This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Tyrone Lobban, the head of blockchain at JPMorgan’s Onyx, a business unit focused on digital assets.

In the craziness of the past couple weeks, it’s easy to overlook or forget good news and positive developments. JP Morgan recently made history by becoming the first major bank to execute a live DeFi trade. The trade involved tokenized forex and government bonds and it all happened on the Polygon blockchain.

In our conversation, we dive into the details of the trade and discuss the implications of major banks like JP Morgan and the rest of TradFi using DeFi, and start by getting a better understanding of Onyx.

JP Morgan’s first DeFi transaction took place on 2 November 2022 and was facilitated by Project Guardian, a pilot initiative of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The trade had a lot of moving pieces and was rather complex. Tyrone takes us behind the scenes and walks us through the steps taken to ensure adherence to KYC/AML standards.

Due to regulatory and privacy concerns, JPMorgan is currently running its DeFi experiments on a permissioned sidechain. We discuss the likelihood of a shift from private infrastructure to a public blockchain.

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