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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

Robert Leshner is one of the rare founders who built one of DeFi’s defining protocols, Compound, in 2017 and then walked away from it to do something harder. His pitch was simple: The crypto-native market is capped at $2T. The real prize is the $700T of stocks, bonds, real estate, and private credit still living in spreadsheets. Superstate is the rail he's building to move it.

That’s why he built Superstate. Three years later, that thesis has become a reality and is building the market structure. From BlackRock to Morgan Stanley, all the major U.S. banks and asset managers have entered the space, and the total value of RWAs has crossed $55.7B (excluding stablecoin and repurchase agreement).

“The ceiling for DeFi is too low if all we have are native tokens of other crypto projects. We need the $700T of stuff, of wealth, of assets, of ownership to make its way on-chain.”

About Robert: Robert Leshner is a prominent entrepreneur and investor, serving currently as the CEO of Superstate, a SEC-registered asset tokenisation platform. In 2017, he also founded Compound, the DeFi lending protocol and grew it into one of the largest in crypto, with billions in deposits at peak.

Superstate is now the issuer-led tokenization layer behind two on-chain Treasury and basis funds with roughly $1B in combined AUM and Opening Bell, the platform tokenizing the SEC-registered shares of NASDAQ-listed public companies. On March 24, Invesco took over portfolio management of Superstate’s USTB fund, a $967M tokenized Treasury vehicle. Three weeks later, Invesco invested in Superstate’s $82.5M Series B. This is the first time a global asset manager has plugged into someone else’s tokenization stack instead of building its own.In April 2026,

By the data: The tokenised U.S. Treasuries market crossed $15B in the first quarter of 2026, with USTB now ranking among the 7 largest tokenised Treasury funds globally.

NYSE, NASDAQ, Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance have all publicly committed to listing tokenized securities. The SEC’s Project Crypto initiative is drafting the rules that will define how regulated securities behave on blockchains. And Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FWDI), the largest Solana digital asset treasury company at 6.8M SOL, has ~8% of its public shares now living as tokens on Solana via Superstate’s Opening Bell, actively used as collateral on Kamino.

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00:00 Why Institutions Came for Tokenization03:05 What SuperState Actually Does07:57 How SuperState Differs From Other Players12:50 Where We Are in the Tokenization Race17:54 Inside the Invesco Partnership22:12 What Tokenized Funds Unlock29:14 Opening Bell Explained32:16 How This Differs From ICOs34:07 Tokenized Shares as DeFi Collateral35:54 Regulation, Project Crypto and Clarity Act40:01 Message to Corporate Leaders

Important Links

* X: https://x.com/rleshner

* Superstate: https://superstate.com/about

* Compound: https://compound.finance/

* Opening Bell platform: https://superstate.com/opening-bell

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Our biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. Tokenization isn't a new asset class. It's a record-keeping change.

Most people hear “tokenized stock” and picture a synthetic. A digital wrapper around a real share, sitting on a chain somewhere, with a startup holding the actual paper. Robert is quick to correct that framing.

“The token on the blockchain is the same share of a company as the one that’s trading on the Nasdaq. And you can actually bridge shares back and forth between those two systems.”

What Superstate does is operate as the public company's SEC-registered transfer agent. The transfer agent is the entity that legally records who owns what. Move that record onto a blockchain, and the token is the share. Same rights, same dividends, same proxy votes. You can move it from your brokerage account into a wallet on Solana, and back, and nothing about the underlying ownership changes.

“The token on the blockchain is the same share of a company as the one that’s trading on the Nasdaq. And you can actually bridge shares back and forth between those two systems.”

Why this upgrade: In traditional financial markets, transferring shares between parties, settling trades, and using assets as collateral all involve layers of intermediaries, delays, and batch processes tied to business-day cycles.

Blockchain infrastructure eliminates much of this friction. As Robert explains, interest on tokenised T-bills through SuperState's USTB product accrues in real time, by the block, not by the business day.

“Something as simple as transferring shares between two parties is just clunky in traditional markets. But trying to get between two wallets, it’s trivial. It’s like one click.”

A watershed moment came with SuperState's recent partnership with Invesco, one of Wall Street's largest asset managers. It became the first major incumbent asset manager to run a product on SuperState's tokenisation platform. Invesco has also invested in SuperState.

“What we’re swapping is our own products for someone else’s products... This is us finally opening our platform to those asset managers.”

Related reads:

2. Superstate’s job is to lift it to $700T

The whole industry has spent the last cycle arguing about which crypto-native chain wins. According to Robert, the crypto-native race is capped at $2T (with respect to Compound Finance) and he sees $700T as the real prize, which includes stocks, bonds, real estate, and private credit currently sitting in spreadsheets, paper contracts, and DTC databases.

Right now, the total DeFi TVL is $83.27B and tokenised RWAs already sits at $55.7B (excluding stablecoin and repurchase agreement). And, the TAM is traditional finance.

“The upper bound of DeFi is $700 trillion. If that doesn’t happen, the upper bound of DeFi is roughly the same as it was in 2019.”

One of the important things I liked about Superstate is that they are trying to make sure his company is the regulated intermediary issuers use when they decide to bring their assets on-chain. The entire thesis sits or falls on whether off-chain securities meaningfully migrate.

Related podcast and reads:

3. Native shares versus wrappers is the architectural choice

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

In 2025, Eddie Fishman, a former State Department and Treasury official who helped design the sanctions against Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, wrote the playbook on economic warfare, Chokepoints. It not only became a New York Times Bestseller, but a blueprint of what would follow.

So I sat down with Eddie to ask the obvious question. If the dollar and the chip supply chain are the new weapons, what happens when adversaries finally build their own? His answer reframed how I think about stablecoins, China, and the next ten years of geopolitics.

His core insight: the most powerful weapons in modern geopolitics aren't military. They're financial and technological. And they include stablecoins.

“The choke points that the US uses, that China uses, that Europe uses may change over time, but economic warfare will continue. All of our businesses may soon be completely dependent on LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic, and guess what, all three are US companies.”

* China (2026): The U.S. controls advanced AI chips and chipmaking tools sales.

* Venezuela (2026): The U.S. military utilised Claude, an AI model developed by Anthropic, to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

* Russia (2022): The U.S. and G7 froze roughly $300B of Russia’s foreign currency reserves held in Western jurisdictions after the Ukraine invasion. Whereas, U.S. and EU sanctions forced companies like Boeing and GE to stop providing spare parts, maintenance, and technical support to Russian airlines.

Interestingly, America doesn’t need to fire a single missile to bring a country to its knees. It just needs to cut off access to the dollar.

* FX: ~90% of all global foreign exchange transactions involve the U.S. dollar.

* Clearing: Almost all dollar transactions, even those between two non-U.S. banks, must eventually clear through a U.S.-based correspondent bank. These settlements typically pass through two U.S. payment rails: Fedwire & CHIPS.

* Because of sanctions, Iran started using Bitcoin as a toll booth for 20% of the world’s oil. [Full story]

* Stablecoins: ~99% of the global stablecoin market is denominated in U.S. dollars.

What made this conversation more worthwhile is that Eddie doesn’t just describe the system. He diagnoses where it’s breaking, and he’s specific about why.

On sanction overuse, he mentioned:

“Every single US president in the 21st century, from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, has imposed sanctions at twice the rate of their predecessor. There has to be a structural driver.”

About Edward: Edward Fishman is a former U.S. diplomat and a leading authority on economic statecraft and international sanctions.

* Current roles: Senior Fellow and Director of the Geoeconomics Center at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and an educator at Columbia University.

* Government service (2011–2017): Held strategic roles at the State Department, Pentagon, and Treasury. He was a central architect of U.S. sanctions regarding Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Iran nuclear negotiations.

* Thought leadership: New York Times-bestselling author of Chokepoints and a frequent geopolitical analyst for Foreign Affairs, The NY Times, and WSJ.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* 00:00 What Are “Choke Points”?

* 01:29 The Hidden Power of the Dollar

* 05:09 What Happens When Sanctions Hit

* 07:49 Why Countries Are Moving Away from the Dollar

* 10:50 The End of Globalization?

* 13:56 Are Sanctions Losing Power?

* 16:09 AI, Chips, and the Next Economic Weapon

* 19:18 China’s Real Strategy

* 21:33 China’s Choke Points vs America’s

* 25:01 The AI Race: Who Wins?

* 28:18 Iran, Sanctions, and Escalation

* 32:53 Europe’s Position in Economic Warfare

* 36:20 More Sanctions or More Wars?

* 39:09 Bitcoin, Stablecoins & the Dollar

* 42:06 What to Watch Next

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-fishman

* X: https://x.com/edwardfishman

* CFR: https://www.cfr.org/experts/edward-fishman

* Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fishman

* Chokepoints: Buy on Amazon

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The dollar is a passport. But alternatives are emerging as well.

According to Eddie, a choke point requires three things: dominant market share (80–90%+), no real substitute, and the ability to inflict asymmetric pain without hurting yourself. By that bar, the U.S. dollar is the most powerful economic weapon in history. It also has the legal authority to lock any company, bank, or government on Earth.

“You usually need 80-90% market share at least. The dollar, 90% of foreign exchange transactions. Rare earth minerals, China controls about 90% of global refining capacity. AI chips, Nvidia has over 90% global market share.”

February 2022 showed what happens when Washington decides to actually use it. Russians lined up at ATMs. The Moscow stock exchange closed for nearly a month. Major Western banks predicted the Russian economy would shrink up to 15%. It shrank ~2%, because Russia clamped down on capital and kept selling oil to whoever would buy it. The chokepoint worked. It just didn’t work as well as people expected.

* Russia: After the initial 2014 sanctions over Crimea, it built SPFS (connects over 557 financial institutions across 20 countries) to serve as an alternative to SWIFT, alongside NSPK and the Mir (476M+ cards) payment card network.

* China: It built CIPS ($24.47T annual volume) to clear transactions in yuan. The e-CNY is China’s central bank digital currency, and Project m-Bridge is a collaborative platform to move digital money directly between global central banks.

The dominance will not change overnight, but the world is progressing, and power is shifting, with new blockchain-based plumbing, and nations like the UAE, Hong Kong, and Singapore are trying to attract builders.

“If you were to fall asleep today and wake up next year, you’d probably say not much has changed. If you went to sleep today and woke up ten years from now, the world would look totally different.”

Related reads:

2. Stablecoin is not an escape; it is the next layer of US dominance

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

I watched the DTCC’s CTO go on stage and say one sentence that reframed everything I thought about blockchain scalability. He said it was real.

The “it” was a live demo. 2 million transactions per second (that’s roughly 100,000 times Ethereum’s throughput). Running on a network of Raspberry Pis. Built by Bryan Pellegrino and the LayerZero labs team, the guy who went from professional poker player to selling AI models to the Oakland A’s to running LayerZero, the protocol that moves 85% of all cross-chain messages.

On February 10, Bryan unveiled Zero, a new layer-one blockchain. Citadel Securities, DTCC, and the parent company of the NYSE all backed the announcement.

The pitch: a system fast enough for the New York Stock Exchange to run on-chain. Not in theory. In production.

“We believe we can actually bring the entire global economy onchain with this technology.”

We dug into the technical architecture, the $10B stablecoin distribution bet nobody expected to work, and why Bryan thinks AI agents will need payment rails that make Visa look like a fax machine.

About Bryan: Bryan Pellegrino is the co-founder and CEO of LayerZero Labs. Before crypto, he was one of the top heads-up poker players on the planet (screen name: Primordial AA) and built AI models for MLB teams, including Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s. LayerZero now secures close to $100B in value and has processed hundreds of billions in cross-chain transfers. His investors include Sequoia, a16z, and Citadel Securities.

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* 00:00 From Poker to Crypto: A Journey of Obsession

* 06:08 Risk Management Lessons from Poker

* 11:48 The Birth of Layer Zero Labs

* 18:09 Building a Layer One Blockchain: The Zero Architecture

* 24:00 Privacy in Blockchain: The Three Zones of Zero

* 29:56 Advisory Board Insights and Future Plans

* 32:08 The Rapid Rise of USDT Zero

* 35:49 Choosing the Right Interoperability Standard

* 39:25 The Strategic Acquisition of Stargate

* 41:39 The Future of Machine-to-Machine Payments

* 46:36 Adapting Traditional Institutions to New Realities

* 49:02 The Evolution of the Crypto Mission

* 53:09 The Case for In-Person Collaboration

* 55:04 Lightning Round: Quick Insights

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bryanpellegrino

* X: https://x.com/PrimordialAA

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanpellegrino/

* LayerZero: https://layerzero.network/

* Zero: https://layerzero.network/zero

* Sequoia spotlight: https://sequoiacap.com/founder/bryan-pellegrino/

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The scalability trade-off is dead for blockchains

For years, blockchain infrastructure has operated under a simple constraint: you can optimize for speed, or you can optimize for decentralization, but not both.

* Solana chose throughput, processing thousands of transactions per second (TPS), but relying on a relatively small set of high-cost validator nodes.

* Ethereum took the opposite approach, prioritizing decentralization with a vast network of nodes, at the cost of limited throughput, around 15 TPS.

Every architectural decision over the past decade has been a trade-off within these constraints. Pellegrino argues that this trade-off is no longer fundamental.

Zero’s architecture, built natively around zero-knowledge proofs, removes the requirement for every node to re-execute every computation. Instead, computation is verified, not replicated.

“There’s been almost five billion dollars of bridge hacks. We said, could we build a better bridge? And that led us to realise that was the generalisable problem.”

The result: a system that reportedly achieves 2M TPS while maintaining decentralization comparable to Ethereum.

This wasn’t presented as a theory. In a live demonstration to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the system ran on a distributed network of Raspberry Pis. DTCC CTO publicly confirmed the demonstration and described it as real.

“You could not have the New York Stock Exchange on chain in any system that exists prior. And now they’re saying, wow, that is possible.”

What makes this notable is a stack of interdependent innovations:

* QMDB (verifiable database): Processes up to 3 million state updates per second, roughly 100× faster than existing verifiable databases and significantly faster than traditional systems like RocksDB.

* FAFO (execution scheduler): Enables over one million EVM transactions per second by optimizing transaction ordering and parallelism.

* SVID (data compression layer): Uses ZK-based compression so nodes only download partial data (a shard plus a transaction commitment), addressing bandwidth constraints that limit high-throughput systems.

Pellegrino describes this as a compounding system, each layer unlocking the next.

Related reads:

2. Stablecoins are the “distribution” wedge for institutions

Tether had about $186B in circulation. Nearly all of it, around $180B, was concentrated on just two networks: Ethereum and Tron.

The prevailing assumption was simple: once you’re live on the major chains, distribution is effectively maxed out. That assumption is now being challenged.

USDT-0, built on LayerZero, expanded Tether’s presence to 20+ additional networks. In less than a year, it enabled roughly $70–75 billion in cross-chain transfers.

More importantly, it drove $10 billion in incremental AUM.

At typical reserve yields (~4%), that translates to $400–450M in annual revenue from ecosystems most teams had written off.

“There is immense value, even in the longer tail of distribution, much more than people give it credit for.”

The usage pattern matters:

* A high volume of small retail transfers

* A smaller number of very large institutional flows

* Including a single $800M transfer

“The most memorable number was a single transfer of $800M. And then the AUM growth alone was about $400 million directly to Tether’s bottom line.”

This mix signals something important: once access improves, professional capital follows. Market makers, in particular, are using this expanded reach to capture arbitrage across chains that were previously too slow or too costly to access. As a result, the total economic activity, not just user count, has expanded.

Related podcast and reads:

3. Immutability is the security model institutions actually need

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

The man who co-wrote HTTP/2, the protocol loading this page right now, just IPO’d a crypto bank. Priced at $18 in January, trading at ~$10 today. And he doesn’t care.

Mike Belshe started BitGo in 2013 and spent 13 years doing the boring work nobody wanted to do: multi-sig wallets, cold storage, SOC audits, trust company licenses in seven jurisdictions. While every other crypto firm was chasing volume or yield or hype, BitGo was filing paperwork.

Now the firm custodies over $100 billion in digital assets, holds an OCC federal bank charter, runs the reserve infrastructure behind the Trump-linked USD1 stablecoin ($4.8B market cap), and just launched regulated crypto services across 30 European countries under MiCAR. First crypto IPO of 2026. First federally chartered digital asset bank owned by a public company.

The thing that stuck with me from this conversation: Mike’s argument that the entire debate about FDIC insurance is backwards. That an uninsured reserve bank is structurally safer than an insured depository. That the banking lobby is fighting interest-bearing stablecoins not to protect consumers, but to protect a spread. And that the Clarity Act, if it passes with market structure intact, is the last excuse institutions have for sitting on the sidelines.

About Mike: Co-creator of HTTP/2 at Google. One of the first ten engineers on Chrome. Founded BitGo in 2013. Pioneered two-of-three multi-sig, still the gold standard for Bitcoin custody. Navigated seven regulatory jurisdictions across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Singapore. Took BitGo public on the NYSE (BTGO) in January 2026.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

00:00 The Evolution of Crypto: From Fringe to Mainstream06:30 Building a Secure Future: The Birth of Bitco12:48 Navigating Regulatory Waters: The Impact of Bank Charters18:14 Crypto as a Service: Expanding Horizons in Europe21:52 Going Public: The Strategic Move for Bicco23:41 Navigating Public Company Challenges26:02 The Intersection of Politics and Digital Assets28:24 Revolutionizing Banking with Stablecoins32:30 The Future of Interest-Bearing Stablecoins41:20 Envisioning the Future of Digital Assets

Important Links

* BitGo: https://www.bitgo.com/mike-belshe/

* Medium: https://medium.com/@mikebelshe

* Belshe: https://www.belshe.com/author/mike/

* goUSD: https://design.bitgo.com/gousd

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The "uninsured bank" is the safe one

This is the part of the conversation I keep coming back to. Mike’s argument is hard to argue with: FDIC insurance exists because depositories take risks with your money. They lend it out. They run fractional reserves. They need a backstop because the money might not be there when you ask for it.

BitGo doesn’t do that. 100% reserves, segregated, audited, bankruptcy remote. The money is there because they never lent it to anyone.

“Ironically, an uninsured bank is actually safer than an insured bank because the insured bank is taking risks that need insurance. We hold the reserves. We don’t need the insurance because the money is actually there.”

Most institutional due diligence checklists still ask “is this FDIC insured?” as a proxy for safety. The better question: what’s the actual reserve model? If a custodian holds 100% of client assets, fully segregated, and a depository lends yours out and carries insurance to cover the downside, which counterparty do you actually trust more?

“Ironically, an uninsured bank is actually safer than an insured bank because the insured bank is taking risks that need insurance. We hold the reserves. We don’t need the insurance because the money is actually there.”

There’s a version of this story where BitGo is just another crypto custodian that survived long enough to get relevant. That version is wrong.

Mike built the security layer first, deliberately, before it was commercially urgent, because he understood that everything else depends on it. Two-of-three multi-sig, cold storage, SOC audits, seven regulated trust companies across four continents. That’s a 13-year foundation.

For institutions evaluating counterparty risk, this matters more than it probably shows up in procurement checklists. Most crypto firms that failed, failed at the foundation. They had the product without the infrastructure.

Related reads:

2. Stablecoins are repricing a $4 trillion spread

Here’s the math Mike laid out. The risk-free rate is roughly 4%. Banks take your deposits, invest at that rate, and return 0.1% to you. The rest is margin. It’s been this way for decades.

Stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether currently keep the full spread for themselves too. Mike thinks that model is temporary. Interest-bearing stablecoins are coming, and the banking lobby is fighting them not because they’re dangerous, but because they’re competitive.

“The risk-free rate is 4%. The bank gives you 0.1% while taking risks with your money. Stablecoins can pass that 4% back to you with lower risk and 24/7 liquidity. The idea that we are passing laws to prevent that is effectively against the American people.”

The fragmentation you’re seeing right now, every institution launching its own stablecoin to capture the spread, goes away the moment interest-bearing coins become legal. One or two well-run issuers charging a small management fee, like an ETF, and passing the rest through. The issuer proliferation problem solves itself.

Related podcast and reads:

3. Market structure is the “last straw” for institutional trust

Mike’s critique of crypto market structure is precise and worth sitting with. In traditional finance, your bank and your broker are separate. There are conflict-of-interest protections. Regulatory separation between custody, trading, and lending.

In crypto, until recently, one vendor did everything. Held your deposits, ran the exchange, matched your trades, held your collateral, settled your transactions. When it worked, nobody asked questions. When it didn’t, you got FTX.

“You should be able to have both security and liquidity and you should be able to have choice of where you store it, who is your bank and who is your broker. And yet what’s happening in crypto without market structure, you don’t get any of those things.”

BitGo has been building the separated version: regulated custody in one entity, trading and financial services through independently regulated affiliates. The Clarity Act, if it passes with market structure provisions intact, codifies this in law. That’s probably the catalyst for the next wave of institutional flow, not because it’s new information, but because it removes the last compliance objection for institutions that have been waiting for permission to move.

Related reads:

4. Going public was a transparency play, not a liquidity event

BitGo priced at $18 in January, hit $24 intraday, and now trades around $10. Easy to read as a flop. Mike framed it differently.

Private companies, however well audited, carry an information gap that public companies don’t. The 300-plus pages of SEC filings create a transparency standard that procurement teams at the largest financial institutions rely on. Multiple investors on the roadshow told Mike they’d been using a competitor not because it was better, but because it was public. That was the entire decision factor.

“Many of our private competitors are, maybe most, losing a lot of money. And it’s difficult to suss that out as a public company. Can I use this company which is a private company when I can’t really see exactly how well they’re operating?”

That says more about where institutional crypto adoption actually is than any conference keynote. It’s not a conviction problem. It’s a procurement problem.

Related Reads:

Related reads:

Bottom line

Mike Belshe is …

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

An SEC Commissioner just apologized to the crypto industry. On the record. To us.

“The regulatory approach made your lives a lot more difficult. I’ve talked to people who really were hurt. I do apologize for that.”

That’s Hester Peirce, who spent eight years as the SEC’s lone crypto dissenter and now leads its entire Crypto Task Force. The woman who quoted the cypherpunk manifesto from a government podium and wore protest t-shirts during commission meetings just filed the first-ever token classification framework with the White House.

The timing is perfect. This week, the SEC and CFTC published their first joint digital asset guidance. The stablecoin capital haircut dropped from 100% to 2%. And the token taxonomy Peirce helped architect is now sitting in the federal regulatory pipeline, potentially live by mid-2026.

I wanted to understand what’s actually changing inside the building, not the press releases, the thinking. Here’s what she told me.

About Hester: Yale Law. Former Goldman-era SEC staff attorney. Counsel to Paul Atkins (now SEC Chairman). Directed the Financial Markets Working Group at George Mason’s Mercatus Centre. She’s led the Crypto Task Force since January 2025 and co-authored Project Crypto, steering the agency from enforcement-first to rules-based.

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🎧 Jump to the best parts

* 00:00 Introduction to Hester Purse and Her Journey

* 01:50 Balancing Regulation and Freedom in Finance

* 04:35 Understanding Project Crypto and Its Goals

* 06:54 The SEC's Token Taxonomy Submission

* 08:47 Progress and Challenges in Crypto Regulation

* 10:48 The Shift in SEC's Stance on Crypto

* 12:14 Legislative Developments: Genius Act and Clarity Act

* 15:49 Political Influence on Crypto Regulation

* 18:52 Surveillance and Privacy in the Financial System

* 22:11 Meme Coins: Risks and Opportunities

* 26:44 Stablecoin Haircuts and Regulatory Guidance

* 28:22 Project Crypto's Institutional Credibility

* 30:38 The Impact of Stablecoins on U.S. Treasuries

* 31:21 NFTs and DeFi: Future Innovations

* 34:26 Learning from Past Regulatory Mistakes

* 35:55 Hester's Goals Before Her Term Ends

* 37:19 Innovation Exemption and Market Dynamics

* 38:27 Looking Forward: The Future of Crypto Regulation

* 42:15 Final Thoughts for Innovators in Crypto

Important Links

* Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hester_Peirce

* SEC: https://www.sec.gov/about/sec-commissioners/hester-m-peirce

* X: https://x.com/HesterPeirce

* SEC Crypto Task Force: https://www.sec.gov/featured-topics/crypto-task-force

Watch or listen now:YouTube • Apple Podcasts

On this topic

My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The SEC isn't pro-crypto. It's pro-rules. That's more valuable.

Don’t confuse what’s happening here. The SEC didn’t wake up bullish. It stopped being hostile. And for capital allocation purposes, that distinction matters more than any endorsement ever could.

Peirce put it plainly:

“We went from being anti-crypto to not pro-crypto, but proactive in the sense that we’re trying to get to clarity. We’re not trying to put our thumb on the scale in favor of any particular asset or even any particular technology.”

Peirce’s position is that the SEC’s existing authority is broad enough to provide meaningful clarity right now, without waiting for Congress to resolve its internal politics.

“Getting it right is important, and I think if Congress can do that, then it will really form the basis for this sector of the economy for many years to come.”

The jurisdictional map is finally being drawn. Tokenised securities land with the SEC. Everything else lands with the CFTC, now headed by Mike Selig, the former chief counsel of the very crypto task force Peirce leads. That alignment between the two regulators is not accidental. It is the architecture.

Related reads:

2. The token taxonomy might be the most important crypto document nobody’s read

On March 3, the SEC submitted a Commission-level classification framework to the White House for interagency review. Four categories: digital commodities and network tokens, digital collectibles, digital tools, and tokenized securities. Only the last one stays under SEC jurisdiction.

The conceptual shift that matters: an investment contract can expire. A token sold as part of a securities transaction doesn’t remain a security forever just because it keeps trading.

“We’ll help people understand how we’re thinking about what an investment contract is, when it ceases to travel with a token.”

If the White House completes its 90-day review on schedule, this framework goes live by mid-2026. That gives the industry its first real regulatory map. Not guidance-by-enforcement. An actual map.

Peirce was careful not to preview the details, but she confirmed the taxonomy is coming soon and aligns with what Congress is working on in the CLARITY Act. If the White House completes its review within the standard 90-day window, this framework could be live by mid-2026, giving the industry its first real regulatory map.

“We’ll help people understand how we’re thinking about what an investment contract is, when it ceases to travel with a token.”

Related reads:

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

We sat down with Michael Blaugrund, the man bridging the world’s most important equity market, the NYSE, on-chain. The platform goes live later in 2026. It’s the biggest change to capital market since electronic trading.

“Irrespective of where crypto asset prices are, the infrastructure momentum at this point is unstoppable.”

All US equities on-chain by 2030? Michael thinks not quite. By 2035? He’s betting yes.

“For a crypto-native investor, the idea of markets being unavailable or the inability to get your funds out at any given moment is a bug, not a feature.”

As the former COO of the New York Stock Exchange and now VP of Strategic Initiatives at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Michael ran all seven of NYSE's exchanges through the pandemic, the meme stock frenzy, and the shift to electronic-only trading. He testified before the US House Financial Services Committee in 2021 following the GameStop saga.

If you’re a bank, an asset manager, or a broker still waiting for “clarity” before acting on tokenization, here’s Michael’s advice:

“You better find another industry. It’s just not going to be a sustainable worldview.”

Today, he’s building ICE’s on-chain future. And this isn’t ICE’s first move:

* The firm quietly invested in Coinbase in its early rounds,

* launched the digital custodian Bakkt,

* helped bring Bitcoin ETFs to market through the NYSE Arca platform,

* put $2 billion into Polymarket at an $8 billion valuation, one of the largest investments by any traditional exchange in the crypto space,

* partnered with BNY and Citi on tokenized deposits across six clearinghouses,

* joined LayerZero's Zero blockchain initiative alongside Citadel Securities, DTCC, Google Cloud, and ARK Invest

And yesterday, it invested in one of the biggest crypto exchanges on the planet: OKX, valued at $25 billion.

In short: ICE has been watching this space for over a decade. Now it's moving it into the core of the business, and Michael is steering the wheel.

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About this episode: We get into what the NYSE’s 24/7 tokenized trading venue actually means, why the real transformation isn’t the trading platform but the collateral infrastructure, what ICE sees in Polymarket, and why Michael thinks the shift will be slow until it’s suddenly very fast.

🎧 Jump to the best parts

00:00 The Future of Trading: Tokenization at NYSE01:16 Challenges in Equity Markets and Solutions through Tokenization08:46 Understanding NYSE's Tokenization Platform14:59 Layer Zero and Blockchain Innovations21:15 Decentralization vs. Regulation in Blockchain23:39 Tokenizing US Treasuries vs. Equities26:01 The Role of DeFi in Future Markets28:31 Transformative Potential of Tokenized Deposits32:54 Investing in Prediction Markets: The Polymarket Case35:24 Looking Ahead: ICE's Strategic Focus37:04 Preparing for the Future of Capital Markets

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-blaugrund

* NYSE: https://nyse.com/

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelblaugrund/

* SIFMA: https://www.sifma.org/people/michael-blaugrund

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

There's a chart making the rounds right now. Gold at $5,400. Bitcoin at $66,000. One is at an all-time high. The other is down 47% from its October peak of ~$126,000. Same "store of value" thesis that the crypto community sold to investors over the last 5 years. Wildly different outcomes. We sat down with the man who saw it coming.

Dr. Michael Howell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on global liquidity, founder of CrossBorder Capital and creator of the Global Liquidity Index, told us why: the 65-month liquidity cycle peaked in Q3 2025. The downswing is just beginning and will likely last through 2027. Every risk asset is exposed.

“Bitcoin is the most liquidity-sensitive asset on the planet. If liquidity goes down, you’ll see it first in Bitcoin.”

About Michael: Dr Howell spent decades at Salomon Brothers and Barings. He has advised the World Bank on capital flows and pioneered the Global Liquidity Index, a framework that tracks money flowing through financial markets across nearly 90 countries. He runs Capital Wars, one of the top-ranked financial publications on Substack. His institutional service provides data to quant funds and investment managers globally.

In short: When Howell says the liquidity cycle has peaked and risk assets face a rough ride into 2027, he’s not guessing. He’s reading a framework that has called every major inflection point for decades.

Bitcoin is down over 50% from its highs. Crypto markets lost over $2 trillion in capitalisation. Every risk asset got hit at once. Michael’s model forecasts the peak, and now it’s forecasting the duration and depth of the downturn.

“Markets have trends, and those trends could be actually really quite exciting. I’m very upbeat about gold and Bitcoin in the long term. I think they’re fantastic assets. But the problem is there’s a cycle, and we can’t forget the cycle.”

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* 02:45 Understanding the Global Liquidity Cycle

* 05:35 The Impact of Global Debt on Liquidity

* 06:56 China and the US: A Bifurcating Monetary System

* 10:02 The Future of Bitcoin and Monetary Inflation

* 12:30 Government Debt and Monetization Strategies

* 20:16 The Impact of Stablecoins on China's Monetary System

* 21:46 The Dollar's Role in Global Trade and Devaluation

* 23:07 Understanding Asset Allocation Cycles

* 24:32 Liquidity Cycles and Market Predictions

* 29:20 Building a Resilient Investment Portfolio

* 32:05 AI Infrastructure Spending and Market Liquidity

* 33:57 Misconceptions About Gold and Market Cycles

* 37:40 China's Monetary Policy and Its Global Implications

* 42:32 The Future of US Debt and Economic Outlook

* 43:40 Investment Strategies for the Coming Year

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/michael-howell-357b1416

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelhowell_official/

* Google Research: https://research.google/people/michaeldhowellmdmph/

* CrossBorder Capital: https://www.crossbordercapital.com/

* Capital Wars: Substack

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

The world is broken. Trust in nearly all institutions is lost. The complex systems we rely on for our survival are daunting and unwieldy. We are in the dying stages of an 80-year monetary regime and debt supercycle. The conclusion is clear: the current system is unsustainable. The answer is decentralization.

That’s Joseph Lubin, Co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys. While most people are watching the daily candles of Bitcoin and Ether, Joe is watching the “Fourth Turning” of human civilisation.

About Joseph: As a co-founder of Ethereum, Lubin has been at the epicentre of the most significant shift in software history. Beyond Ethereum, he is the founder and CEO of Consensys, the infrastructure giant behind MetaMask and Linea, which is currently eyeing a landmark IPO in mid-2026. He also serves as the Chairman of SharpLink , a Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) company that holding $1.8B in Ethereum. He’s lived through every crypto cycle, built technology used by nation states and Fortune 500s, and has a macro worldview that extends far beyond price charts.

In short: When Lubin talks about civilization-scale infrastructure and 80-year super cycles, he’s not being hyperbolic. He’s describing the world he’s actively building for.

Ethereum is down 53% today in 6 months. Bitcoin’s down 42%. The DAT model is under pressure. And yet, Lubin remains one of the most convinced builders in crypto, not because he’s ignoring reality, but because he sees a different endgame than most.

Ideally we avoid a kinetic World War III. But we have a chance of getting through this mess via the use of decentralized protocols, via the invention of decentralized trust.

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* (02:09) → The 80-year super cycle: Why Ray Dalio and Strauss & Howe explain today’s market chaos and why the “Fourth Turning” is here.

* (09:42) → Decentralised trust as the answer: How Ethereum becomes the foundation of the next super cycle alongside AI.

* (16:15) → The origin story: How Ethereum went from 100+ volunteers to civilisation-scale infrastructure without VC funding.

* (23:26) → Ethereum killers and layer 2s: Why L2s aren’t just “scaling” tools; they are the partitions that allow nation-states and corporations to join the network.

* (27:45) → How blockchain becomes the trust foundation of AI

* (32:00) → The DAT strategy: Why Lubin joined SharpLink, and what happens when ETH is down 50% from ATH.

* (37:42) → The layer 2 debate: Joe’s take on Vitalik Buterin’s recent comments regarding the L2 roadmap and why ZK-EVM is “magic.”

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-lubin-48406489

* X: https://x.com/ethereumJoseph

* Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lubin

* Consensys: https://consensys.io/

* SharpLink: https://www.sharplink.com/josephlubin-1

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

1. The next supercycle

Lubin doesn’t open with price predictions. He opens with an 80-year macro framework that reframes every asset allocation decision you’ll make this decade.

“There are a lot of economic philosophers that have framed super cycles, usually 80 to 100 year super cycles. Ray Dalio has studied many cycles economically. Strauss and Howe put together a theory of generations where they have a seculum, 80 to 100 year super cycles consisting of four generations.”

The pattern: Every ~80 years, institutional trust collapses. The last time was World War II. The cycle before that: the Civil War era. Each time, the crisis forced a complete rewiring of economic infrastructure.

We’re in that fourth generation now. And the numbers back it up. Global sovereign debt has hit $97 trillion. The U.S. alone carries $36 trillion. Central banks have no exit strategy besides printing — which is exactly what Lubin predicts they’ll do.

“We’re going to have to print a lot of money so nation states can pay down their debt. That’s going to be positive for certain assets around the world, including cryptos and precious metals.”

But Lubin’s framework goes beyond the standard “money printer go brr” thesis. Social media has weaponized polarization. Institutional credibility is collapsing. Trust — the invisible substrate of every economy — is broken.

“Big tech, social media created weapons of mass manipulation. Those weapons were in use by all sorts of actors including enemies of the United States. The polarization that was introduced into political systems and social media has caused a tearing of the social fabric on the planet.”

The investment implication: If centralized trust is failing, assets that provide decentralized trust become structurally bid. Not because of speculation — because of necessity.

“The problem is as we crack up, there’s gonna be incredible volatility in the dissolution of the old system and the startup or instantiation of the new system.”

Translation for allocators: The volatility you’re seeing isn’t a sign of failure, but the sign of a regime change.

Related podcast:

2. Why Ethereum is winning, and why no competitor can catch it now

I pressed Lubin on Solana. On Canton. On every “Ethereum killer” narrative that’s emerged. His response:

His answer was both humble…

“There was a special period in time when something like Bitcoin could be developed and grow and become successful. There was a special period of time where a project like Ethereum could be formed and grow … while still adhering to the core principles of the technology—rigorous decentralization, credible neutrality, censorship resistance.”

and clear:

“There’s no way that any VC-funded project or even token-funded project currently could come close to rivaling the magnitude of what Ethereum is currently because there’s just so much has been built over the 10 and a half years that Ethereum has been running nonstop.”

The data supports the conviction. Ethereum secures roughly $112 billion in staked value. Over 30% of all ETH — roughly 36 million tokens — is now locked in staking, an all-time high that just crossed in February 2026. The network runs 1.1 million validators. It hosts 68% of all DeFi TVL and 53% of all stablecoins (~$163 billion).

But the real moat, Lubin argues, isn't the tech stack. It's the origin story.

Ethereum started as a movement, not a product. That’s why it’s credibly neutral. That’s why nation states trust it. A VC-backed chain, no matter how fast, can’t replicate that.

“If we had taken some VC money, it would have had a totally different vibe, shape, architecture. It would not be seen to be essentially of, by, and for the people.”

It was conceived as civilisation-scale infrastructure, not a product:

“You can argue that Apple and Google are maybe civilisation-scale technologies right now, but this is more like TCP/IP. This is the biggest part of Web3 and as such it’s a natural evolution of the Internet and the Web 1 and Web 2 protocols.”

And it maintained core principles through every cycle: Rigorous decentralization. Credible neutrality. Censorship resistance. These aren’t just buzzwords; they’re why Ethereum is trusted by nation states, enterprises, and DeFi protocols alike.

The punchline:

“Major institutions are using it currently or kicking the tires on it. It is likely to become the canonical enterprise Ethereum layer two blockchain.”

Translation: Ethereum is becoming the infrastructure layer for everything that matters.

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3. The DAT model is Ethereum’s answer to MicroStrategy. But it’s under real stress.

Lubin's SharpLink holds 863,424 ETH — roughly $1.75 billion at current prices. It's the second-largest corporate ETH holder after BitMine Immersion. All of it is staked. All of it is earning yield.

But the crypto market lost over $1T in market capitalisation in a month. And the entire DAT model is under pressure.

The thesis is compelling: ETH is “productive money” that throws off staking yield (~3.3% APR), unlike Bitcoin which sits static on Strategy’s balance sheet, funded by debt.

“I had a dinner in December 2024 with Michael Saylor… he did some brilliant things with MicroStrategy, now Strategy. It just became clear… that we can do this better because Ethereum is much more broadly utilized. Ethereum is a productive asset in the sense that it throws off risk-free yield in staking.”

The execution:

“We found a microcap company, SharpLink, and we led a round of investment into it. I became chairman and we hired a truly stellar team. Joseph Shalom came over from BlackRock after a short retirement. We essentially raised $3 billion. It is long-term patient capital. All of it’s staked. All of it is earning quite significantly.”

The endgame:

“Similar to how our friends at Bitmine operate, we will continue to accumulate capital and stake it or otherwise invest it in the Ethereum ecosystem. In the long tail, we’ll probably get to 5% as Tom Lee has indicated. At some point, we need to stop raising capital and buying ether. We’ll still keep earning yield on staking and other activities, but we’ll probably end up taking this giant pile of highest powered money and start investing it into protocols that are highly aligned with and valuable for the Ethereum protocol.”

For investors: The DAT model is a conviction vehicle, not a trade. If you believe ETH at $2,000 is mispriced relative to the network’s institutional adoption trajectory, SBET offers leveraged exposure with yield. If you don’t, the DAT structure amplifies downside just as efficiently.

Related reads:

4. L2s aren’t scaling Ethereum. They’re partitioning it for nation-states and enterprises.

Vitalik dropped a bomb: The rollup-centric roadmap no longer makes sense. L2s aren’t scaling Ethereum. The market panicked. Lubin reframed the entire debate.

“I think it made sense in that it drove the creation of technologies, including the zero-knowledge-proof technologies that are now permeating the Ethereum ecosystem. They’re enabling layer one to scale alongside a few layer twos.”

And he explains what Vitalik actually meant:

“Many of these layer twos have developed up to a certain level of maturity and they’ve stopped there for different reasons, whether it’s a technological reason or a business decision. He doesn’t consider those as being ideal scalability mechanisms for layer one, which is correct.”

The L2 landscape today is genuinely fragmented. Ethereum L1 revenue fell drastically in the last years. The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 slashed L2 costs 90% — great for users, painful for L1 revenue. Blob fees dropped to near zero.

Lubin’s framework is the most useful I’ve heard: Ethereum is a wholesale business. L2s are its customers.

“The layer two construct is going to be incredibly valuable for nation states to have their own partitioning, for sub-regions of nation states, for gaming ecosystems to have their own layer twos and layer threes, for corpo chains, for consortium chains. Layer twos are here to stay.”

His example is telling. Switzerland might set up an L2. Each canton gets an L3. They’re plugged into L1. It’s not fragmentation — it’s metropolitan Ethereum. Think of L1 as the interstate highway system. L2s are state roads. They serve different purposes but settle to the same infrastructure.

And ConsenSys’s Linea? Lubin is positioning it as the canonical enterprise L2:

“Major institutions are using it currently or kicking the tires on it. It is likely to become the canonical enterprise Ethereum layer two blockchain.”

The conclusion:

“It’s a spectacular technology. It’s magic. And it is indeed scaling Ethereum.”

5. AI without blockchain is a weapon of mass manipulation

This is where Lubin goes genuinely long-term. And it might be the most important part of the conversation.

“I think we should all be a bit wary of Big Tech because Big Tech has used AI over the years to effectively exploit its customers in different ways. What I would be concerned about is very powerful AI in the hands of a small group of nefarious human actors.”

His concern is concrete: centralized AI models optimized for engagement have already polarized global discourse. Give those same entities AGI-level capabilities without decentralized checks and you get what Lubin calls “weapons of mass manipulation” at civilization scale.

The solution? Your own AI agent, running on your own infrastructure, protected by decentralized identity.

“I want my own digital twin agent running on my own computer with my own personal operating system. Maybe it’s even part of the MetaMask money operating system that we’re building.”

The endgame:

“It would be really great in my opinion if a lot of people experience the web from the protection, behind the protection or with the protection of their own agent, their own AI agent that can essentially depolarize the incredibly polarized discourse that we’re subjected to on crypto Twitter and other social media so that we can get good clean information and rational interpretations.”

When your AI agent needs to pay another AI agent, it uses ETH. When it needs to prove your identity without revealing it, it uses zero-knowledge proofs on Ethereum. When it needs to settle a transaction instantly, it uses Ethereum L2 rails.

“We are moving into a world where virtually everything will be financialized, where many of the financialized things will be gamified. We’re moving into a world of markets for everything.”

The thesis: AI creates the demand. Blockchain provides the rails. The machine economy — AI agents transacting with each other at scale — becomes the killer use case for programmable money. And Ethereum, as the only credibly neutral, programmable settlement layer with institutional trust, captures that value.

Bottom line

I played paddle with Joseph a couple of months ago. He came on the 51 podcast yesterday. What struck me then still strikes me now: his humbleness. This is a man who co-founded a $300 billion+ ecosystem, and he still talks about it like a builder. It was profound to hear the humble origins of Ethereum — and why we're building this technology in the first place.

The biggest institutions in the world are building on blockchain. BlackRock. JPMorgan. SWIFT. DTCC. Nation states. That’s not a narrative. That’s a fact.

And here’s what this conversation crystallized for me. We’ve spent years drawing a line between “blockchain as neutral infrastructure” and “tokens as a speculative asset layer sitting on top.” That distinction is now breaking down. It will collapse entirely as markets mature.

Everything converges toward infrastructure. Tokens won’t be “speculative” or “asset classes”, they’ll be infrastructure tokens that align economic incentives across networks of participants. This infrastructure will power the markets for everything. Every asset. Every transaction. Every agreement.

Lubin’s edge isn’t price prediction. It’s infrastructure conviction. He isn't trading the volatility. He's building through it. And when you look at who's deploying alongside him – the largest asset managers, banks, and sovereign institutions on earth – the only question is when the market prices it in.

Take care,Marc

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“The idea of general purpose blockchains or blockchains where all block space is worth the same is going to go away. Within a year, maybe two years, you can guarantee they’re pretty much identical. In that world, we recognized a need to differentiate ourselves again.”

That’s Marc Boiron, the CEO of Polygon Labs, explaining why being just “another fast L2” is no longer a viable business model.

For years, Polygon owned DeFi. Fast, cheap transactions. $10 billion TVL at peak. Then FTX collapsed, enterprises fled, and competitors caught up on speed. Polygon faced a choice: become irrelevant or get ruthlessly focused.

The answer: Stop being everything to everyone. Start being the best at one thing.

And that one thing is payments.

About Marc: Marc Boiron is the Chief Executive Officer of Polygon Labs, a prominent developer of Ethereum scaling infrastructure. A lawyer by training, he has become a leading voice in the Web3 industry, overseeing the strategic development of the Polygon and AggLayer ecosystems. He’s the man tasked with navigating Polygon through its “rebuilding” phase, moving from the DeFi boom of 2021, surviving the enterprise exodus post-FTX, and now doubling down on ZK-tech and global money movement.

In our conversation, we explore why Polygon is betting on B2B2C, how they plan to out-distribute Fintech giants like Stripe, and why the “App Layer” (like Polymarket) is finally becoming more valuable than the “Infrastructure Layer.”

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* (04:30) → The Death of General Purpose: Why block space is becoming a commodity and how Polygon is differentiating.

* (11:20) → The Institutional Reality: Do big banks care if you’re a Layer 2 or a Sidechain? (Spoiler: No).

* (16:18) → Competing with “Corporate” Chains: Marc’s take on ARK, Tempo, and the threat of Wall Street-backed blockchains.

* (21:40) → The Cross-Border Killer App: Why B2B treasury and creator payouts are the low-hanging fruit of 2026.

* (33:02) → The “Package” Strategy: How Polygon plans to simplify the “convoluted” onboarding process for enterprises in Q1.

* (43:40) → The Polymarket Effect: What happens when an app built on your chain becomes more valuable than the chain itself?

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcboiron

* X: https://x.com/0xMarcB

* Polygon: https://polygon.technology/contact-us

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit 51insights.substack.com

Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

“Everyone has a boss. The central bank’s boss is a devil known as inflation. When inflation is tame, they can tune the economy and bail out the system. But when price pressure stays steady, the central bank gets constrained. That’s the environment crypto sits in today.”

That’s Garrick Hileman, one of the few Bitcoin advocates who’s deeply skeptical about what Bitcoin will actually become.

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About Garrick: Ranked as one of the 100-most influential economists in the UK and Ireland. For over a decade, Garrick Hileman has occupied a unique position in crypto. He was publishing research on Bitcoin in 2013 (pseudonymously, to appease his PhD supervisors). He authored University of Cambridge’s first major crypto benchmark study in 2017. He was Head of Research Blockchain.com and was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. He studied under economic historians such as Niall Ferguson.

In short: He’s seen crypto from the very beginning. And now, he’s warning us about something uncomfortable.

Bitcoin won’t be money. It might be digital gold. And if institutions keep accumulating it, it could become neither.

“I am one of the only Bitcoiners who consistently rails against ‘Hyper-Bitcoinization.’ People only think one chess move ahead. A dollar collapse wouldn’t just make Bitcoin go up; it would trigger a government response so catastrophic and restrictive that you might not like the exit you’re running toward. You want the frog to boil slowly in the kettle, not a crisis-driven rush.”

In our conversation, we dive into why Bitcoin isn’t “money” by traditional definitions, why the AI bubble might be the biggest threat to your portfolio, and why the massive concentration of Bitcoin in the hands of Wall Street institutions like BlackRock might actually break the “cypherpunk” dream.

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* (02:25) → The central bank’s boss: Why inflation is the only thing that can stop the money printer and what that means for asset markets.

* (05:16) → Dollar dominance, stablecoins and payments in the context of financial history

* (11:45) → Is Bitcoin money? Garrick explains why his students are always split 50/50 on this question and why Bitcoin currently fails the “Unit of Account” test.

* (18:10) → The hyper-Bitcoinization fallacy: Why a dollar collapse would be bad for Bitcoin

* (21:40) → The biggest systemic risk: Why the real risk to the economy isn’t a bank run, but ChatGPT-6 “underwhelming” the markets.

* (27:04) → Why CBDC’s failed vs private stablecoins

* (38:05) → Corporate blockchains vs open blockchains

* (46:15) → The Wall Street concentration risk: What happens to Bitcoin’s soul when BlackRock and Michael Saylor own more than Satoshi?

Important Links

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hileman

* X: https://x.com/GarrickHileman

* Website: https://www.garrickhileman.com/

* ITIF: https://itif.org/person/garrick-hileman/

* Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0SuZhjwAAAAJ&hl=en

* RePEc: https://ideas.repec.org/e/phi155.html

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My biggest takeaways from this conversation & who to bet on: