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KAST CEO Raagulan Pathy on building a stablecoin neobank that barely mentions crypto, and why its tagline is now simply "Money by KAST."Raagulan Pathy (Raags) ran Circle's Asia Pacific business as VP and CEO of Circle Singapore, after a first cloud startup that didn't work out. His second company, KAST, is a stablecoin neobank for people who earn, spend and save across borders. It has passed one million users and processes close to $5 billion in annualized transaction volume.In this episode of the unhashed podcast , Raags tells host Sri Misra why most of the world is already dollarized, and why network effects will keep USDT and USDC ahead of challenger stablecoins. He expects tokenized stocks to grow the way online shopping did, a point or two a year. He also explains how KAST plans to approach stablecoin remittances to India by focusing on inward flows, so it doesn't become a channel for capital flight.KAST raised an $80 million Series A in March 2026, co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital, at a reported $600 million valuation. This conversation is about who gets to build the first truly global money app.Key highlights:👉Why KAST dropped crypto language and rebranded as "Money by KAST"👉The Amazon playbook: retailer, then marketplace, then AWS, with an acquired infrastructure layer for fintechs building their own neobanks👉 Why Raags names only Revolut, Nubank and the large banks as long-term rivals👉 How KAST is approaching India's remittance market ($135.4 billion in FY25 inflows), starting with a lawyer as its head of India👉 What the Credit Suisse collapse taught him about keeping customer deposits in treasury-backed stablecoins👉Why he calls tokenization "up only," and how tokenized stocks drive demand for stablecoins👉What stablecoin neobanks will look like by 2030Chapters:00:00 From failed startup to stablecoin neobank04:36 What a stablecoin neobank really is06:40 KAST's Amazon playbook: from app to infrastructure08:57 Global money app vs Revolut and Nubank12:09 Euro stablecoins and dollarization16:04 Stablecoin remittances to India17:51 Safe yield and tokenized stocks21:31 Why tokenization is "up only"23:57 Unbundling banking and USDT vs USDC27:17 Stablecoin neobanks by 2030Subscribe to un# (unhashed) for weekly founder conversations on stablecoins, DeFi and tokenization.Follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra/Guest: Raagulan Pathmanathan (Raagulan Pathy), Co-founder and CEO, KAST#Stablecoins #KAST #Neobank #Tokenization #Fintech#RaagulanPathy #KAST #SriMisra #unhashed #Stablecoins #StablecoinNeobank #Neobank #Fintech #CryptoPodcast #DeFi #USDC #USDT #Tokenization #TokenizedStocks #GlobalMoneyApp #StablecoinPayments #CryptoCard #RemittancesIndia #futureofbanking Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

The entire ad-funded internet exists because of one missing capability in 2008: no way to move a fraction of a cent. Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer explains why stablecoin payments for AI agents remove that constraint, and why he would not build Android the same way today.Few people have watched the internet's business model form from as many seats as Nikhil Chandhok, an early Google and YouTube product lead who launched YouTube on the first iPhone, ran AR at Meta, and is now CPTO at Circle, issuer of USDC. His argument here is blunt: mobile app ecosystems went ad supported by constraint, not by choice, because nothing underneath them could clear a microtransaction, and much of what we now call DeFi was simply unbuildable in 2008. He walks through Circle Agent Stack and the Arc blockchain competing internally for the same developers, why Circle will not lock agents onto its own chain, and why settlement finality is the feature that actually matters once agents start trading. Recorded with Sri Misra weeks before Arc's public mainnet, the conversation lands as tokenization, onchain credit, and non dollar stablecoins move from thesis to roadmap.👉Why the Android and early iPhone app economies defaulted to advertising, and what that reveals about payment rails as a core platform primitive rather than a feature bolted on later👉How nanopayments and agent wallets unlock business models that were structurally impossible when Google and Facebook ad networks were the only monetization option available to developers👉What happens inside Circle when Agent Stack is mandated to grow USDC on every chain while Arc is mandated to grow Arc, a tension Chandhok compares to Google Maps shipping on iOS👉Why settlement finality is the single argument Arc has to win with agent developers running onchain trading, and what unwinding a trade would do to that model👉How cheaper company formation plus fully auditable onchain activity could move credit underwriting itself on chain, one of the founding ideas behind Arc👉Why Nikhil thinks saying no to stablecoins is like saying no to the internet, and why non dollar stablecoins still have a real role even if the dollar stays dominantSubscribe to un# for weekly conversations at the frontier of crypto, AI, and money, and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra/ for daily insights.00:00 - Why Payment Rails Shape Every Platform00:49 - How Money Decides User Experience01:01 - Why Android Became An Ad Business02:47 - Payments As Core Platform Capability03:03 - Are Agent Wallets Native To Arc03:32 - Agent Stack Versus Arc Inside Circle04:48 - Building A Neutral Stablecoin Stack05:25 - Next Two Years In Digital Assets05:57 - Tokenization And Onchain Credit Formation08:02 - Will Every Country Issue Stablecoins#NikhilChandhok #Circle #USDC #ArcBlockchain #CircleAgentStack #SriMisra#Stablecoins #StablecoinPayments #AgenticEconomy #AIAgentPayments #Nanopayments #Tokenization #RWA #DeFi #OnchainCredit #FutureOfPayments #StablecoinRegulation #CryptoPodcast #web3payments Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

The best way to keep money on your chain is to make it effortless to move off it. That contrarian bet sits at the centre of the Circle Arc blockchain, and Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer Nikhil Chandhok explains why liquidity that cannot leave is liquidity nobody sends.Four and a half years at Circle, issuer of $73.3 billion of USDC, taught Nikhil Chandhok two things: receiver preference drives stablecoin distribution, and people leave money where they know they can pull it out. Speaking with host Sri Misra, he explains why Arc was built as a USDC liquidity hub rather than a walled garden, why settlement finality and USDC denominated gas matter to enterprises, and why agentic payments today look like websites in 1997. Arc mainnet goes live on 16 September 2026.👉Why Arc was designed so USDC deploys in one click across the roughly 30 chains it already reaches, instead of locking liquidity in.👉How settlement finality and USDC denominated gas change the pitch to enterprises that do not want to hold a native token.👉Why nested AI agents hiring other agents create a new internet architecture that three day settlement money cannot serve.Subscribe to un# for weekly founder conversations and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra for daily insights.00:00 - Circle, USDC And What Comes Next05:19 - Liquidity Fragmentation Across EVM Chains06:22 - Arc As A USDC Liquidity Hub10:07 - Morpho, Uniswap And cirBTC On Arc13:12 - AI Agents And The 1996 Internet#NikhilChandhok #Circle #USDC #ArcBlockchain #ArcMainnet #Stablecoins #StablecoinLayer1 #SriMisra #alphaunhashed #DeFi #AgenticPayments #AIAgents #CryptoPodcast #futureofpayments Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved. You may share this video using the YouTube share function.

Most of crypto builds a token and hopes users show up. This crypto private equity conversation flips that playbook, as Santiago Roel Santos of Inversion explains why he buys profitable businesses and adds blockchain rails behind the scenes.A veteran of more than 150 crypto investments and a former partner at ParaFi Capital, Santiago Roel Santos has watched most crypto startups die for one reason, a lack of users. His company Inversion runs the first crypto private equity strategy, acquiring profitable small and mid-sized businesses and quietly upgrading their back end with stablecoins and on-chain settlement to expand margins. He argues that buying distribution is cheaper than building it, that most acquisition synergies become vaporware, and that the next billion crypto users will never know they are using crypto. He also explains why he refuses on-chain credit for now, and why smart money is choosing equity over tokens. Timely against the GENIUS Act and a maturing stablecoin market, this discussion with host Sri Misra reframes crypto adoption as a distribution problem, not a technology one.👉Why acquiring existing distribution beats building crypto users from scratch, and how that logic became a company called Inversion.👉How stablecoins release trapped working capital and can lift thin SMB margins by roughly 200 basis points.👉Why a profitable 16-year-old business borrowed at 22 percent when it should have paid closer to 8 percent.👉What makes on-chain credit too fragile to underwrite today, from floating rates to the adverse selection problem.👉Why the equity versus tokens debate now decides where real value actually accrues in crypto.Subscribe to un# for weekly founder conversations and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra for daily insights.00:00 - Why Crypto Has No Real Users 02:51 - The Inversion Crypto Private Equity Thesis 04:44 - Why Buying Distribution Beats Building It 07:14 - Where Stablecoins Actually Boost Business Margins 14:00 - When Acquisition Synergies Become Vaporware 16:28 - Why Inversion Is Not a Fund 19:14 - The On-Chain Credit Problem Explained 26:41 - How the GENIUS Act Changes Everything 32:38 - The Equity vs Tokens Debate #SantiagoSantos #SantiagoRoelSantos #Inversion #InversionCapital #un #Unhashed #SriMisra #CryptoPrivateEquity #Stablecoins #CryptoAdoption #DeFi #Web3 #Avalanche #GENIUSAct #StablecoinPayments #EquityVsTokens #Tokenization #OnchainFinance #CryptoInvesting #privateequity Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Circle started as a Bitcoin payments app in 2013. Today it issues USDC, settles dollars across more than sixty countries, and has grown into a financial internet platform. In part one of this conversation, Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Circle, gets into what the company is becoming, how Circle thinks about new entrants in a market it helped build, why liquidity decides which stablecoin wins, and the road from $77 billion to $150 billion, including the opportunity in markets like India.Part one of three.Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:32 Four themes on Nikhil's plate 5:25 What is Circle evolving into? 9:07 OUSD and the competition question 13:50 The road from $77B to $150B 14:12 Why USDT leads in IndiaDisclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Wall Street is racing to move 5.5 trillion dollars of assets on-chain, yet the man who wrote Citi's forecast says most of what people want to tokenize will never work. Ronit Ghose sits down with Sri Misra to separate the asset tokenization hype from the few markets that actually belong on a blockchain.Ronit Ghose spent twenty three years as a public markets analyst before taking over Future of Finance at Citi Institute, the bank's in-house research lab, and he wrote the book Future Money. His team's Tokenization 2030 report sees the tokenized securities market growing from roughly 17 billion dollars today to 5.5 trillion by 2030, led by US equities and Treasuries rather than private assets. The contrarian core of this conversation with Sri Misra is that asset tokenization is not alchemy, that putting illiquid things like real estate, venture stakes, or a Picasso on a blockchain does not magically create liquidity, and that bank tokens may quietly out-move stablecoins on volume. With the SpaceX IPO, DTCC pilots, and a European euro stablecoin consortium all landing in 2026, this is a timely map of stablecoins, tokenized US Treasuries, and where institutional DeFi adoption goes next.👉Why Citi projects the tokenized securities market reaching 5.5 trillion dollars by 2030, and why US equities and Treasuries lead while private credit and private equity each stall near 100 billion.👉How the "alchemy versus distribution" idea explains why tokenizing real estate, venture stakes, and collectibles keeps failing while liquid public assets scale.👉What makes tokenized US Treasuries and public equities work on-chain, and why a 50 percent retail shift could pull 2.6 trillion dollars into tokenized stocks.👉Why bank tokens and tokenized deposits could move more annual volume than stablecoins by 2030, even as dollar stablecoins stay close to 98 percent of the market.👉How leapfrogging built M-PESA in Kenya, Alipay in China, and India's UPI long before Wall Street paid attention, and why that geography of innovation still matters.Subscribe to the un# podcast for weekly conversations with the founders and thinkers shaping DeFi, and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra for daily insights.00:00 - Why Finance Keeps Returning To America12:56 - The SpaceX IPO He Cannot Discuss 15:34 - Why Startups Stay Private Longer 21:22 - Can Tokenization Democratize Private Markets 26:01 - Asset Tokenization Is Not Alchemy 29:25 - Tokenization Forecasts From Two To Thirty Trillion 36:35 - Inside Citi's 5.5 Trillion Tokenization Report 43:47 - Stablecoins Versus Bank Tokens Explained #AssetTokenization #Tokenization #Stablecoins #RonitGhose #CitiInstitute #FutureOfFinance #SriMisra #DeFi #Web3 #TokenizedAssets #RWA #TokenizedTreasuries #BankTokens #DigitalAssets #WallStreetOnChain #StablecoinsExplained #TokenizationExplained #InstitutionalDeFi #cryptoregulations Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Most experts said training a frontier AI model on consumer laptops was impossible, until the numbers started proving them wrong. What that shift means for decentralized AI, on-chain finance, and who ultimately controls intelligence is what Jake Brukhman of CoinFund lays out in this conversation.Jake Brukhman bought his first Bitcoin in 2011, then forgot about it for seven years before founding CoinFund in 2015, one of the first crypto-native investment firms in the world, raised on the back of a thesis written weeks before Ethereum even launched. CoinFund, now a roughly $158M firm, backs the decentralized stack and the teams trying to train large AI models across ordinary gaming PCs and MacBooks instead of billion-dollar data centers, a field that went from impossible to a published research frontier in four years. Across this conversation with host Sri Misra, Brukhman argues that DeFi is now a feature of on-chain finance rather than its replacement, explains why the real bottleneck in AI is GPUs a government can switch off, and makes the case that the average investor will get AI exposure through a token before a stock. It lands the same week a single AI lab was forced to pull its most powerful model offline, making the decentralized AI debate impossible to ignore.👉How decentralized AI training moved from impossible to a real research frontier, with parameter counts climbing run after run 👉Why Jake says there is no DeFi anymore, only on-chain finance, and what that reframe changes for builders 👉What tokenization actually unlocks, from borrowing against your Tesla stock to instant settlement between banks 👉Why the true chokepoint in AI is the supply of high-end GPUs, not algorithms or talent 👉How tokenizing an AI model creates something both valuable and public that no single company can censor or shut down 👉Why a $500M law-firm model budget and a $600B AI infrastructure buildout point to where compute demand is heading next.Subscribe to un# for weekly conversations with crypto and AI builders, and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra/ for daily insights.00:00 - Pioneering One of Crypto's First Funds 03:36 - Finding LPs Before Crypto Was Real 05:58 - Soviet Roots and a Contrarian Bet 11:19 - There Is No DeFi Anymore 18:28 - Network Investing and the Token Question 28:18 - Where Tokenization Actually Solves Problems 33:54 - Stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, On-Chain Finance 37:24 - The Convergence of Web3 and AI 40:43 - When a Government Switches Off AI 42:26 - Training Frontier AI on Gaming PCs 46:40 - Tokenized AI Models You Can Own 55:19 - Agentic Swarms and the Quantum Threat#JakeBrukhman #CoinFund #SriMisra #DecentralizedAI #OnChainFinance #CryptoVC #AITraining #Tokenization #RWA #Web3AI #Stablecoins #CryptoInvesting #HowToOwnAI #TrainAIonGamingPCs #DecentralizedAITraining #Bitcoin #Ethereum #AIandCrypto #tokenizedassets Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

A network built on the idea of immutable, unstoppable code chose to freeze $71 million in stolen funds, and the man who helped design that power says he wants it gone. Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain and the architect behind Arbitrum, breaks down the tokenization of Wall Street, the future of Ethereum scaling, and why bringing institutions on chain forces hard questions decentralization was never meant to answer.Steven Goldfeder did not arrive at crypto through trading or speculation, but through a Princeton cryptography lab, where he co-authored the field's leading textbook and helped formalize the concept of MEV before co-founding Offchain (formerly Offchain Labs). The company now operates the full stack behind Arbitrum, the largest Ethereum Layer 2 by value secured, providing the infrastructure that lets institutions like Robinhood, BlackRock, and Franklin Templeton move real assets on chain. In this conversation with host Sri Misra, Goldfeder makes the case that scaling is a permanent cat-and-mouse game rather than a solved problem, explains why a European buying an Apple share on Robinhood may be using a blockchain without knowing it, and argues that holding USDC is fundamentally different from holding ETH. As tokenized real-world assets cross $30 billion and institutional adoption accelerates, this episode lands at the exact moment TradFi and DeFi begin collapsing into one system.👉Why Goldfeder believes scaling Ethereum will never be fully solved, and how Arbitrum keeps pushing chain capacity from gigagas toward higher limits👉How the Arbitrum Security Council froze $71 million in funds tied to the Kelp DAO hack, and why he still defends a decision purists called a betrayal👉What separates a programmable economy from today's manual financial markets, and how institutions can program their own compliance, privacy, and recourse rules👉Why Robinhood chose Arbitrum to put over 2,000 tokenized stocks on chain, and what optionality means when an institution does not yet know if it needs its own blockchain👉How blockchain settlement collapses a T+5 day wait into a single block, and why steel, GPUs, and equities are all becoming tokenized assetsSubscribe to un# for weekly founder conversations and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra] for daily insights.00:00 - Why Offchain Dropped the Word Labs 02:19 - Rebranding Beyond Scaling Ethereum 06:55 - The Cryptography Origin of Arbitrum 12:58 - Arbitrum Before Ethereum Went Live 15:46 - Is the Scaling Trilemma Solved 17:16 - Building the Programmable Economy On Chain 20:00 - The $71M Kelp DAO Freeze 30:05 - A Future With No Security Council 40:54 - Robinhood and Tokenized Stocks On Arbitrum 46:47 - Tokenizing Steel, GPUs and Equities #StevenGoldfeder #Offchain #Arbitrum #SriMisra #Ethereum #Layer2 #Tokenization #RealWorldAssets #DeFi #CryptoPodcast #RobinhoodStocks #EthereumScaling #TokenizedStocks #BlackRockBUIDL #KelpDAOHack #CryptoRegulation #Web3Infrastructure #HowToTokenizeAssets #WhatIsArbitrumDisclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, deconstructs the US capital markets stack  from the DTCC vault at the core to the broker-dealers, exchanges, and IPO syndicates layered on top, each one extracting fees the issuer never sees.

Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, explains the two real bottlenecks stopping AI agents from running serious capital on-chain - thin asset history and the security arms race  and host Sri Misra counters with a sharp reframe on OPSEC. Full episode at: unhashed.co/jim

Most asset managers still can't accept stablecoin payments, yet over $300 billion in regulated capital is already sitting on-chain. Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, explains how the tokenization of capital markets is reshaping the rails now powering Invesco, Bitwise, and Coinbase Asset Management, with the first fully on-chain IPO targeted for H2 2026. Building tokenization rails for Wall Street is a credibility game, and few operators have stacked credentials as deliberately as Jim Hiltner, who moved from Citibank to Compound Treasury before co-founding Superstate in 2023. Superstate now manages over $1.2 billion across two tokenized funds and powers Opening Bell, the platform letting SEC-registered companies issue native tokenized equity on Ethereum and Solana with the same CUSIP, voting rights, and dividend rights as traditional shares. In conversation with un# host Sri Misra, Jim explains why Superstate handed its $1 billion USTB fund to Invesco in Q2 2026, why Circle's IPO mispricing exposes a structural flaw in capital formation, and why the first on-chain IPO is coming in H2 2026. With the SEC's Innovation Exemption now formalizing rails for tokenized stocks and RWA tokenization crossing $34 billion globally, this conversation captures the inflection moment for on-chain capital markets. 👉Why Superstate handed its $1 billion USTB tokenized treasury fund to Invesco in Q2 2026, and what the hand-off signals about the future of fund management 👉How Opening Bell makes a tokenized stock legally identical to a Nasdaq share, with the same CUSIP, voting rights, and dividend rights 👉What Circle's IPO trajectory, from $30 allocation to $150 first-week close, reveals about structural underpricing in traditional capital formation 👉Why $300 billion in regulated stablecoins is forcing every major asset manager to build on-chain distribution rails 👉How Jim Hiltner went from Citibank to Compound Treasury to co-founding Superstate, and why the 2022 crypto lender collapse was the catalyst 👉What needs to happen before AI agents can manage real money on-chain, and why the ultimate defense is legal, not cryptographic. Subscribe to the un# podcast for weekly founder conversations and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra] for daily insights. 00:00 - Inside Tokenization of Capital Markets 0:55 - From Citibank to Tokenizing Wall Street 04:05 - FTX Collapse: The Superstate Origin Story 07:09 - How Superstate's Tokenization Stack Works 11:12 - Invesco Takes Over $1B Tokenized Fund 16:38 - How Opening Bell Tokenizes Real Stocks 23:36 - Why $300B Stablecoins Force Tokenization 30:05 - Disintermediating DTCC With Public Blockchains 42:11 - First On-Chain IPO Coming H2 2026 45:19 - Why Agentic Finance Isn't Ready Yet#JimHiltner #Superstate #SriMisra #Unhashed #Tokenization #RWA #OnChainIPO #OpeningBell #TokenizedStocks #TokenizedTreasuries #Stablecoins #USTB #DeFi #WallStreet #CapitalMarkets #BlockchainFinance #InstitutionalCrypto #CryptoFinance #Web3Finance #RWATokenizationDisclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Spark Protocol Co-founder Sam MacPherson breaks down the two-layer stablecoin stack: a money layer led by USDT, USDC, and incoming bank and fintech issuers  and a credit layer where USDS and Spark live. Instead of fighting for payments share, Spark wraps yield around every major stablecoin and handles DeFi deployment for Web2 partners who don't want to manage it themselves. His 2030 projection: tens of billions in USDS at the low end, $100B+ at the high end.

Spark Protocol Co-founder Sam MacPherson explains why his team offboarded rsETH as collateral in January  months before the $292M KelpDAO exploit drained Aave's lending markets. The takeaway: a minimalist collateral set, ruthless risk-return reviews, and a philosophy of shrinking the attack surface kept Spark depositors whole while the rest of DeFi absorbed the blow. A masterclass in why disciplined governance beats yield chasing.

Sam MacPherson spent two years inside MakerDAO's core engineering team before co-founding Phoenix Labs to build Spark, the on-chain capital allocator that now manages billions in stablecoin liquidity across DeFi, CeFi, and tokenized real-world assets within the Sky ecosystem. Spark sits at the credit layer beneath USDS, Sky's $9B+ stablecoin, intermediating yield for institutions, fintechs, and retail through products like Spark Savings, Sparklend, Spark Prime, and an Anchorage Digital integration for institutional Bitcoin-backed loans. In a wide-ranging exchange with host Sri Misra, Sam explains why Spark offboarded rsETH three months before the KelpDAO exploit, why pure DAO governance does not scale, and why "boring" stablecoin yield products are quietly winning the institutional DeFi race. The conversation lands at a moment when the GENIUS Act has banned regulated stablecoin issuers from paying interest, pushing $300B in idle deposits toward Spark Protocol and its competitors, and when AI agents are emerging as the next stablecoin user base.👉How Spark Protocol avoided the $292M KelpDAO exploit by offboarding rsETH three months early through routine risk reviews👉Why MakerDAO's original DAO governance model failed, and how the new Sky "Stars" structure with sub-DAOs like Spark, Grove, and Obex actually works👉What the math behind a median oracle running Chainlink, Chronicle, and Redstone together protects DeFi lending protocols from👉How Spark generates $21M in annual revenue today and earned $80-$100M ARR at the last bull market peak, while running a programmatic SPK token buyback👉Why the institutional OTC crypto lending market at $20-30B is 3-6x larger than the on-chain side, and how Spark Prime is going after it👉Why stablecoin yield, AI agent payments, and cross-border settlement are converging into the next decade's biggest fintech opportunitySubscribe to the un# podcast for weekly founder conversations and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra] for daily insights.00:00 - Inside DeFi's Oldest Lending Protocol 03:08 - What Spark Protocol Actually Does 06:30 - From MakerDAO to Sky Rebrand 09:11 - Why DAO Governance Failed at Scale 12:39 - Grove, Obex, and Sky's New Stars 14:46 - How Spark Stablecoin Yield Really Works 21:14 - The KelpDAO Exploit and Spark's Response 22:42 - Conservative Collateral Beats Degen Yield 28:08 - Median Oracles and Risk Engineering 35:00 - Spark Protocol Revenue and SPK Buybacks 40:53 - Stablecoins as the New Credit Layer 48:09 - Lessons From Three DeFi Cycles #SamMacPherson #SparkProtocol #PhoenixLabs #MakerDAO #Sky #USDS #DeFiLending #StablecoinYield #InstitutionalDeFi #KelpDAOExploit #DeFiInterview #CryptoFounderInterview #SriMisra #aarnaProtocol #StablecoinExplained #RealWorldAssets #OnChainCredit #CryptoLending #defi2026 Disclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Anton Katz, Founder of Talos, built the institutional crypto trading infrastructure that BlackRock, Nasdaq, and Robinhood rely on, and in this conversation with host Sri Misra on alpha un#, he explains exactly what happens to finance next.Anton Katz is a MIT computer science graduate, IDF veteran, and former Head of Trading Technology at AQR Capital Management, who left in 2018 to build the institutional infrastructure his former employer could not. Talos is now a $1.5 billion digital asset trading platform connecting over 100 venues, serving asset managers with $21 trillion in AUM, and powering execution behind BlackRock's Aladdin integration and Nasdaq's tokenized collateral initiative. In this conversation, Katz makes a counterintuitive declaration: Talos is not a crypto company. Crypto was simply the first asset class on digital rails, and equities, bonds, and treasuries are next. He describes three separate financial conversations running simultaneously, why most builders are watching only one, and recounts a real exchange with a Wall Street trading head who admitted 40% of market liquidity will soon be native on-chain with no system to bridge the gap.👉How Talos became the execution layer behind BlackRock's crypto trading workflows and what that integration actually required to build👉Why Anton Katz says "crypto is just the first asset class on digital rails" and what that means for equities, bonds, and treasuries moving on-chain👉What a major US bank's head of trading told Katz four weeks before recording: that 40% of market liquidity will go native on-chain and no bank has a system to operate across both worlds👉How Talos navigated the FTX collapse and the 2022-23 crypto winter by building a churn model that doesn't compete with rivals but instead tracks whether clients' entire businesses survive👉Why DeFi vaults may fundamentally change the cost structure and access model of institutional asset management, from the perspective of someone who ran trading technology at one of the world's top quant funds👉What three financial conversations are running in parallel right now, crypto as an asset class, stablecoins as payment rails, and capital markets tokenization, and why understanding all three simultaneously is where the real opportunity sitsSubscribe to unhashed for weekly founder and builder conversations, and follow Sri Misra on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/srimisra for daily insights on DeFi, AI, and the future of finance00:00 - Inside Talos: The Institutional Crypto Infrastructure Story 02:04 - What Talos Actually Does for Institutions 08:09 - How Institutions Use CeFi vs DeFi Today 12:28 - Why DeFi Vaults Could Change Asset Management 14:35 - Talos, BlackRock Aladdin, and Crypto Adoption 18:07 - Leaving AQR: The Origin of Talos 24:28 - The Founder Mindset: Optimist and Pessimist 28:55 - The ETF Moment That Unlocked Institutional Crypto 32:21 - Stablecoins as the New Settlement Rail 35:03 - The $130 Billion Remittance Problem Stablecoins Solve 37:06 - Phase 3: Talos Beyond Crypto Assets 40:56 - BlackRock's Warning: 40% Goes On-Chain 43:47 - Is Talos Becoming a DeFi Gatekeeper? 47:18 - No Token, Possible IPO: What's Next#AntonKatz #Talos #InstitutionalCrypto #DigitalAssetTrading #CryptoInfrastructure #BlockchainCapitalMarkets #TokenizationRWA #DeFiForInstitutions #CryptoAdoption #BlackRockCrypto #SriMisra #CryptoStartup #InstitutionalBlockchain #StablecoinPayments #DeFiYield #CryptoFounder #Web3Infrastructure #DigitalAssets #CryptoUnicornDisclaimer: The information presented is for educational purposes only. Views expressed are those of the speakers, not necessarily the channel. You are responsible for your own research and decisions.Copyright: © 2024 Aarna AI Pte Ltd, Singapore. All rights reserved.