SmarterMarkets™

We close out the year on SmarterMarkets™ with Part One of our Holiday Special 2025: The Year in Review.   2025 has been a big year full of big months here at Abaxx and at SmarterMarkets™, and we’re closing out 2025 by revisiting the conversations with our guests that helped us understand and articulate the themes that would come to define the year.    2025 was the year in which we discovered that this was not the energy transition that we were expecting; and the year in which a new geopolitical reality emerged and old geopolitical concerns resurfaced. It was the year featuring a tale of two carbon markets and the need for new weather markets to manage the risks posed by reliance on renewable power. And 2025 was the year in which there was both a new gold rush and a rush into tokenization.   We hope you’ll sit back, relax, and enjoy Part One of our Holiday Special 2025: The Year in Review.   Our guests in order of appearance:   Andy Home – Senior Metals Columnist, Thomson Reuters SM213 – 1.18.2025 – The State of Play in Battery Metals   Andrea Hotter – Special Correspondent, Fastmarkets SM214 – 1.25.2025 – The State of Play in Battery Metals   Peter Zaman – Partner, HFW Singapore SM218 – 2.22.2025 – Carbon Frontiers 2025   Nobuo Tanaka – Executive Director Emeritus, International Energy Agency (IEA) SM246 – 8.30.2025 – Summer Playlist 2025   Helima Croft – Managing Director & Global Head of Commodity Strategy, RBC Capital Markets SM245 – 8.23.2025 – Summer Playlist 2025   Dave Ernsberger & Mark Eramo – Co-Presidents, S&P Global Commodity Insights SM251 – 10.4.2025 – Catching Up On Climate   Rene Velasquez – Managing Partner, Valitera SM219 – 3.1.2025 – Carbon Frontiers 2025   Mark Lewis – Partner & Managing Director, Climate Finance Partners LLC and Former Head of Research, Andurand Capital SM216 – 2.8.2025 – Carbon Frontiers 2025   Hannah Hauman – Global Head of Carbon Trading, Trafigura SM250 – 9.27.2025 – Catching Up On Climate   Theresa Kammel & Pierre Buisson – Originator & Senior Structurer, Weather & Agro Zurich, Munich Re SM241 – 7.26.2025 – Summer Playlist 2025  

We close out our Re-engineering Tokenization series this week with Walt Lukken, President & CEO of the FIA and Former Acting Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. David Greely sits down with Walt to discuss the state of the conversation on tokenization in the cleared derivatives industry – and what the next steps are towards bringing tokenized assets into the mainstream.

This week on Re-engineering Tokenization, we welcome Leah Wald, Digital Title Lead at Abaxx Technologies, into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Leah to discuss her experiences and insights from a career working at the intersection of DeFi and traditional finance – and how she's working with Abaxx to re-engineer tokenization through the introduction of Abaxx Private Digital Title.

Re-engineering Tokenization continues this week with Christopher Jensen, Portfolio Manager & Director of Digital Asset Research at Franklin Templeton. SmarterMarkets™ host David Greely sits down with Christopher to discuss his experience tokenizing money market shares with their BENJI token – and the challenges and opportunities that he sees for both the builders and the investors in tokenization for real-world and digitally native assets.

This holiday weekend on our Re-engineering Tokenization series, we welcome Julian Kwan, CEO at IXS and InvestaX, into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Julian to discuss his experience in tokenizing real-world assets, finding the business models that work, how the space has evolved, and how after eight years, it's only getting started.

We continue our Re-engineering Tokenization series this week with Riley Hughes, Co-Founder & CEO at Trinsic. David Greely sits down with Riley to discuss how digital IDs are being used today; the need for a visa-like network for identity in order to move digital IDs more into the mainstream; and the opportunities that a wallet full of digital IDs and attestations will create for a future of more secure, private, and trusted digital interactions.

Re-engineering Tokenization continues this week with Carrie Jaquith, Global Head of Digital Product at Abaxx Technologies. David Greely sits down with Carrie to discuss what makes new technology adoptable by large institutions, the importance of it being interoperable and auditable, and why we should be thinking of augmenting existing PDF-based processes rather than replacing them as we re-engineer tokenization.

This week on Re-engineering Tokenization, we welcome Peter Zaman, Partner at HFW Singapore, back into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Peter to discuss the tokenization and fractionalization of commodities and real-world assets – and the law and customs that facilitate commodity trading by allowing for the transfer of ownership without the transfer of possession.

We continue our Re-engineering Tokenization series this week by welcoming Phil Zimmermann, Creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Phil to discuss his work in cryptography and its role in establishing trust and preserving privacy online. Phil shares his thoughts on what we need to be doing to make sure our technology is helping – not hindering – us in building the type of society we want to live in.

This week on Re-engineering Tokenization, we continue our conversation with Ian Forester, Head of Product at Abaxx Technologies. David Greely sits down with Ian to pick up where we left off last week, digging in deeper on the use of cryptographically secured identity and signatures to take the next step from digitization to tokenization. David and Ian discuss Abaxx’s approach to the four pillars supporting trusted commercial transactions: secure identity, intent, assets, and data.

This week, we kick off our new series Re-engineering Tokenization with Josh Crumb and Ian Forester, CEO and Head of Product at Abaxx Technologies. SmarterMarkets™ host David Greely sits down with Josh and Ian to discuss asset tokenization and Abaxx Technologies’ approach to it – focusing on secure digital identity, privacy, and legal finality as the foundations for institutional grade commercial transactions.

We present a special episode of SmarterMarkets™, bringing you exclusive interviews from the IETA North America Climate Summit 2025. SmarterMarkets™ returned to the IETA North America Climate Summit to explore the challenges and opportunities defining the next phase of carbon market development. This year’s conference examined emerging carbon pricing systems worldwide and the “how” and “when” of driving long-term growth — from the growing role of nature- and technology-based removals to the outcomes of the voluntary market’s focus on integrity and how businesses account for carbon. In partnership with IETA, we spoke with a cross section of delegates about where they see progress, what challenges remain, and the developments they’re watching most closely as markets evolve. We’ve compiled a selection of those 10 interviews into this Special Episode of SmarterMarkets™. The full interviews for each guest are available on the SmarterMarkets™ Presents media portal. Our guests in order of appearance are: Daniel Klier, CEO, South Pole Margaret Kim, CEO, Gold Standard Mandy Rambharos, CEO, Verra Lisa DeMarco, CEO & Senior Partner, Resilient LLP Juan Duran, CEO, EcoRegistry Guy Turner, Managing Director of Carbon Markets, MSCI Ed Morse, Senior Advisor, Hartree Partners Sandeep Roy Choudhury, Co-Founder & Director, VNV Stephen Mackenzie, Managing Director, EduVOD Africa + Irungu Waggema, Business Development Sector Leader – Agriculture, Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) Steve Zwick, Host, Bionic Planet & Co-Author of The Carbon Paradox + Renat Heuberger, CEO, Terra Impact Ventures & Co-Author of The Carbon Paradox

We close out our Catching Up On Climate series this week with Dave Ernsberger & Mark Eramo, Co-Presidents of S&P Global Commodity Insights and Members of S&P Global’s Executive Leadership Team. David Greely sits down with Dave and Mark to catch up on the state of U.S. policy and the global discussion on energy, climate, and sustainability after New York City Climate Week – and where we’re heading next.

This week on Catching Up On Climate, we’re celebrating our 250th episode of SmarterMarkets™ with Hannah Hauman, Global Head of Carbon Trading at Trafigura. David Greely sat down with Hannah at the IETA North America Climate Summit in New York this week to catch up on how Article 6 and CORSIA are reshaping the global carbon markets. They discuss how countries are now framing their environmental goals, setting their climate ambitions, and building new compliance carbon emissions markets in a multipolar world.

On our third installment of Catching Up On Climate, we welcome Dirk Forrister, President & CEO of IETA, back into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Dirk to discuss what he and IETA have been focused on this past year – and what he sees as some of the most important things happening in climate and the carbon markets ahead of IETA's North America Climate Summit 2025.

We continue Catching Up On Climate this week by welcoming Alexia Kelly back into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. Alexia is Managing Director of Carbon Policy and Markets Initiative at High Tide Foundation. David Greely sits down with Alexia to discuss what's been happening beneath the quiet surface of the voluntary carbon markets in order to get them ready for prime time and unlock the institutional capital these markets need.

This week, we kick off our new series, Catching Up On Climate, where we'll be discussing the state of the climate, the energy transition, and carbon markets going into Climate Week New York City 2025.   We begin our new series by welcoming David Shukman back into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. Shukman is a journalist and former Science Editor at the BBC. SmarterMarkets™ host David Greely sits down with Shukman to catch up on how our experience of climate change is becoming more local and immediate, how governments and corporations are responding, and how the stories we tell – and the way we tell them – must adapt to help us confront this changing reality.  

We close out our Summer Playlist this week by welcoming Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director Emeritus at the International Energy Agency, into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with Nobuo Tanaka to discuss how the energy trilemma of balancing energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability is shaping the energy and geopolitical landscape facing Japan and Korea – and what it means for the future of LNG and nuclear power.

We continue our Summer Playlist this week by welcoming Helima Croft back into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. Helima is Managing Director & Global Head of Commodity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets. David Greely sits down with Helima to discuss the state of the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, how and why the Trump administration may be turning to tariffs and trade deals to reduce Russian energy exports, and the consequences for energy markets and prices going forward.

On this week’s installment of Summer Playlist 2025, we welcome DJ Watkins and Chanel Host, Founder and Director of the Aspen Design Conference, into the SmarterMarkets™ studio. David Greely sits down with DJ and Chanel to discuss their relaunch and reimagining of the historic International Design Conference in Aspen. Together, they explore how design thinking transforms ideas into innovations that build businesses and change our lives – and how design thinking  can be applied to help solve our biggest challenges.