MoneyNeverSleeps

Citi Institute's "Tokenization 2030: Wall Street OnChain" puts a number on it: $5.5 trillion in tokenized assets by 2030. Alejandro Gutierrez, who leads Solana Superteam Ireland and returns for another appearance on the show, joins me to stress-test that forecast — what Citi gets right with DTCC, NYSE and Nasdaq embedding tokenization into core infrastructure, and what we think it misses, including the stablecoin-treasury flywheel, the pressure native issuers like Ondo and Superstate are putting on incumbents, Ireland and Luxembourg's combined funds industry as an underrated jurisdictional play, and why 24/7 markets are really built for AI agents, not retail traders.

Read the full report, "Tokenization 2030: Wall Street Onchain," Citi Institute, June 2026: https://www.citigroup.com/global/insights/tokenization-2030

Castle DAO, the Solana builder residency at Slane Castle: https://tally.so/r/ODJv1k

Follow Alejandro on X and LinkedIn: https://x.com/A_gutierrohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-gutierrez-98979b43/Follow Superteam Ireland on X: https://x.com/SuperteamIEhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/superteam-ireland/

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open — for the agents
00:37 Introduction
01:18 Citi's stated case: three drivers behind $5.5 trillion
02:19 Is public equities at $3.6 trillion an aggressive number?
03:25 Public permissionless vs. private permissioned chains
04:30 The flywheel Citi missed: stablecoins, treasuries and collateral
06:28 24/7 isn't for retail — it's for the agents
08:50 Ondo, Superstate and the pressure on incumbents
10:53 Ireland, Luxembourg and the €12.5 trillion opportunity
12:02 The wrapper problem: tokenized funds without tokenized holdings
12:41 Castle DAO at Slane Castle

MoneyNeverSleeps — sharp riffs, big ideas, and real insights from smart people, in under 15 minutes. Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend, GP at Norio Ventures, sitting at the intersection of crypto, fintech, AI and onchain finance.

Website: moneyneversleeps.ie
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/PeteTownsendNV
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petetownsend353/
Email: [email protected]

Martin Watkins is CEO of Montis Group, which is building a blockchain-native central securities depository — the settlement and issuance layer that makes tokenized assets work as real financial products.

With 30 years inside Euroclear, AtosEuronext and EY, Martin chose to build the infrastructure the market was missing rather than keep advising on the existing system. We get into what a digital CSD unlocks for collateral mobility, why the ECB's DLT eligibility confirmation matters, and what Luxembourg's Blockchain Law IV could mean for Ireland's €5 trillion funds industry.

Find Martin at [email protected] or visit montis.digital

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

CHAPTERS

00:00 The doom loop that tokenization solves

00:27 Introduction

01:13 Martin Watkins welcome

01:18 30 years inside the plumbing of capital markets

03:50 What a blockchain-native CSD does differently

05:48 The Friday afternoon collateral problem

06:22 The 24/7 problem in tokenized funds

07:46 The Irish question: settlement finality and €5 trillion in fund assets

09:27 Legal certainty, portfolio managers and the velocity of capital

10:39 Why the market infrastructure isn't there yet — but nearly is

11:20 How to reach Martin and Montis

MoneyNeverSleeps: Sharp riffs, big ideas and real insights from smart people — all in under 15 minutes. Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend with the people rebuilding money, markets, and the internet from the ground up.

moneyneversleeps.ie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/

X/Twitter: https://x.com/PeteTownsendNV

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petetownsend353/

Email: [email protected]

Pete Townsend is joined by Eric Ries, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, for a conversation about the invisible structural forces that corrupt even the most mission-driven companies, and what founders can do about it before it's too late.

Eric's new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great, is out now. Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Incorruptible-Good-Companies-Great-Stay/dp/B0FWZZBPZB

Eric spent 15 years teaching a generation how to build fast and learn faster. Incorruptible asks the harder question: how do you protect what you built from the forces that will eventually try to take it from you?

In this special double-length episode, he walks through the concept of financial gravity, the structural tools that the world's most durable companies have used for over a century, and why good intentions are never enough.

Topics covered:– Why corporate corruption is a structural failure, not an ethical one

– What financial gravity is and why it's invisible until it's too late

– The Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust and what it was designed to protect against

– How Novo Nordisk built a structure 100 years ago that protected $500 billion in shareholder value

– Why Silicon Valley Bank's mission statement was worthless

– The one two-page filing most founders never make

CHAPTERS

00:00 The More Golden the Goose

00:23 Welcome Eric Ries

01:06 The Founder's Wake

05:08 What Did The Lean Startup Miss?

08:09 What is Financial Gravity?

12:50 The Right Architecture

13:11 Anthropic and the Long-Term Benefit Trust

14:59 The Novo Nordisk Story

18:18 Are You Smarter Than a Nobel Laureate?

19:28 The Vatican Panel

20:46 The Public Benefit Corporation

22:41 Is LTSE Incorruptible?

23:39 The Guardian of the Company's Soul

Connect with Eric:X: https://x.com/ericries

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/

Incorruptible (book): https://incorruptible.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericriesactual/

Newsletter: https://news.theleanstartup.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow

Podcast: https://www.ericriesshow.co

Buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Incorruptible-Good-Companies-Great-Stay/dp/B0FWZZBPZB

Connect with Pete:X: @PeteTownsendNV

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/

Norio Ventures: https://norioventures.com

MoneyNeverSleeps: https://moneyneversleeps.ie#incorruptible #leanstartup #founders #startups

Pete Townsend is joined by Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN and Managing Partner at A100x Ventures, for a conversation about how to tell the difference between a token that represents ownership of the value-creating thing and one that's an accelerant bolted onto something else.Sal has been underwriting these decisions at A100x at the pre-seed and seed stage. He walks through what's actually changed in the market, what a defensible answer on value accrual sounds like in a pitch meeting, and why the race-to-TGE game that defined the last cycle is largely over.

Topics covered:

– Why the era of tolerating tokens with no claim on cash flows is ending

– How to tell whether a founder has real conviction on decentralization or is bolting a token onto an equity business

– The cap-table tensions between SAFEs, token warrants, and Series A investors who can't touch tokens

– Why building the product before designing the token is the new discipline

– The question Sal wishes more founders walked in with an answer to

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Bad Tokens Ruin Good Projects

00:30 Welcome Sal Ternullo

01:10 What Changed in Token Value Accrual

03:00 Equity vs. Token: Where Does Value Accrue

04:55 Signs a Founder Has Real Conviction

06:15 Ownership or Loyalty Points

08:30 Tokens After 18 Months: Pump.fun and the Lag

10:00 The Race to TGE Game is Over

11:30 The Cap Table Reality

13:00 The Question Founders Should Ask

Connect with Sal:X: @sal_ternulloEmail: [email protected]

SVRN: https://svrn.net

A100x Ventures: https://a100x.vc

Connect with Pete:X: @PeteTownsendNV

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/

Norio Ventures: https://norioventures.com

MoneyNeverSleeps: https://moneyneversleeps.ie#crypto #venturecapital #tokens

Dan Gold is founder and CEO of Stratiphy, and as far as anyone knows, the only platform offering tax-efficient crypto exposure to UK retail investors right now.

The path got narrow fast. The FCA lifted the retail crypto ETN ban in October 2025. HMRC then closed the stocks-and-shares ISA route at the start of this tax year, leaving crypto ETNs eligible only for Innovative Finance ISAs, which no mainstream platform offered. Stratiphy re-opened the door, partnering with 21Shares to offer bitcoin, ether, and the new BOLD bitcoin/gold hybrid inside an ISA wrapper.

We get into the regulatory maze, whether Bitcoin is a lottery ticket or a real line item, and what launching into a 35% drawdown tells you about who your customers actually are. Plus: why the IFAs will come around whether they like it or not.

Follow Dan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-gold-5186091b2/

Learn more about Stratiphy: https://www.stratiphy.io

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Tax-Efficient Crypto in the UK: The Short Story

00:25 The Regulatory Sequence

03:00 IFAs and the Education Gap

04:00 Portfolio Construction or a Punt?

05:30 Bitcoin: Lottery Ticket or Asset Allocation?

08:00 Launching Into a Down Market

09:30 Where Stratiphy Goes Nex

t11:30 Sign-Off

🌐 https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

#MoneyNeverSleeps #Crypto #Bitcoin #ISA #UKInvesting #ETN #Fintech #21Shares #Stratiphy

Tokenization has a perception problem. The industry keeps selling it as an efficiency play — less friction, more transparency, better infrastructure. But if tokenization doesn't help you sell more of whatever you've tokenized, it's irrelevant.

Alejandro Gutierrez leads Solana Superteam Ireland and has been building in this space since before most people knew what tokenization meant. Co-founder of the Defactor DeFi protocol. Creator of a blockchain-based supply chain financing application with Consol Freight. And the only builder on a KPMG panel last week alongside the Central Bank of Ireland, Invesco, and Dillon Eustace — in a room of over a hundred people from the heart of Irish financial services.

The POC phase is long gone. Ireland has all the ingredients. Now it's time to move product — or get left behind.

Also: Castle DAO is coming to Slane Castle. The TradFi Band is yet to be confirmed.

Follow Alejandro on X and LinkedIn: 

https://x.com/A_gutierro

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-gutierrez-98979b43/

Follow Superteam Ireland on X and LinkedIn

https://x.com/superteamIE

linkedin.com/company/superteam-ireland/

CHAPTERS: 

00:00 Sell More or Don't Bother 

01:00 Is Crypto Getting Boring? 

02:00 Guardrails, Governance and the Drift and Kelp Hacks 

03:00 The KPMG Panel — The Builder in the Room 

05:00 The Commercial Reality of Tokenization 

06:00 What Defactor and Consol Freight Unlocked 

08:00 The Colombian SME and Global Capital Formation 

09:00 Does Ireland Have What It Takes? 

11:00 The POC Phase Is Long Gone 

12:00 Before We Go — Buildstation, Colosseum and Castle DAO

🌐 https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

#MoneyNeverSleeps #Tokenization #Tokenisation #Solana #Ireland #DeFi #Web3 #Crypto #Fintech #Blockchain #IrishFintech #OnchainFinance

Brian McNulty has been building toward this moment for a decade. When he co-founded the Post Trade Distributed Ledger Group with the London Stock Exchange back in 2015, he was helping the industry imagine what tokenized funds might one day look like. On April 21st 2026, he rings the bell at that same exchange to launch DVF — Lingfeng Capital's Digital Venture Fund — and the circle closes.In this episode, Brian and Pete trace the journey from FAC to the Apex exit to DVF, and dig into what VC 3.0 actually means: a venture fund first, a tokenized structure second, built to fix the distribution problems that have kept private markets broken for decades.They cover why the underlying investment case always has to come first, how Archax and LSEG's Digital Markets Infrastructure underpin the model, what structured transferability actually looks like in practice, who DVF is really for, and the real hurdles the industry still has to clear.DVF is Lingfeng Capital's $100 million regulated tokenized venture fund investing in Series B through pre-IPO fintech, AI, blockchain, and digital infrastructure companies across global markets.Find Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmcnulty/EP 116 — the original FAC episode from 2020: https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/116-all-these-funds-brian-mcnulty-and-fac/CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction00:45 From PTDL to Lingfeng — The Journey02:00 What FAC Got Right and Wrong03:15 Why Tokenization Alone Is Never Enough04:00 Private Markets Distribution Is Broken05:00 Venture Fund First, Token Second07:00 How DVF Works — LSEG, Archax and VC 3.009:00 Structured Transferability vs True Liquidity09:30 Who DVF Is For — Four Investor Buckets11:30 The Real Hurdles Left to Clear13:15 Ringing the Bell at the London Stock Exchange🌐 https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/#MoneyNeverSleeps #VentureCapital #Tokenization #PrivateMarkets #DVF #VC30 #Fintech #Blockchain #DigitalAssets #LingfengCapital #Archax #LSEG

Who's watching the agent? That's the question at the heart of this episode — and it's one that's going to define the next decade of finance.

Rob Viglione spent his career figuring out how machines make decisions in high-stakes environments. From the US Air Force to Afghanistan, and now as Co-founder and CEO of Horizen Labs, he's building the cryptographic trust infrastructure for the agentic economy.

Every asset class will be tokenized. Agents will be trading 24/7 across all of them. Your data will be completely public. All the time. The guardrails don't exist yet — and the answer is Zero Knowledge Cryptography. The technology that lets agents prove they did what they were supposed to, without revealing how they did it.

Find Rob at horizenlabs.io and follow him on X at @robviglione

MoneyNeverSleeps is on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@moneyneversleeps1814And on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/moneyneversleeps/id1455819294

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Who's Watching the Agent?01:30 The Stakes of Agentic Commerce03:00 What Breaks When Agents Hit Financial Rails05:00 Is TradFi Infiltrating or Integrating with DeFi?07:30 Zero Knowledge Cryptography and Privacy on Public Rails09:30 Baking Privacy into the Protocol11:00 Is This ZK's Moment?

#MoneyNeverSleeps #ZeroKnowledge #AgenticEconomy #HorizenLabs #Crypto #Fintech #Web3 #Privacy #Tokenization #AI #Blockchain #ZKProofs

Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity is not. John Hill, VP of Story at Whop, has spent his career watching founders in Cape Town, Lagos, and Medellín build something real — and then hit a wall the moment they try to get paid. Whop is an AI-backed platform where anyone can build a digital business in minutes, and in February 2026 it closed a $200 million investment from Tether to embed stablecoin payments across 144 countries. The shift from finding a job to being the job is already happening. This is what the infrastructure behind it looks like.

We cover

• What the wall actually looks like for a founder in Lagos, Cape Town, or Medellín
• Why talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not
• How Whop has removed the barriers that once kept entrepreneurship out of reach
• What Tether's $200M investment means for creators and builders outside the western financial system
• The shift from finding a job to being the job
• Why the Boston Irish diaspora is the original first dollar entrepreneur story
• How two students turned one skill into $140,000 a year — while still in school

For full show notes and guest links visit moneyneversleeps.ie

🌐 https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

MoneyNeverSleeps explores one big idea each week in under 15 minutes with founders, operators, and investors shaping crypto, fintech, AI, and onchain finance.

Subscribe and join the conversation.

#Entrepreneurship #FutureOfWork #Tether

Markets don't close when the exchange does. They just move somewhere else.

In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend speaks with Alex Pollak of 21Shares about why crypto ETPs are not just surviving the rise of onchain finance — they're about to become part of it.

Alex Pollak is Managing Director and Head of UK and New Markets at 21Shares, which provides the largest suite of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products in the world. Drawing on over 20 years in the ETF and ETP industry, Alex explains why the wrapper that made crypto accessible to institutions is now evolving into something programmable, tokenized, and potentially tradeable around the clock.

Across crypto, fintech, and traditional finance, the conversation around tokenized assets and 24/7 markets is moving from theory toward product reality. Exchanges, brokers, and issuers are beginning to ask what happens when the underlying assets never sleep but the fund structure still does.

Rather than being displaced by direct crypto ownership or onchain alternatives, ETPs may be about to get smarter — evolving from simple access vehicles into programmable baskets that operate inside a financial system that no longer has opening hours.

This isn't a crypto-versus-TradFi conversation. It's a discussion about financial infrastructure, total cost of ownership, and how one of the most successful product innovations in market history is quietly reinventing itself.

We cover

• Why buying crypto directly isn't always cheaper than using an ETP
• How total cost of ownership changes the calculation for institutional investors
• Why basket products are the next frontier — and what's holding them back
• How regulators in the US, UK, and Europe are shaping the pace of innovation
• Why 21Shares wants to tokenize its own ETPs
• What a 24/7 tradeable ETP actually looks like in practice
• Why the long runway for crypto ETPs is just beginning

Alex brings a perspective shaped by two decades of watching skepticism turn into a multi-trillion dollar industry — and sees the same pattern emerging in crypto ETPs today.

If you're a founder, operator, or investor trying to understand how traditional financial products and onchain systems are beginning to converge, this episode offers a clear-eyed view of where things are heading.

00:00 Markets never close: the cold open

00:30 Intro and guest welcome

01:00 How investors access crypto today

02:30 ETPs vs direct ownership: who uses what

03:30 Total cost of ownership and the spread argument

04:30 How ETP spreads have tightened over time

05:00 From single asset to basket products

06:00 What regulators in the UK, US and Europe are allowing

07:00 The dream: funds as smart contracts

08:00 Tokenizing ETPs and the 24/7 market problem

09:30 Technology ahead of regulation

10:30 The long runway for crypto ETPs

11:00 Closing thoughts and where to find 21Shares

For full show notes and guest links, see below.

MoneyNeverSleeps explores one big idea each week in under 15 minutes with founders, operators, and investors shaping crypto, fintech, AI, and onchain finance.

If you're interested in where financial infrastructure is heading — from tokenized assets and crypto ETPs to programmable markets and onchain settlement — subscribe and join the conversation.

🌐 https://www.moneyneversleeps.ie/

#CryptoETPs #TokenizedAssets #OnchainFinance