Nick van Eck, co-founder and CEO of Agora, joins Frank Chaparro and Slater Santer for the inaugural episode of The Desk to unpack how stablecoins are quietly overhauling global finance and disrupting traditional banking. Nick makes the case that traditional banks have shortchanged depositors for decades by offering near-zero checking rates while capturing the Fed funds rate overnight—causing static checking accounts to lose 40% of their purchasing power over twenty years. He breaks down how Agora's AUSD and stablecoin APIs allow embedded finance platforms and enterprise corporates to earn yield backed directly by short-dated U.S. T-bills and overnight reverse repos, details their push for a federal banking charter, and explains why he expects total stablecoin market cap to jump from $300 billion to $1 trillion as institutional cross-border settlement takes off. A conversation about regulatory arbitrage, deposit friction, and the multi-decade transformation of enterprise finance, from a founder building the next generation of dollar infrastructure.

Nick van Eck, co-founder and CEO of Agora, joins Frank Chaparro and Slater Santer for the inaugural episode of The Desk to unpack how stablecoins are quietly overhauling global finance and disrupting traditional banking. Nick makes the case that traditional banks have shortchanged depositors for decades by offering near-zero checking rates while capturing the Fed funds rate overnight—causing static checking accounts to lose 40% of their purchasing power over twenty years. He breaks down how Agora's AUSD and stablecoin APIs allow embedded finance platforms and enterprise corporates to earn yield backed directly by short-dated U.S. T-bills and overnight reverse repos, details their push for a federal banking charter, and explains why he expects total stablecoin market cap to jump from $300 billion to $1 trillion as institutional cross-border settlement takes off. A conversation about regulatory arbitrage, deposit friction, and the multi-decade transformation of enterprise finance, from a founder building the next generation of dollar infrastructure.

Scott Melker, host of The Wolf of All Streets, joins Frank Chaparro for a conversation about where the crypto market currently stands.

Scott breaks down the CLARITY Act at the finish line at what he calls coin-flip odds, why the fight has quietly narrowed to ethics and whether the president can participate in the crypto industry, and how Trump's meme coin reshaped the debate. Scott also discusses why price conversations have gone quiet at the institutional events and that "institutional adoption" so far has meant firms building products for retail rather than buying tokens for their own books. 

He also reflects on his own path from trading all day in public to building a more measured voice that bridges crypto and traditional finance.

A candid read on the cycle, the narratives, and the gap between what's being built and what the market is paying for.

Scott Melker, host of The Wolf of All Streets, joins Frank Chaparro for a conversation about where the crypto market currently stands.

Scott breaks down the CLARITY Act at the finish line at what he calls coin-flip odds, why the fight has quietly narrowed to ethics and whether the president can participate in the crypto industry, and how Trump's meme coin reshaped the debate. Scott also discusses why price conversations have gone quiet at the institutional events and that "institutional adoption" so far has meant firms building products for retail rather than buying tokens for their own books. 

He also reflects on his own path from trading all day in public to building a more measured voice that bridges crypto and traditional finance.

A candid read on the cycle, the narratives, and the gap between what's being built and what the market is paying for.

Joseph Chalom, co-CEO of SharpLink and a 20-year BlackRock veteran, joins Frank Chaparro to explain what separates a digital asset treasury that survives from one that blows up.

Joseph makes the case that a productive, yield-bearing asset like ETH changes the entire treasury model, so the goal becomes growing ETH per share rather than accumulating at shareholders' expense. He argues the market has pigeonholed Ethereum, walks through the "scoreboard" of settlement, tokenization, and DeFi activity he says shows it winning, and details the newly announced ETH Labs, a stakeholder-funded home for Ethereum's institutional roadmap that its backers intentionally do not control. 

A conversation about market structure, treasuries, and Ethereum's long game, from someone who spent two decades inside the world's largest asset manager.

Paul Erlanger, co-founder of FOMO, joins Frank Chaparro to talk about building a social trading app where every position, win or loss, is public. 

Fresh off a $75 million Series B, Paul makes the case that retail now sits in the driver's seat of markets, that transparency changes what it means to follow the smart money, and that giving people access to everything onchain from day one beats the old model of listing assets one at a time. 

A conversation about the interface for the next financial system, from a founder building it.

John D'Agostino, Head of Strategy at Coinbase, joins Frank Chaparro to unpack the next phase of market structure: tokenized equities, pre-IPO perpetuals, prediction markets, and the move toward a 24/7 "everything exchange."

John argues the market is panicked, not apathetic, and that panic has historically been the buying signal. He shares the framework he developed with economist Nouriel Roubini for separating productive bubbles that leave real infrastructure behind from inert ones that leave nothing, and explains why putting every asset on a common platform actually makes lending safer.

GoQuant Founder and CEO Denis Dariotis joins Frank Chaparro on The Crypto Tape to unpack the plumbing behind crypto's markets. They cover why fragmentation costs institutions money, what cascading liquidations reveal about exchange risk engines, the difference between perpification and tokenization, and why Denis thinks privacy and dark pools are the most underrated opportunity in crypto.

Crypto is in the headlines almost every week, yet the price keeps going nowhere. GSR's Managing Director of Asset Management Andy Baehr joins Frank Chaparro to explain why. They unpack the divergence between crypto's slow money of institutional integration and the fast money of volume and leverage, and why nearly $20 billion in October liquidations still hangs over the market. Andy and Frank also discuss Bitcoin’s maturation into a macro asset, and how that has influenced the Core Three framework behind GSR's actively managed multi-token ETF.

Important Information:
An investment in GSR Crypto Core3 ETF (Ticker: BESO) involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the Fund carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other information and should be read carefully before investing: http://gsretps.io/etf/beso

Staking is the process of putting digital assets to work on a blockchain network to receive rewards and enhance protocol security. By helping the blockchain run more smoothly and securely, rewards are earned in the native blockchain token. Potential staking rewards are earned by the Trust and not issued directly to investors.

Asheesh Birla has been building in crypto since 2013, back when there were just a handful of blockchains and Vitalik was still working out of Ripple's offices. Now CEO of Evernorth, the largest actively managed digital asset treasury built around XRP, he joins Frank Chaparro to make the case that the technology is the easy 25% and the real work is connecting blockchains to the wider economy.

They get into why XRP went from "the bank chain" insult to a structural advantage, why stablecoins are blockchain's broadband moment, the coming shakeout in digital asset treasuries after 2025's "summer of debt," and how tokenized equities went from negligible to $25 billion in two years.

A grounded, builder's-eye conversation about tokenization.