eXponential Finance

Matt is the Founder & Chief Decentralization Officer at DecentraNet, where he is working on the Monetary Reformation. As an analogy, he views the Reformation as the open sourcing & forking of Christianity. The Catholic Church still exists today, but you do not have to use them. The Monetary Reformation will do the same to central bank money. 

We also talk about a data-centric future, where you own your data, a cause that is greatly advanced by Brittany Kaiser's suitably named Own Your Data Foundation. We touch upon PegNet, founded by David Johnston based on the Factom protocol, and close with a look at Matt's other passion, focusing on psychodelics to upgrade the human mind with AMMA Healing. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Railsbank was co-founded by Nigel Verdon, who also founded Currencycloud - the most famous FinTech startup that nobody has ever heard of, as its engine powers Revolut, Monzo and Starling Bank, among others. Railsbank is taking a similar trajectory in enabling any company to become a FinTech. 

We talk with Shaul David, Head of Growth, and previously in a role as a FinTech Sector Specialist with the Department for International Trade (DIT) of the UK Government, where he also promoted London as a FinTech hub to Japanese financial services players. We define what the "invisibility cloak" implies, how Railsbank as an abstraction of the infrastructure layer could make market entry into Japan so much easier, and the immense opportunities that lie ahead of us, for banks and non-banks alike. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Masuda-san is the Chairman of the Japan Security Token Association (JSTA) and the Chief Operating Officer at Blockchain Hub. Previously, he also worked at SMBC, one of Japan's three megabanks, where he was setting up an Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley. We talk about the recent changes in crypto assets and digital securities regulation in Japan, how we expect the market to react to those rules that came into effect only on May 1, 2020, as well as the role the JSTA has to play in adoption, and how that contrasts with the Japan Securities Token Offering Association (JSTOA), the self-regulatory organization (SRO) for the broker/dealers engaging in crypto assets business.  Masuda-san also shares his observations on the adoption of blockchain technology among Japanese corporates, and how the current engagement differs from the early adopters.  

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Fabrizio is the Co-Founder & Head of Growth at Fintastico, curating a comprehensive database of of FinTech services and FinTech news to address the financial needs of consumers, retailers, enterprises and financial institutions, with a primary focus on European and North American FinTech startups. Following their recent funding round, they are working hard to become a FinTech aggregator, leveraging Open APIs to create a consumer-centric one-stop-shop for all things FinTech.

As an Italian who studied in Amsterdam and moved into a FinTech job in Barcelona in 2013, quite a bit of our conversation centers around the Italian and Spanish financial services and FinTech markets. Why are BBVA and Banco Santander doing so well in the innovation space, compared to the Italian (and for that matter, German) incumbents? 

Fintastico is also co-hosting a business match making & conference event on May 27 & 28, which is available for free using the following link:

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Luc is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tokeny Solutions, a Luxembourg-based software vendor building an full lifecycle platform to issue, manage and transfer tokenized securities, such as tokenized loans, structured notes, equity and funds, in a compliant way, allowing companies operating in private markets to benefit from using blockchain technology. 

Technically built on the Ethereum protocol, and hence leveraging the vast ecosystem of engineering talent as well as of existing wallets, Tokeny shields the implementation details from the user by providing pre-defined business processes. Primarily, the components are a compliant issuance  solution (cloud platform to issue tokenized securities to eligible investors), an onchain transfer solution (Tokeny's T-REX protocol for compliant transfer of ownership to white labeled investors), and a securities servicing solution for events throughout the security token lifecycle. 

In July 2019, Tokeny announced funding from Euronext, the leading pan-European exchange in the Eurozone. The investment allows Tokeny to lean on the resources brought by the largest centre of debt and funds listings in the world.

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Dotin  taps into the subconscious mind through colours and contrasts to develop personality profiles that create greater certainty in hiring decisions, identifying top talent within the organization, and help the organization develop the right professional development plan around an individual, all based on science originally developed in Japan in the mid-1980s, and still in use at all major marketing agencies.  

You can perform the one minute assessment free of charge at the following link: https://hrtool.dotin.us/registration

Dotin is a Business to Business (B2B) SaaS decision-making Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that aligns users' core motivations to the right opportunities through their subconscious behaviors to help the users and the enterprise reach their outcomes faster, creating a win-win situation. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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David is the Group CEO of 11:FS, a challenger consultancy that builds and launches next generation digital propositions for some of the biggest banks in the world.  They believe that digital banking is 1% done and that digital reform is needed to improve systems and services for banks and their customers. David's co-founder was part of the founding team at Monzo and Starling, and 11:FS has worked with the likes of Standard Chartered and NatWest, among others, on digital propositions. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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We refer to Shibata-san as the "Godfather of FinTech in Japan", not in a Mario Puzo sense (you won't find the head of a horse next to you when waking up), but because of the influence Shibata-san had in shaping many careers and mentoring so many of the startups in the overall ecosystem. Also a sought-after speaker and panelists at conferences in Japan and abroad, we were delighted that the pandemic allowed us to find some time to take a 360 degree view on the hot FinTech topics in Japan. 

So beyond some general commentary on the health of the overall FinTech ecosystem in Japan, we go into more detail specifically on the promotion of cashless payments, the situation in open banking, and get Shibata-san's perspective on the recently released security token regulation. 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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For the first time, we welcome two guests to the podcast: Haichao Zhu, Associate Director at the Algorand Foundation, and Alex Hui, Director at Moonstake and Co-Founding Chairman at the APAC Blockchain Association.

With Haichao, we discuss Algorand's Pure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol, the features of Algorand 2.0, namely Algorand Standard Assets (ASA), Atomic Transfers and Algorand Smart Contracts at Layer 1 (ASC1), and the latest development with the so-called Co-Chains. 

The research document mentioned on the podcast can be found at the following link: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/stanford-blockchain-conference/2020/no-incentive/

From Alex, we learn how Moonstake goes about building a pan-Asian staking business, why they chose to go down the Proof-of-Stake route rather than building another Proof-of-Work Mining Pool, what the roadmap for the various coins is, as well as what supporting infrastructure we can expect (hint: BinaryStar wallet coming in May!). 

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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Kyle Ellicott is a Founder, Investor and Analyst deeply involved with Blockchain and Open Finance. We had such an extensive conversation that we will publish it in two parts. In this episode, we round out our discussion on digital identity & authentication, debate friction vs frictionless financial services, and cover robustness and resilience in light of the Robinhood and MakerDAO issues during "Black Thursday".

Kyle is a Co-Founder of ReadWrite and Topio Networks as well as the Chief Labs Officer of ReadWrite Labs. He is also a noted TEDx and global keynote speaker, strategist, published author, & technologist with over 15 years of experience at the cornerstone of digital transformation between industry and technology. He’s advised venture capital funds, family offices (FOs), as well as over 175 companies globally throughout industries such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Transportation/Mobility, Blockchain/DApps/FinTech, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Health, Smart Cities and has successfully raised over $130 million in venture funding.

Quarterly, Kyle publishes the "Blockchain Infrastructure Landscape Map", with the Q1/2020 edition including more than 900 individual companies globally split into two parts, the overall landscape and supporting ecosystem. The overall landscape showcases several second-level categories throughout the Consumer, Enterprise, and Infrastructure sections. The supporting ecosystem highlights key players from venture to accelerators to consortiums.

Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected]

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