for crypto and the disruptive potential of blockchain as financial infrastructure.
Edward Woodford is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zero Hash, a B2B technology and compliance platform that allows companies to embed crypto and stablecoins with a few lines of code and no regulatory overhead. Zero Hash has raised $170 million from investors including Bain Capital, Nyca Partners and Point72, and supports companies like Stripe, MoonPay, Interactive Brokers, Franklin Templeton and many others. In this conversation, Edward and Will Beeson discuss the most interesting crypto and stablecoin market opportunities in 2024, building digital asset infrastructure, landing blue chip clients, closed vs. open-source in crypto, the leadership ethos that has allowed the company to grow and thrive in a volatile market and more.
Regan Bozman is co-founder of Lattice Capital, a crypto-focused VC firm, and an expert in token launches and secondary trading dynamics. Lattice manages $80m across two funds, with a focus on early-stage crypto projects. Prior to founding Lattice, Regan and his partner Mike Zajko worked at CoinList, a leading platform for new token launches operating since 2017. In this conversation, Regan and Will Beeson discuss the current state of retail crypto trading, various interpretations of memecoin energy, lessons for building community with airdrops, tension between VCs and retail token investors, managing a venture fund in a narrative versus fundamentals driven market, the rationale for LP allocation to crypto and more.
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