Speaker 1: We're spending a lot of time on private credit and
Speaker 1: specifically acid backed finance and fintech lending. That space is
Speaker 1: really interesting because there's no clearing house, there's no exchange,
Speaker 1: it's very bilateral as it operates today, and it's really
Speaker 1: an area that I think is still very opaque, not standardized,
Speaker 1: and really can therefore stand to benefit from this tech
Speaker 1: being blockchain, stable coins, tokenization, and smart contracts.
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Speaker 2: Link will be in the description. Hey everyone, welcome into
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward and
Speaker 2: we are recording at Station three in New York's Financial District.
Speaker 2: And joining me today is Morgan Krepetski, who is the
Speaker 2: vice president of on chain Finance at Ava Labs, which
Speaker 2: is the technology company building the Avalanche blockchain. Prior to
Speaker 2: joining avle Labs, Morgan spent time at City almost over
Speaker 2: a decade beginning with roles focused on institutional FX and macro,
Speaker 2: covering hedge funds, asset managers, and pension funds. Morgan, Great
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 1: You, Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. Full disclosure, I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of Avalanche. I am an avax sokenholder. But
Speaker 2: also Morgan, spend a lot of time at City. You
Speaker 2: have the tread five banking perspective, and now you're in crypto,
Speaker 2: so I'm ready to dig into your perspective on what's
Speaker 2: happening and adoption we're seeing. So great. Great to have
Speaker 2: you here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Let's start with your background. Would you grow up, how'd
Speaker 2: you end up in finance?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I grew up outside of Philadelphia and went to
Speaker 1: college in New York and have been living here ever since.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I guess that makes me a
Speaker 1: true New Yorker. You know, inherently, you know, going to
Speaker 1: school and really the financial capital of the world. I
Speaker 1: think there was a big kind of pipeline of you know,
Speaker 1: university to financial services just inherently kind of from a
Speaker 1: cultural standpoint, and so you know, I think part of
Speaker 1: it is like you don't know what you don't know.
Speaker 1: But in you know, my schooling, I was attracted to
Speaker 1: macroeconomics and so did kind of a series of internships
Speaker 1: in various parts of financial services and found that I
Speaker 1: really liked it, and so started at City right after
Speaker 1: I graduated in the kind of institutional rotational program, specifically
Speaker 1: within sales and trading, and stuck around for quite some time.
Speaker 1: While I was still at City, I had a couple
Speaker 1: other roles kind of in the process before diving into
Speaker 1: crypto and digital assets, which I know we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that was kind of my foreign and TraFi.
Speaker 2: So along that journey, was it at City that you
Speaker 2: discovered blockchaining crypto?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So it was interesting because I spent the majority
Speaker 1: of my career in what they call like the fun
Speaker 1: office or the first line of defense in the business
Speaker 1: in kind of directly revenue generating businesses, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier I was part of the FX and macro derivatives desk,
Speaker 1: covering hedge funds, asset managers, and pension funds, and that
Speaker 1: was the majority of my time, and then the last
Speaker 1: kind of couple of years I spent in the second
Speaker 1: line of defense working for city chief compliance officer it
Speaker 1: was her chief of staff, and kind of through both
Speaker 1: of those experiences, I saw, you know, how end to
Speaker 1: end processes worked, not just as it related to trade execution,
Speaker 1: but also post trade a lot of reconciliation, middle and
Speaker 1: back office processes, the kind of managing of risk and controls,
Speaker 1: and saw kind of firsthand how those things were linked
Speaker 1: and inherently I saw how sometimes processes would inherently not
Speaker 1: necessarily run smoothly because and this is not necessarily just
Speaker 1: specific to city, but I think it's any large bank
Speaker 1: or any large enterprise or institution that you know, because
Speaker 1: it's the result of you know, very like older a
Speaker 1: lot older systems, and sometimes M and A and sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, lack of prioritization in terms of spending the
Speaker 1: time and resources to actually streamline systems. A lot of
Speaker 1: the times, uh, there would be you know, manual processes
Speaker 1: that would be put in place, kind of maker checker
Speaker 1: type of processes where inherently systems wouldn't talk to each
Speaker 1: other and therefore, you know, bodies would be thrown at
Speaker 1: having to reconcile things internally, let alone when you talk
Speaker 1: about going from kind of one institution to another institution,
Speaker 1: and so as I was you know, observing this, at
Speaker 1: the same time, we had you know, the last cryptobal market,
Speaker 1: and I got a lot more interested in kind of
Speaker 1: going down the rabbit hole and really understanding what the
Speaker 1: tech was about. And so my kind of fury into
Speaker 1: this space was less on like the bitcoin maxie side
Speaker 1: of things and more of like, how can we use
Speaker 1: smart contract capabilities to really upgrade legacy financial services infrastructure
Speaker 1: and institutional workflows. So it's really not like the sexy part,
Speaker 1: it's like the plumbing, but it really kind of got
Speaker 1: me excited because I know, took a step back and
Speaker 1: saw the potential of what the tech could do as
Speaker 1: it related to really upgrading how processes would work within
Speaker 1: financial services, but also obviously kind of other industries as well.
Speaker 2: Well. You were certainly ahead of the curve because we're
Speaker 2: seeing City, along with other banks and Wall Street firms
Speaker 2: are all integrating blockchain technology. It's not just about bigcoinner
Speaker 2: bitcoin ETFs, but tokenization stable coins using blockchain to move
Speaker 2: information and data. All that's being built now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. It's interesting. So when I first joined av Labs,
Speaker 1: I was specifically focused on institutions and capital markets, so
Speaker 1: bringing banks and asset managers onto Avalanche in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form and the context of their blockchain digital
Speaker 1: asset strategies. And so that was a lot about educating
Speaker 1: institutions around not necessarily what was blockchain, because at that point, luckily,
Speaker 1: I think they were more or less ish on board,
Speaker 1: but they had digital asset teams, but it was what
Speaker 1: is avalanche, what are the differentiators in the usps, and
Speaker 1: how can we leverage the underlying technology too. And we'll
Speaker 1: get into this, but basically, either upgrade how we do things,
Speaker 1: enter net new markets, capitalize on net new revenue opportunities.
Speaker 1: And really since then, the worlds of trad FI, DeFi,
Speaker 1: c FI tokenization have really converged and I think will
Speaker 1: continue to converge. And so at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: while before I think there was like a spectrum of
Speaker 1: different types of financial services institutions in terms of those
Speaker 1: that have been really progressive for a while and those
Speaker 1: that were very new. I think, especially after the election,
Speaker 1: it kind of gave a green light for a lot
Speaker 1: more institutions to really start standing up digital asset teams,
Speaker 1: hiring digital asset heads, to really kind of create both,
Speaker 1: you know, to your point, a crypto and digital asset
Speaker 1: strategy as well as more of like a blockchain strategy.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the election, so I'm curious prior to the
Speaker 2: election and the favorable environment we're in right now where
Speaker 2: a firms like City it's kind of sitting on the fence.
Speaker 2: I think we get this and we want to build
Speaker 2: it born. We don't want to be in trouble with
Speaker 2: the regulators. Was that the crux of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think there was always a spectrum, right,
Speaker 1: Firms like JP Morgan had been really at the forefront
Speaker 1: of leveraging blockchain infrastructure relatively for quite some time, and
Speaker 1: then there were others I won't name names who were
Speaker 1: just like, we know this is a thing, and we're
Speaker 1: keeping up to date with the news, but we don't
Speaker 1: really want to touch this for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: one of which, to your point was regulatory clarity, and
Speaker 1: especially with the likes of FTX and Celsius, that didn't
Speaker 1: really help the industry's cause. Luckily from an Avalanche standpoint,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this, but Avalanche really allows institutions
Speaker 1: to stand up their own private permission environments if that's
Speaker 1: what they want or if that's what the use case
Speaker 1: kind of demands. And so we luckily early on had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a wedge even four years ago
Speaker 1: in working with the cities and JP Morgans of the world,
Speaker 1: where you know, historically they were used to building on
Speaker 1: what we would call like enterprise chains, like a hyper
Speaker 1: ledger that was fully isolated from you know, the DeFi
Speaker 1: innovation and composability and n with avalanchell ones. It really
Speaker 1: allowed them to like step into the world of public
Speaker 1: permissionless in a way that still allowed them to you know,
Speaker 1: address a lot of their compliance and regulatory requirements, but
Speaker 1: start to get a little bit closer to you know,
Speaker 1: the public permissionless realm DeFi innovation, composability and now, especially
Speaker 1: after the election, there's still definitely use cases that demand
Speaker 1: private permission networks. But really there has been such a
Speaker 1: turn in the tide of Okay, now we really gotta
Speaker 1: do something in the space. We have to figure out
Speaker 1: what it is, why are we doing it, and really
Speaker 1: start to operationalize and in production various types of use cases.
Speaker 2: Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
Speaker 2: you can please support the podcast by hitting the like
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Speaker 2: the content. Thank you so much. And Morgan, it's fascinating
Speaker 2: because you're seeing even the detractors are now capitulating, if
Speaker 2: that's the right word. Yeah, And we're in this race,
Speaker 2: and it seems that the direction to Puck is heading
Speaker 2: in is blockchain rails powering markets and the economy. It
Speaker 2: seems that's what the end goal is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess blockchain just in general, and
Speaker 1: to take a step back, it's always been, you know,
Speaker 1: conducive for the transfer of peer to peer value, and
Speaker 1: that value is encapsulated in a variety of different tokenized
Speaker 1: assets as well as in tokenized cash or digital forms
Speaker 1: of money that is, stable coins or tokenized deposits. And
Speaker 1: so when you have both of those things, leveraging a
Speaker 1: common set of trade, transaction and settlement rails also being
Speaker 1: reflected in common kind of token standards. It provides for
Speaker 1: the much more seamless transfer of value where you know,
Speaker 1: historically enterprises were built on systems that inherently don't talk
Speaker 1: to each other, whether it's intra company or inter company,
Speaker 1: and as a result of that, historically that's why we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of intermediaries pop up, or the need
Speaker 1: for intermediaries to pop up to basically take data from
Speaker 1: one place to another direct concile it right, which is
Speaker 1: inherently not automatic and error prone because a lot of
Speaker 1: it's a lot of the time it's governed by manual processes.
Speaker 1: And so to be able to instead leverage you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I call it like the world's Excel sheet that
Speaker 1: you know, inherently you can see how value whether it's
Speaker 1: on a wholesale level or on a retail level, how
Speaker 1: that could really help to upgrade, you know, how we
Speaker 1: work today.
Speaker 2: Before we get into the ecosystem and all the great
Speaker 2: things that are being built on the Avalanche blockchain, for
Speaker 2: the viewers and listeners who may not know, give a
Speaker 2: quick overview of Avalanche as a blockchain and the capabilities
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: So Avalanche actually is not a blockchain, It is a
Speaker 1: network of many blockchains. It is anchored by a public
Speaker 1: permissionless liquidity hub called the Avalanche Sea chain, which is
Speaker 1: EVEM compatible, which basically means anything that anyone has built
Speaker 1: for Ethereum or a hyperledger can very easily be ported
Speaker 1: over into Avalanche, and then on the Avalanche seachain that
Speaker 1: houses kind of all of the primitives and native integrations
Speaker 1: that make any kind of public permissionless ecosystem tick, right,
Speaker 1: So that's DeFi primitive stable coin integrations, custodial integrations, on
Speaker 1: and off ramps, tokenization platforms, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And so when people think about Avalanche, oftentimes they're thinking
Speaker 1: about the activity that exists on the liquidity hub or
Speaker 1: Avalanche seachain. However, the network also allows builders, whether that's
Speaker 1: a government agency, a financial services institution and enterprise, to
Speaker 1: stand up its own individual or series of customizable layer
Speaker 1: one blockchains that can be public and permissionless. They can
Speaker 1: be private and permissioned, or they can be hybrid, they
Speaker 1: can be public and permissioned, and so importantly, those networks
Speaker 1: are natively interoperable with each other as well as with
Speaker 1: the Avalanche seat chain, which means that just because you're
Speaker 1: launching your own chain, doesn't mean again you're in isolation.
Speaker 1: You can bring in USDC, USDT users, other types of
Speaker 1: tokens into and out of your environment two sea chain
Speaker 1: or to other networks if that's what your kind of
Speaker 1: use case demands for. And so in general, you know,
Speaker 1: when we talk to different types of partners, we don't
Speaker 1: we're not necessarily prescriptive to say you have to launch
Speaker 1: on Avalanche teachain or you have to launch your l one.
Speaker 1: It's very dependent on the particular use case and the
Speaker 1: application and the particular kind of compliance and other types
Speaker 1: of requirements. And therefore it doesn't necessarily as a network
Speaker 1: beholden a partner to a particular network toolkit or logic.
Speaker 1: It's really dependent on the particular use case. And so
Speaker 1: that customizability, the ability for you know, regulated financial services institution,
Speaker 1: let's say, who's building a collateral mobility platform to really
Speaker 1: cater the network and the chain to the use case.
Speaker 1: And that includes things like permissioning across validators, transactors, smart
Speaker 1: contract deployers. It doesn't necessarily mean that validation if it's
Speaker 1: permission has to be centralized. It can be distributed among
Speaker 1: a whole host of institutions who have an economic or
Speaker 1: business interest in validating that network. But it's very malieable.
Speaker 1: And so that customizability we found has really resonated with
Speaker 1: a variety of different types of builders.
Speaker 2: That's really great. So let's do a mock scenario. So
Speaker 2: let's use JP Morgan in city. So let's say they
Speaker 2: both build on I don't know what makes sense to
Speaker 2: see chain or you know, one of the their own
Speaker 2: l one version. They have the privacy, so JP Morgan
Speaker 2: can see cities information and vice versa. But if they
Speaker 2: want to transact with each other they can correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean to your point exactly, like it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that City and JP will for sure have
Speaker 1: their own chains. What we've actually found is institutions who
Speaker 1: have been issuing and tokenizing assets. It behooves them to
Speaker 1: issue those assets where users, liquidity, and other types of
Speaker 1: integrations exist, which is on sea chain. But to the
Speaker 1: extent that an institution or group of institutions is building
Speaker 1: an application that might be more conducive for an L
Speaker 1: one environment. So for example, if they're building again like
Speaker 1: an engine for collateral mobility or an exchange of some kind,
Speaker 1: that might be more conducive for its own l one. Now,
Speaker 1: within that l one, to your point, you can have
Speaker 1: a variety of different institutions interacting and trading, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to settlement, perhaps it makes sense to settle
Speaker 1: those trades back on their respective networks. And if that's
Speaker 1: the case, let's say, you know, two institutions come together,
Speaker 1: they decide on a particular trade, the asset and the
Speaker 1: payment can settle on the respective institutions l ones and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that doesn't require third party
Speaker 1: bridges or third party assumptions because it's using avalanches, native
Speaker 1: intra network interoperability capabilities, and so there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different kind of configurations. And again it just depends on
Speaker 1: and we always sit down with institutions and sometimes they
Speaker 1: kind of like think they know what they want, or
Speaker 1: they're saying we absolutely need this, and I'm like, you
Speaker 1: actually don't need that. Here's a more efficient way to
Speaker 1: kind of solve that. So we always try to get
Speaker 1: to the crux of like what are you trying to solve?
Speaker 1: Why do you think you need what you are saying
Speaker 1: that you need, And then let's talk through different ways
Speaker 1: to express that need from a blockchain architecture perspective and
Speaker 1: help you help you get there.
Speaker 2: I want to make sure I wrap my head around this,
Speaker 2: and this is a general question I have even overall
Speaker 2: of of what's being built with these institutions, because many
Speaker 2: of them you alluded to this, they kind of have
Speaker 2: the wall gardens, right. They tried to build their own
Speaker 2: internal permission chain, which is fine, but now they're noticing, hey,
Speaker 2: we need to get to public chains to sell and
Speaker 2: communicate with other folks, Avalanche being one of them. So
Speaker 2: when they transact, how is that data or money or
Speaker 2: whatever it is going back internally? So and this is
Speaker 2: where your perspective is going to be great because you
Speaker 2: worked at a bank, so you know how this all works.
Speaker 2: So if city's operating on this l one an Avalanche,
Speaker 2: how does the value of whatever you're doing get back
Speaker 2: to the bank itself? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, at this point, unfortunately, I don't think banks are
Speaker 1: in a position to like custody USDC, which I hope
Speaker 1: that they will. But a lot of them are either
Speaker 1: already have or are working on tokenized deposits, right, And
Speaker 1: so that I guess, in a certain sense from a
Speaker 1: token standard perspective, is very similar to a stable coin
Speaker 1: like USDC, but inherently it reflects the token reflects a
Speaker 1: tokenized deposit or a deposit that exists already within the
Speaker 1: bank and that is within the bank's custody, and so
Speaker 1: it's kind of similar in that sense, and that in
Speaker 1: this case, I guess City it would be the issuer
Speaker 1: of the of the tokenized deposit. But hopefully we'll get
Speaker 1: to a point where where a lot of these financial
Speaker 1: services institutions can start to really custody at scale stable coins,
Speaker 1: in which case that would probably follow the same model
Speaker 1: that any institution kind of custodies a stable coin. And
Speaker 1: in the case of USDC, for example, if an institution
Speaker 1: is building let's say on their own L one and
Speaker 1: they want to pull in let's say USDC from Avalanche
Speaker 1: Teachain into their environment, they don't necessarily have to contract
Speaker 1: with Circle to integrate native USDC onto their network, because
Speaker 1: that's probably going to be a very difficult proposition to
Speaker 1: get Circle to do that. I'm sure they have a
Speaker 1: large pipeline. They don't really care about necessarily integrating all
Speaker 1: these different chains, whether they're l ones or L two's,
Speaker 1: and so what would happen instead is that through avalanches
Speaker 1: native interoperability protocol, they would basically pull in USDC into
Speaker 1: their environment. And I think I mentioned this, but the
Speaker 1: interoperability that doesn't necessitate in the context of Avalanche third
Speaker 1: party bridges, and so it really relies really just on
Speaker 1: the two validator sets of the network to facilitate that
Speaker 1: innerchain messaging. And so for example, let's say you have
Speaker 1: a city chain and a JP Morgan chain. Presumably those
Speaker 1: chains are permissioned. They have a permissioned validator set, probably
Speaker 1: run by city in JP Morgan respectively. City. In the
Speaker 1: case that they want to send an asset or a
Speaker 1: payment to JP Morgan, they would pay that network to say, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to send you whatever ten tokenized deposit units.
Speaker 1: The validators of the JP Morgan L one would basically
Speaker 1: look up on the validator registry of Avalanche, which is
Speaker 1: held on the Avalanche Pea chain, and say, who is
Speaker 1: sending me this message? Oh, this is the validators of
Speaker 1: the City network. We trust the City network to receive
Speaker 1: that message and to receive that that payment, and they
Speaker 1: choose to accept that message, and therefore that transfer or
Speaker 1: that message happens and goes through again just relying on
Speaker 1: those two already known and trusted validator sets. So that
Speaker 1: would be an example. I mean, obviously you can send
Speaker 1: payments assets, you can paying a chain for has this
Speaker 1: transactor been ky seed? There are so many you know,
Speaker 1: there's a very low level and the kind of arbitrary
Speaker 1: protocol that you can layer on on top really anything
Speaker 1: that you want. But those are kind of some examples
Speaker 1: from an institutional perspective.
Speaker 2: That's great insights. See, that's what I wanted to just
Speaker 2: for you, for myself, I know we're going.
Speaker 1: Down the rabbit hope, that's kind of what it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating and I'm so interested to learn how
Speaker 2: the piping and the moving parts and components all work.
Speaker 2: And you know, obviously you being at a bank and
Speaker 2: I and I'm fascinated to see how they're integrating all
Speaker 2: these things. So it's amazing what's being built. And look,
Speaker 2: there's been a wave of institutional announcements on Avalanche. There's
Speaker 2: a lot so ETPs. You've got broad Ridge payments, infrastructure
Speaker 2: and much more. I would love to dive into talk
Speaker 2: to us about these things and also dive into broad Rage.
Speaker 1: Sure, So I would just to take a step back,
Speaker 1: like the commonality behind I think most of the builders
Speaker 1: and companies deploying on Avalanche are generally speaking, they've been
Speaker 1: solving real world problems aiming for real world adoption by
Speaker 1: real world businesses. They're generally less direct to consumer and
Speaker 1: more B to B or B to B two C.
Speaker 1: And we call these partners, whether they're in financial services
Speaker 1: or gaming, or payments or sports and entertainment, we call
Speaker 1: them tech enablement partners. And they're the ones who we
Speaker 1: basically work in tandem with on a kind of go
Speaker 1: to market or bead strategy and ultimately reaching out to
Speaker 1: different types of businesses that would benefit from the blockchain
Speaker 1: enabled product, services and capabilities that those tech partners bring
Speaker 1: to the table. So that's you know, the ecosystem at
Speaker 1: a high level. Obviously we have a robust and top
Speaker 1: tier kind of DeFi ecosystem, but even the DeFi primitives
Speaker 1: that exist on Avalanche, between various types of vaults, infrastructure,
Speaker 1: borrow lend protocols, I almost look at them as kind
Speaker 1: of top of the funnel where even those protocols we
Speaker 1: actively pitch two different FinTechs, wealth tech platforms and eobanks
Speaker 1: to embed in their back ends to start offering new product,
Speaker 1: service and capabilities to their clients. So I almost see
Speaker 1: like the DeFi partners as tech enablement partners in the
Speaker 1: same way. So that's really kind of the commonality. And
Speaker 1: I think in general, as we really pivoted to focus
Speaker 1: on this like better business strategy, it's really about how
Speaker 1: do we via our partners deliver better business outcomes. Is
Speaker 1: it cutting of costs, is it creating efficiency, is it
Speaker 1: entering in at new market, capitalizing on a new revenue opportunity?
Speaker 1: And largely when we pitch to the these ultimately end clients,
Speaker 1: we don't really talk about avalanche. We talk about the
Speaker 1: business benefit that that business gets by leveraging a slew
Speaker 1: of tech enablement partners on avalanche. Most of those customers
Speaker 1: don't have large digital asset teams. More necessarily should they,
Speaker 1: who should be thinking about building all of this stuff
Speaker 1: from scratch, And so the ideas that they are sold
Speaker 1: on the capability and there is an agreement that is
Speaker 1: kind of struck between them and the tech enablement partner,
Speaker 1: and it happens to be on avalanche, and that's how
Speaker 1: it should be. Right, Like people shouldn't know or care
Speaker 1: what network they're using, if they're even using blockchain, and
Speaker 1: that's really kind of the go to market motion that
Speaker 1: we strive for as it relates to broad Ridge in particular,
Speaker 1: maybe just as a summary, a few weeks ago, we
Speaker 1: announced with broad Ridge that they have built a purpose
Speaker 1: build to L one and Avalanche l one within our network,
Speaker 1: and it is really meant for the transmission of corporate
Speaker 1: actions to a variety of different platforms, not just on Avalanche,
Speaker 1: but across a variety of different chains. Today, broad Ridge
Speaker 1: is a huge piece of you know, financial market infrastructure
Speaker 1: in the world of trad fi. Specifically, again as it
Speaker 1: relates to corporate actions, I think they cover you know,
Speaker 1: over ninety percent of you know, US equity corporate actions today,
Speaker 1: corporate action communications today, and oftentimes it's still via like mail,
Speaker 1: like paper trail and in this world where you know,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this as a theme, but more
Speaker 1: and more companies are exploring tokenized equities, both kind of
Speaker 1: as a mirror token as well as native on chain issuance.
Speaker 1: Broad Ridge really saw this as a way to start
Speaker 1: to explore how to upgrade their own kind of infrastructure
Speaker 1: and rather than potentially sending via mail exploring, Hey, if
Speaker 1: somebody has a wallet with you know, Google Shares and
Speaker 1: Apple Shares, how do we send the communication the opportunity
Speaker 1: to vote, for example, to somebody's wallet directly, right, Because
Speaker 1: all of this information, again is on chain on a
Speaker 1: public ledger, is there a way for us to do
Speaker 1: that directly and therefore maybe make it again the process
Speaker 1: more efficient bypass certain intermediaries that are now no longer
Speaker 1: needed or the need for them is kind of reduced.
Speaker 1: And so it's really their answer to start to kind
Speaker 1: of come into this new world where equities are now
Speaker 1: natively issued on chain.
Speaker 2: That's pretty profound. And I've gotten those mails, Oh you
Speaker 2: got to vote.
Speaker 1: By this and do you actually vote?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I feel so annoying my websit. Why
Speaker 2: are you getting on the like we're invested in this
Speaker 2: and that's why I think you're sending it to us.
Speaker 1: And it's like three months ago because I don't check
Speaker 1: your mail every day.
Speaker 2: And then it keeps sending like multiple copies and I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh. But if that is fully digital and
Speaker 2: having the verification via blockchain and tokenized assets, that will
Speaker 2: make my life a lot easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it'd be cool to see it like
Speaker 1: kind of like throughout a pop up notification right where
Speaker 1: you can just decide and then probably'd be more inclined
Speaker 1: to participate in governance if it was right there and
Speaker 1: very easily accessible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see. I find that so fascinating it and
Speaker 2: it's so important to tell these stories, these use cases,
Speaker 2: because sometimes people are very distracted by price and then
Speaker 2: sometimes negative headlines. But to see this type of adoption,
Speaker 2: this type of building, real world use case, trad fund
Speaker 2: novel concept, yeah right, yes, and I think these need
Speaker 2: to be the headlines, not this meme coin or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, You.
Speaker 1: Have me both, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I do feel like you know, over the past four years,
Speaker 1: we've seen and we talked about this, like definitely more
Speaker 1: institutional interest and enterprise adoption, where I think the industry
Speaker 1: has had grown up somewhat and is focusing a lot more,
Speaker 1: especially with stable coins, on like real world use cases
Speaker 1: and maybe less so crypto casino. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: prediction markets are obviously huge, but even there, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's an effort to kind of like institutionalize or
Speaker 1: professionalize them a little bit more so and so I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of scope to see that
Speaker 1: like market grow up as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I think is Intercontinental Exchange parent company
Speaker 2: Unior ex South Exchange, they invest it in.
Speaker 1: Poly marketing huge, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So to your point, industry is growing up. And look,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are probably gonna hate on me
Speaker 2: for saying this, but I think the trad fly folks
Speaker 2: coming in are helping us to mature. Yeah. Obviously I
Speaker 2: love Crypto. I missed some of the twenty seventeen days
Speaker 2: because it's just like it was fun, but we had
Speaker 2: to grow up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really it's really ironic to see. I think
Speaker 1: there was like a Crypto ethos of like we don't
Speaker 1: need the institutions and we're gonna build our own banks,
Speaker 1: and I like shunned kind of trad fy And now
Speaker 1: everyone's cheering, or most people are kind of cheering the
Speaker 1: institutionalization bringing trod fy into this kind of realm, and
Speaker 1: not necessarily because I think they're gonna have the same role,
Speaker 1: but I think it definitely brings more resources into the space,
Speaker 1: more talent into the space, and new innovation and new
Speaker 1: kind of opportunities for adoption.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the keyword there is adoption because I think
Speaker 2: of look, I'm a techie, I was early to this,
Speaker 2: I was. It pulled me in, right, It had a
Speaker 2: gravitational pull because I love tech. But I think about
Speaker 2: my mom and dad and for them to even invest
Speaker 2: in bitcoin or crypto, they probably want Fidelity, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, because I did trust Fidelity, Trust JP Morning.
Speaker 2: Those are names companies they worked with, have accounts with already.
Speaker 2: And if I want them to use certain types of
Speaker 2: apps to do web three things, they probably want to
Speaker 2: use a brand they're familiar with, not necessarily a crypto startup. Again,
Speaker 2: it's all about demographics in the segmentation of.
Speaker 1: Course, yeah totally. I mean how gen Z kind of
Speaker 1: looks at investing is very different than millennials and older generations.
Speaker 1: And by the way, this is not financial advice, but
Speaker 1: I think various institutions just want to ensure that their
Speaker 1: clients kind of have at their fingertips what it is
Speaker 1: that they need in the way that they are comfortable
Speaker 1: with accessing it, which is also I think why we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of popularity with the crypto ETFs right,
Speaker 1: like it provided a new but traditional way to access
Speaker 1: new asset in a way that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of institutions and individuals were comfortable.
Speaker 2: With speaking of ETSS bit wise, they launch an avax
Speaker 2: ETF recently which is huge, and there's a lot a
Speaker 2: lot more coming, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's again not financial advice, but it's
Speaker 1: exciting to again see these different kind of ways to
Speaker 1: be able to offer UH, you know through bit wise
Speaker 1: for example, access to UH to crypto assets, and so
Speaker 1: I think it just lends kind of another point for
Speaker 1: for credibility, for legitimacy and really allows you know, bit
Speaker 1: wise and others to start really telling kind of the
Speaker 1: avalanche story from an educational standpoint, because as much education
Speaker 1: as we've done, it's not going to be over anytime soon.
Speaker 1: And so I think the more kind of partners we
Speaker 1: have of the ecosystem working on education telling the story
Speaker 1: not just of the platform, but also to your point,
Speaker 1: the use cases that are being deployed on the platform,
Speaker 1: the better. And so definitely excited to see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's still billions of people who don't have they
Speaker 2: haven't touched this, they don't know what it is. Some
Speaker 2: are maybe turned off by certain headlines but education will
Speaker 2: help solve that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I think so. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see from like an order of operations standpoint point. UH.
Speaker 1: You know, in general, banks have been not quick, but
Speaker 1: have definitely prioritized offering kind of crypto products, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously starting with the basics UH to their customers with ETFs,
Speaker 1: and I think over time we'll start to see kind
Speaker 1: of a lot more blockchain based UH products being offered,
Speaker 1: ideally with the blockchain components being abstracted away, but a
Speaker 1: lot of different companies are looking at kind of issuing wallets,
Speaker 1: digital wallets, not custodial wallets to their customers, and then
Speaker 1: through that there's so many different you know, products and
Speaker 1: services you can offer to your customers through that channel.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think over the past year,
Speaker 1: I've really seen it, seen it accelerate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. An example I'll give is the folks of Franklin Templeton,
Speaker 2: just because I remember Sandy Call of Franklin Templeton talking
Speaker 2: about this. We're moving away from the account based up
Speaker 2: total wallet based setup and everyone's trying to build their
Speaker 2: own wallet that's self custodia wallety, and that could be
Speaker 2: folks their financial hub, their digital identity, all.
Speaker 1: Kinds of things, totally totally fascinating. Sandy also a city
Speaker 1: alum ah.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. Yeah she's great, Yeah she's great.
Speaker 2: I had her on many times. The tokenization race is
Speaker 2: heating up. A lot of tokenization happening on Avalanche as well.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that let's say the Clarity Act gets
Speaker 2: past this year, plus the Genius Act rolling out, will
Speaker 2: help boost more adoption, more building, We're going to see
Speaker 2: the next wave of innovation, so to speak.
Speaker 1: I hope.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think in general, just like on
Speaker 1: the regulatory point, especially for really kind of established incumbent institutions,
Speaker 1: the more clarity upon intended that there is the more
Speaker 1: understanding of the guidelines and guardrails that institutions and enterprises
Speaker 1: can start to operate within and within I was gonna
Speaker 1: say around, but they're not doing it around, They're doing
Speaker 1: within the guardrails, and so I think that that's only
Speaker 1: net positive for the industry. I think we saw an
Speaker 1: example of that what happened post Genius. There was this
Speaker 1: such a renewed push and focus on stable coins. It
Speaker 1: was no longer you know, what is our blockchain digital
Speaker 1: asset strategy, but what is our stable coin strategy? And
Speaker 1: we saw not just banks, but a lot more types
Speaker 1: of enterprises Western Union, PayPal, others really really kind of
Speaker 1: push forward in the space. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: m and a activity obviously in the specifically within the
Speaker 1: stable coin space that has and likely will continue to happen.
Speaker 1: So if that's any any indication, I think clarity and
Speaker 1: just further global you know, regulatory clarity can only be
Speaker 1: a net positive in terms of giving institutions the green
Speaker 1: light to really start to productionize and scale a lot
Speaker 1: of their deployments. And so from a tokenization standpoint, I
Speaker 1: think inherently that you know, that will help as well
Speaker 1: in terms of kind of themes that we've seen from
Speaker 1: a tokenization perspective. You know, I've always considered stable coins
Speaker 1: as like the quintessential tokenized asset, and so obviously stable
Speaker 1: coin market cap over time has grown tremendously and I
Speaker 1: think as a result of that, a lot of institutions
Speaker 1: saw that growth, especially asset managers, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: stable coins, inherently, don't you know, offer yield to the
Speaker 1: to the holders of those stable coins. I know that's
Speaker 1: obviously a hot topic as it relates to clarity, but
Speaker 1: I think that really was an impetus for a lot
Speaker 1: of asset managers to start offering money market funds or
Speaker 1: tokenized money market funds. Obviously, there's a whole slew of
Speaker 1: asset managers who who have launched tokenized money market funds,
Speaker 1: many of which are on avalanche, and so to date
Speaker 1: a lot of the kind of subscribers or buyers of
Speaker 1: those money market funds have interestingly been stable coint and
Speaker 1: synthetic dollars shoers. And then I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: by extension, fintech's well tech platforms and neobanks who are
Speaker 1: starting to be able to offer to their customers, you know,
Speaker 1: digital savings accounts as generated by by money market funds.
Speaker 1: So I think we'll see that continue. And I think
Speaker 1: by extension there we've started to see uh, especially kind
Speaker 1: of the synthetic dollar issuers waiting into the world of
Speaker 1: private credit and other types of fixed income products, and
Speaker 1: so I think I think that will continue. There's obviously
Speaker 1: been a very big theme around tokenized equities, which I
Speaker 1: think will continue. There's a lot of initiatives out there
Speaker 1: between UH, super state and others working on native on
Speaker 1: chain equity issuance, which I think is a long road,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely worth it because that is really where
Speaker 1: you start to see actual like efficiencies in the end
Speaker 1: to end process, not just of issuance, but you know, trading, clearing, settlement,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And then in addition to that,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been very focused specifically on private credit,
Speaker 1: asset backed finance, fintech lending, which we can talk about,
Speaker 1: and really everything in between. So we've seen a lot.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the space will will continue to evolve,
Speaker 1: and it's it's exciting to kind of see right infoferent
Speaker 1: types of institutions getting involved as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it feels like we're at this pretty significant
Speaker 2: moment in history because Morgan, we're about two blocks away
Speaker 2: from the New York Souck Exchange Wall Street, and if
Speaker 2: we're going to twenty seven twenty four to seven markets,
Speaker 2: there's not going to be an opening and closing belt.
Speaker 2: That's going to be a thing of the past. We're
Speaker 2: gonna go it's gonna be I don't know, the bell
Speaker 2: is going to be put in a display, right, and.
Speaker 1: We'll go through another b C.
Speaker 2: I remember when it used to do this.
Speaker 1: Remember we's all gather, right, it's and.
Speaker 2: No, no, But I'm also like, you know, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go nuts having twenty four to seven markets and all
Speaker 2: these things trading, you know while we're sleep being in
Speaker 2: much more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I also think, and not necessarily as
Speaker 1: it relates to twenty four seven trading, but I also think, like,
Speaker 1: just because the tech enables it, does it mean that
Speaker 1: it needs to happen. For example, the technology enables kind
Speaker 1: of atomic DVP settling or swapping an asset for a payment,
Speaker 1: which means that if you kind of look ahead, not
Speaker 1: just twenty four seven trading and settlement or trading, but
Speaker 1: also twenty for seven settlement and gross settlement. Right, So
Speaker 1: theoretically assets and payments are going to be swapped, swapping
Speaker 1: or can be swapping in gross or engross in gross
Speaker 1: in a way that might not necessarily be uber capital
Speaker 1: efficient for institutions. And so just because that can happen,
Speaker 1: there's a question of whether it should happen. And so
Speaker 1: rather than just continuously swapping and settling assets for payments,
Speaker 1: maybe it makes sense to net trades on a on
Speaker 1: an intra day basis more regularly that in a way
Speaker 1: addresses a lot of the kind of counterparty credit risk
Speaker 1: and other types of risks that you know, clearing house
Speaker 1: is kind of addressed today, right, But do you have
Speaker 1: to go to the other extreme, like maybe not? And
Speaker 1: so I think there's a lot of kind of innovation
Speaker 1: and thinking to be done from a business standpoint of
Speaker 1: what and in regulatory of like what actually makes sense
Speaker 1: in the context of the business as it marries to
Speaker 1: the technological capabilities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. Just because we can doesn't
Speaker 2: mean we have to. And maybe in the cases where
Speaker 2: we have to, and yes, you have international teams, but
Speaker 2: that's maybe where AI agents and much more can come
Speaker 2: into play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean throw AI in there, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the possibilities are endless, and so yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to think about how the tech enables certain
Speaker 1: things and how does the business as well as the
Speaker 1: regulatory component keep up because there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: questions around, especially in the context of tokenized assets, the
Speaker 1: ability to leverage and transport digital identity and so today
Speaker 1: like it technically it's possible to have an NFT of
Speaker 1: all of your credentials and technically tokenization platforms can read
Speaker 1: those credentials and determine that you are KSC, that you're
Speaker 1: an a credited investor, But from a regulatory standpoint, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily doable today, and so it's solved by the tech.
Speaker 1: But how does the kind of regulatory part keep up
Speaker 1: and evolve? You still have a lot of those kind
Speaker 1: of open questions.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I did want to ask you about unchain
Speaker 2: lending and borrowing and the whole DeFi aspect or ecosystem
Speaker 2: on Avalanche. I'm a big believer in DeFi, but it
Speaker 2: feels like we're still in version one point where there's
Speaker 2: still tweaks that need to be made. We still see exploits.
Speaker 2: You know, what's your outlook on DeFi, but also you know,
Speaker 2: tell us about what's being built on Avalanche.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, Even though
Speaker 1: DeFi has been around for a long time, I still
Speaker 1: think it's it's early, but it is exciting to see
Speaker 1: various types of DeFi protocols, Barlin protocols specifically like the
Speaker 1: MorphOS and Aves of the world partnering with very large
Speaker 1: and established FinTechs, whether it's coinbase or wop or others
Speaker 1: where you're really starting to see the convergence in production
Speaker 1: really at scale. And so I think it's mature enough
Speaker 1: at least to see that convergence to the point where
Speaker 1: to your point, is your mom going and getting like
Speaker 1: a loan on ave. Probably not, But to the extent
Speaker 1: that those types of capabilities are powered in the back
Speaker 1: end on fidelity, like that could be really interesting. I think.
Speaker 1: I think there's a bunch of innovation happening in this space.
Speaker 1: I think vaults infrastructure is like the hot topic in
Speaker 1: meta today. A lot of different types of asset managers
Speaker 1: are exploring the idea of being curators and using the
Speaker 1: capabilities of the vault infrastructure and overlaying like a regulatory
Speaker 1: lens with being able to form capital more quickly and
Speaker 1: more efficiently, to be able to distribute funds in a
Speaker 1: more efficient way in terms of like fund disbursements and allocations.
Speaker 1: And so I think like the DeFi primitives are being
Speaker 1: considered in the context of like how again how tratfy
Speaker 1: operates today, things like term loans I know, are being
Speaker 1: explored as well. Right, so if you have like a
Speaker 1: loan on a certain platform, it's kind of annoying to
Speaker 1: like continuously monitor LTV and your positions so to the
Speaker 1: extent you can kind of take out like a term loan.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that is actively being explored today.
Speaker 1: So the building blocks are there, but there's definitely tweaks, optimizations,
Speaker 1: and net new innovations that are that are being explored,
Speaker 1: especially with the introduction of more and more real world
Speaker 1: assets or tokenized assets coming into this space. As these
Speaker 1: you know, various looping strategies are explored, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that people are working to figure out as
Speaker 1: it relates to on chain nav as well as liquidation mechanisms,
Speaker 1: particularly for less liquid assets, And so I think all
Speaker 1: of this stuff is actively being worked on today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe going back to the theme we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, TRADIFI coming in an assisting with DeFi or
Speaker 2: offering some of their own DeFi solutions that could help
Speaker 2: it's mature or grow past some of these things we're
Speaker 2: experiencing now.
Speaker 1: Totally totally and I think like an interesting way, and
Speaker 1: maybe this is more C five related, but I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when we saw kind of the various unfortunate
Speaker 1: series of events that happened in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I mean a lot of it was
Speaker 1: stuff that already caused kind of blow ups in trad
Speaker 1: fy in some way, shape or form historically, which is
Speaker 1: why we have certain like market structure, regulation and standardization,
Speaker 1: and so I do think to your point, there will
Speaker 1: be a little bit more kind of like institutional rigor
Speaker 1: and and an innovation that's hopefully kind of overlaid on
Speaker 1: some of these cryptonative primitives.
Speaker 2: All right, final item here next twelve to twenty four months.
Speaker 2: What do you what are your priorities? What are you
Speaker 2: doubling down on?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. We're we're and I think I
Speaker 1: mentioned this earlier. We're spending a lot of time on
Speaker 1: private credit and specifically asset back to finance and fintech lending.
Speaker 1: I think that space is really interesting because really there's
Speaker 1: no there's no clearing house, there's no exchange. It's very
Speaker 1: bilateral as it operates today, and it's really an area
Speaker 1: that I think is still very pig not standardized, and
Speaker 1: really can therefore stand to benefit from this tech being blockchain,
Speaker 1: stable coins, tokenization, and smart contracts, and so to the
Speaker 1: extent that this tech can really be introduced as upstream
Speaker 1: as possible in the origination of loans, for example, you
Speaker 1: can start to kind of create an environment an opportunity
Speaker 1: for verification and servicing to be done on chain as well,
Speaker 1: and as a result of that really start to chip
Speaker 1: away at a lot of the third party service providers
Speaker 1: that currently today take a ton of fees between the
Speaker 1: ultimate borrower and the ultimate lender, where you know, at
Speaker 1: scale you can start to even provide more competitive rates
Speaker 1: to borrowers and better rates of return to lenders. And
Speaker 1: so this is a space where we're working with a
Speaker 1: variety of different capital partners, credit infrastructure platforms to bring
Speaker 1: both crypto or blockchain native originators as well as web
Speaker 1: two thin tech originators onto avalanche by way of by
Speaker 1: way of this tech, where again, it solves real world
Speaker 1: problems for the space, right like the prevention of the
Speaker 1: double pledging of collateral, the ability to kind of monitor
Speaker 1: collateral in real time and do kind of compliance risk
Speaker 1: management in real time as opposed to on a delay
Speaker 1: by thirty days via PDF. All of these things are
Speaker 1: solving real world problems for the kind of ABF space
Speaker 1: which we're really excited about. And so that's one of
Speaker 1: the few areas that we're very focused on. Obviously, stable
Speaker 1: clint adoption by both retail as well as kind of
Speaker 1: institutions on a B to B and wholesale payments perspective
Speaker 1: is something that you know we have and continue to
Speaker 1: focus on as well. And then tokenization in various shapes
Speaker 1: or forms. But but I say a lot, so let
Speaker 1: me pause.
Speaker 2: There all great stuff, love it, And like I said
Speaker 2: at the beginning, I'm a fan of the Avalanche ecosystem
Speaker 2: EVAX tokenholders. I'm excited to see the future updates. I
Speaker 2: have some wrap up questions here for you. They are
Speaker 2: rapid fire. Favorite food.
Speaker 1: I love a good burger, so i'll say burger.
Speaker 2: Favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: I've been listening to a lot of shaw De recently,
Speaker 1: which is like very I feel like cliche, but so good.
Speaker 1: Favorite movie, favorite movie. My favorite chick flick is How
Speaker 1: to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. But I like,
Speaker 1: you know, mel Brooks movies, and you know, really any
Speaker 1: type of movie that's not a horror movie. I really
Speaker 1: don't like horror movies. So favorite book. I've been reading
Speaker 1: a lot of books around kind of like spirituality and
Speaker 1: manifestation and positive thinking, which really helps to offset a
Speaker 1: lot of like the deep digital asset, crypto smart contract
Speaker 1: research that I do on a day day basis. So
Speaker 1: so it's been good to kind of balance it out
Speaker 1: with those types of books.
Speaker 2: Yes, good stuff. And when you're not working, what do
Speaker 2: you do for fun?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be active because my job requires me
Speaker 1: to either be on the ground at a conference doing
Speaker 1: things like this or sitting up my computer for hours
Speaker 1: on end. So try to be as active as possible,
Speaker 1: plates tennis, skiing, So try to try to get some
Speaker 1: activity in.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm with you on that. I'm in the same
Speaker 2: boat at the computer or doing this.
Speaker 1: Maybe next time we can do a tennis less of
Speaker 1: you know that.
Speaker 2: That's actually it's funny. I was thinking about podcast themes
Speaker 2: and you know you have hot ones eating hot wings
Speaker 2: while having an interview, right, maybe I can.
Speaker 1: Introduce it so engage to get the person vulnerable because
Speaker 1: it's so spicy. But I, yeah, I think we have
Speaker 1: to keep nuling that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to come up with a good idea. Morgan,
Speaker 2: absolute pleasure. Love what's happening with the avalanche ecosystem. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for joining me, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please hit the
Speaker 2: like button subscribe if you haven't as if you're listening
Speaker 2: on a podcast platform such as Spotify or Apple, please
Speaker 2: follow and leave a five star rating. Thank you so much.