The Index Podcast

Ever tried explaining to your private banker why your money is spread across three countries, two exchanges, and a crypto wallet? Shimon Newman, former Director of Research at Squads and now Founder & CEO of Moto, is building the card that makes that whole headache disappear. This one's for globally mobile customers who are tired of slow settlement times, FX fees, and banks that only pay attention once you've already made it.

In this episode of The Index Podcast, Shimon breaks down why he left one of crypto's best companies to build a "secured credit card" that actually behaves like one, how Moto turns stablecoin deposits into real yield-funded cashback, and why he's betting the next $124 trillion wealth transfer won't go to Amex or JPMorgan.

What we cover:

• 🏍️ The Genesis story: why Shimon left Squads to build Moto, and the "$10 vs $10M" customer support insight that sparked the idea
• 💳 Real credit vs. fake crypto cards: why most "crypto credit cards" are functionally debit cards, and how Moto's actually different
• 🔁 The economic engine: how Moto borrows from credit facilities, earns interest on deposits, and funnels it straight into cashback
• 🌐 Killing the private banking model: why global wealth no longer fits in one country, one bank, or one relationship
• ⚡ Stablecoins, DeFi & on-chain infrastructure as invisible plumbing: how it powers Moto without ever feeling "crypto" to the end user
• ✈️ The perks: Visa Infinite benefits, airport lounges, near-instant access to dedicated human support, and an invite-only waitlist by design
• 🔮 The 5-year vision: Moto as the "Soho House of finance" and a real challenger to Amex and JPMorgan for the next generation of wealth

Links: 

🔗 The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast 🔗 Moto: https://www.moto-card.com/ 🔗 Moto on X: https://x.com/usemotocard 🔗 Shimon Newman on X: https://x.com/ShimonNewman 🔗 Shimon Newman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shimon-newman-671928153

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Domains are the most entrenched, least liquid asset class on the internet, and it's about to change forever. Inder Singh, VP of Product & Tech at D3 (the team behind Doma Protocol), joins The Index Podcast to break down how a $360B+ industry still run like it's 1999 is finally getting an on-chain upgrade, built natively on Solana.

From spot-trading domains like stocks, to fractional ownership of premium names, to AI agents that manage your domain on autopilot, this episode is your crash course in the next big RWA narrative.

🔑 What we cover:

🌐 Why domains are a $360B (and growing) asset class most people have never heard of 

💸 How legacy domain sales work today, and why 25% fees and slow settlement are about to disappear 

⚡ Bringing Solana Record Service (SNS) on-chain for instant, NFT-based domain settlement 

🧩 Fractionalizing premium domains (like software.ai) so anyone can own a piece 

📦 DABs (Domain Asset Vehicles), tokenized baskets of thousands of domains, launching Q3 

💰 How token holders earn real cash flow when domains in a basket sell 

🤖 Why AI agents need domain-based identity, and what that means for the future of the internet 

🏆 Why Solana is the only chain built for this kind of institutional-grade RWA liquidity 

📈 The case for domains as a diversification play alongside stocks, real estate, and other RWAs

🔗 Links: 

🎙️ The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast 

👤 Inder Singh — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inderpreetsingh/ 

🐦 Inder Singh — X: https://x.com/InderpreetSingh 

🏢 D3: https://d3.com/ 

🌐 Doma Protocol: https://doma.xyz/

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Alex Kehaya sits down with Avery Ching, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs and former lead engineer on Meta's Libra project, for a wide-ranging conversation on what happens when AI absorbs all of our data, and who ends up owning the intelligence that comes out of it. From Shelby's plan to put your data on encrypted, decentralized rails to Decibel's on-chain trading engine, this episode digs into where crypto and AI actually intersect, and why Avery thinks we have less time than we realize to get it right.

In this episode:

🧠 Open Intelligence: Avery makes the case that access to AI should be a human right, and warns that a handful of gated, closed models could create a deeply unequal world within just a few years.

🔐 Data Ownership: that concern leads straight into Shelby, Aptos Labs' answer to the problem: a decentralized, quantum-resistant storage layer built so your data can power training and inference without ever being exposed, giving individuals and enterprises real control over their own intelligence stack.

🏢 Real-World Use Cases: Avery walks through who's actually testing Shelby today, from data-labeling companies like Scale AI to ad-transparency platforms and next-gen prediction markets built on richer, on-chain datasets.

⚡ Enterprise-Grade Decentralization: the conversation turns to how Aptos hit sub-second P99 latency, and why that reliability is what lets Shelby promise hyperscaler-level performance without the egress fees.

💱 Decibel & Agentic Trading: Avery breaks down Decibel, Aptos' fully on-chain exchange doing 25ms block times and $4B+ in volume, and why he thinks agentic trading (not just agentic payments) is the next frontier.

📉 AI Bubble Talk: Alex and Avery get candid about whether crypto has decoupled from traditional markets, and whether AI is repeating the dot-com cycle at an even bigger scale.

🔮 AI vs. Crypto: a frank take on which technology actually matters more right now, and why Avery believes the two need each other to keep intelligence open and ownership fair.

🔗 Links 

📺 More from The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast 

👤 Avery Ching on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/averyching/ 

🌐 Aptos Labs: https://aptoslabs.com/

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Most crypto investors are chasing a lottery ticket. Jake Claver is building the system that keeps you from losing it all when you finally win.

Jake Claver is the CEO and Principal of Digital Ascension Group. a firm helping high-net-worth individuals and institutions navigate wealth, sovereignty, and the seismic shift happening in global finance. With a community of 17,000+ members and a mission to help 1 million people reach financial freedom, Jake brings a rare mix of street-level hustle and institutional-grade thinking to every conversation.

In this episode, Jake and Alex go deep on:

💰 Why most crypto investors aren't ready for real wealth  and the mindset shift from "my money" to "my family's money" 

🏦 What a Digital Family Office actually looks like  governance, ethics, multi-generational wealth planning, and how it applies to crypto holders 

🤖 AI agents inside wealth management  how DAG is building super-agents across legal, tax, insurance, and estate planning verticals 

🔗 On-chain family governance  zero-knowledge proof voting, investment committee guardrails, and blockchain-based transparency 

⚠️ CBDCs, UBI & the coming technocracy  a frank conversation on where the macro financial system is actually heading 

📉 The deflationary collapse thesis  why AI + blockchain could trigger it, and how central banks may respond with digital money 

🧠 Open-source AI vs. frontier labs  why the absence of a viable open-source alternative to GPT-4 / Opus is a genuine civilizational risk 

🚀 Building a personal brand & community in the AI era, Jake's framework for starting from zero in 2025: health, finance, or relationships 

⚡ The SaaS disruption wave, why subscription software is about to get obliterated and what to build instead 

📑 Paper Search MCP & the Last 30 Days skill, the AI tools Jake is actually using to stay ahead of the curve

🔗 Connect with Jake Claver:

• 🌐 Digital Ascension Group: http://www.digitalfamilyoffice.io
• 📧 Substack (600K+ subs): https://jakeclaver.substack.com/
• 🐦 Twitter/X: https://x.com/beyond_broke
• 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JakeClaverQFOP
• 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakeclaverqfop/
• 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobclaver/
• ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jakeclaver
• 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jakeclaverqfop

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What if every community, your baseball team, your college campus, your favorite creator's fanbase, had its own currency that worked like real money from day one? Ted Livingston, the founder who built Kik into one of the world's largest messaging apps and launched the first token on Solana, is back with his boldest bet yet: Flipcash.

In this episode, Ted breaks down why Bitcoin, Kin, and stablecoins each got it partially right and how Flipcash is designed to capture the best of all three. This one is a must-watch for anyone serious about where crypto payments are actually headed.

Topics covered:

💬 Ted's full backstory — from Blackberry intern to Kik, Kin, Code, and now Flipcash
 🪙 What "community money" actually means — and why it's not a meme coin or a stablecoin
 📈 How Flipcash's bonding curve works — more stable, more gradual, USD-backed from day one
 🔒 Why nobody gets coins for free — the key design decision that avoids Kin's fatal flaw
 💧 Reinventing liquidity in crypto — no market makers, no manipulation, just an on-chain reserve
 ⚡ Why Solana is the only home for Flipcash — and what Alpenglow will unlock next
 🏀 Should the Knicks create a Flipcash currency? — Ted's take might surprise you
 💸 Spending vs. selling — why this distinction is the whole point of making crypto into real money

🔗 Links:

• 📺 The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast
• 👤 Ted Livingston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedlivingston/
• 🐦 Follow Ted on X: @ted_livingston
• 🌐 Flipcash website: https://www.flipcash.com/
• 📱 Download Flipcash: Search "Flipcash" on the App Store or Google Play

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From trading desks at UBS to leading global growth at one of the fastest-growing blockchains in the world — Xen Baynham-Herd's journey through crypto is as wild as the industry itself.

In this episode, Alex sits down with Xen, Head of Marketing & Global Growth at Base, to unpack what it really takes to bring the world on-chain. If you're building in Web3 or just trying to understand where this is all going, this one's for you.

Topics covered:

🏦 How Xen went from UBS fixed income trader to crypto OG — and why he's been in the space for 10+ years and can't look away

🔵 What Base actually is — and how it's positioning itself as the go-to blockchain for global finance (not just another Solana competitor)

📈 Base's focus areas: trading, payments & AI agents — including Base NPC, X402 agentic commerce, and what millions in on-chain volume actually looks like

🤖 Will AI agents cross the chasm into mainstream? — why being able to transact directly inside ChatGPT or Claude could be the unlock crypto has been waiting for

🥃 Real-world asset tokenization done right — the whiskey barrel lending story that perfectly explains DeFi's killer advantage over TradFi

🌍 Emerging markets as crypto's first movers — Latin America, Africa, India, and Asia are already running on stablecoins, and Base is doubling down on that

🚀 The Base Ecosystem Fund & Base Batches accelerator — what kinds of teams they're backing and what founders should be building right now

💡 When does crypto stop being crypto? — Xen and Alex agree: the real win is when nobody's talking about blockchain anymore because they're just using it

🔗 Connect with Xen Baynham-Herd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xen-baynham-herd-01685775/

🌐 Explore Base: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinbase/

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The man behind one of Solana's most foundational DeFi protocols finally sits down with us. Michael Hwang, CEO of Orca, breaks down how a protocol that's been quietly powering Solana's liquidity for 5+ years is now stepping into the spotlight — and building infrastructure for the next era of on-chain finance.

What we cover:

🏦 From BlackRock to Solana — Michael's backstory and why he believes blockchain is building the financial rails of the future

🌊 Orca's evolution — How the protocol went from a retail-friendly DEX to the back-end liquidity engine for institutions, RWAs, and hybrid assets

🔐 Regulated Asset Infrastructure — Orca's brand-new product that lets asset issuers toggle KYC/compliance controls directly into on-chain liquidity pools

🪙 Tokenized Gold, Stocks & RWAs — Why permissioned DeFi isn't a contradiction, and how Orca is building rails for a full spectrum of asset types

🤖 Prop AMM research — The internal market-making engine Orca has been quietly running in production (and what it might become)

📈 Institutions on Solana — Why "institution" is a spectrum, who's actually ready to step on-chain, and what friction remains

🌍 The democratization thesis — Michael's core belief: your grandma LPing alongside a Wall Street quant in the same pool is what makes DeFi worth building

🔗 Links:
 📺 The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast
🐦 Michael Hwang (Twitter): https://x.com/tmoClabs
💼 Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mqhwang/
🌊 Orca: https://www.orca.so/
🐦 Orca on Twitter: https://x.com/orca_so
💼 Orca on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orca-so/

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What if every hot take you had could instantly become a trade? Jason Rodrigues, Founder of Cesto, is building exactly that on Solana — and it might be the most exciting DeFi product you haven't heard of yet.

Cesto lets anyone invest in curated baskets of assets built around ideas, narratives, and trends — from semiconductors and AI to sports teams and geopolitical headlines. In this episode, host Nicki Scans sits down with Jason to explore how Cesto is turning finance into something you actually feel — and how Solana makes it all possible.

🔑 Topics Covered:

• 🧠 Finance is editorializing — why more and more money is moving based on vibes, views, and conviction
• 🪣 What is a Cesto basket? — curated bundles of tokens, stocks, and prediction market positions in one click
• ⚡ Speed of execution — how Cesto can launch a basket within 1–5 minutes of a breaking news story
• 📊 Short-term vs. long-term holds — how users are trading narratives, not just assets
• 🤖 The Anthropic Anti-Portfolio — a real-world basket that 3–4x'd by shorting companies Anthropic disrupted
• 🏗️ Why Solana? — speed, culture, community liquidity, and developer ecosystem all in one
• 👥 How Cesto curates experts — from niche Substack writers to Reddit mods, building the next generation of fund managers
• 🌍 What's coming — World Cup baskets, mobile retail, wallet integrations, and institutional-grade liquidity

🔗 Links:

• 🎙️ The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast
• 🌐 Cesto: https://cesto.co/
• 🐦 Cesto on X: https://x.com/cesto_co
• 🐦 Jason on X: https://x.com/jasonrodrigues
• 💼 Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrrodrigues/

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What does it take to build a truly decentralized exchange that can compete with traditional financial markets?

In this episode of The Index Podcast, Dhrumil, Co-Founder of Archer Exchange, joins us to discuss why Solana is uniquely positioned to power the next generation of on-chain trading and how Archer is building a fully on-chain order book designed for transparency, efficiency, and deep liquidity.

From democratizing market making to creating infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, Dhrumil shares the vision behind Archer and what it takes to build an exchange that stays true to DeFi principles.

Key Topics Covered

🚀 Why Dhrumil chose Solana to build Archer

📈 How Archer combines the efficiency of modern AMMs with the familiarity of an order book

💡 Why market making should be accessible to everyone—not just large institutions

🔓 The importance of fully on-chain trading infrastructure

🌐 How composability enables developers to build new products on top of Archer

🏦 The future of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and on-chain markets

🔒 Why security and transparency are critical for the next generation of DeFi exchanges

📊 Lessons learned from Archer's beta launch and early user growth

⚡ Building liquidity, tighter spreads, and better trading experiences on Solana

Links

🔗 The Index Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast

🔗 Dhrumil (X):
https://x.com/mmdhrumil

🔗 Archer Exchange:
https://archer.exchange/

🔗 Archer Exchange (X):
https://x.com/ArcherExchange_

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What happens when you combine rare whiskey, real-world assets, and Solana?

In this episode of The Index Podcast, Alex Kehaya sits down with Tzvi Wiesel, Founder & CEO of Baxus, to explore how one of the most unique RWA platforms in crypto is bringing rare spirits, collectibles, lending, and liquidity fully onchain.

From tokenized whiskey bottles and decentralized financing to physical asset authentication and viral whiskey vending machines, Todd shares how Baxus is building the future of collectibles on Solana.

What You'll Learn: 

🥃 How Baxus is transforming the global whiskey and spirits market with Solana

📈 Why rare whiskey behaves like NFTs—but with real-world value

🏦 How Baxus is tokenizing whiskey barrels and unlocking DeFi lending opportunities

💰 The path to adding $500M+ in new TVL through tokenized barrel infrastructure

🔍 How Baxus uses real-world data, sensors, and provenance tracking for asset verification

🎰 Inside the new Baxus whiskey vending machine and collectible marketplace experience

🌎 Why stablecoins could become a major payment rail for the global alcohol industry

🚀 The future of RWAs, collectibles, and tokenized ownership on Solana

🔗 Links

🎙️ The Index Podcast
 https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast

🥃 Baxus Website
 https://www.baxus.co/

🐦 Baxus on X
 https://x.com/BAXUSco

👤 Tzvi Wiesel (LinkedIn)
 https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-wiesel/

🐦 Tzvi Wiesel on X
 https://x.com/web4O

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