In ten years, every major agency will support stablecoin rails

Tokenized Episode 97. Simon Taylor (Head of Market Expansion at Tempo) and Cuy Sheffield (Head of Crypto at Visa) invite Ferdinand Dabitz, Co-Founder and CEO of Augustus, and Anna Wroblewska, Chief Business Officer of Dinari, to discuss topics such as Stripe's acquisition of OpenRouter, reconstructing correspondent banking liquidity with stablecoins, and 24/7 tokenized securities.

Ferdinand's judgment is straightforward: ten years from now, every major correspondent bank or peer bank will support stablecoin rails, and it may even happen in five years; ultimately, it will just be another payment rail. Anna's perspective comes from Dinari—Robinhood is pushing tokenized stocks to over 120 countries, and the U.S. market already has a path forward, with the key being the difference between custodial models and synthetic models.

They discussed the following core points:

1. Stripe acquired OpenRouter for over $8 billion—intelligence is becoming a new merchant category, and the structure of "routing markup + token billing commission" in the AI economy is forming.

2. The liquidity trapped in nostro accounts of correspondent banks is the most genuine and least fake news efficiency improvement scenario for stablecoins; emerging markets will continue to dominate stablecoin adoption.

3. The battle of two models for tokenized stocks: Dinari's custodial model (holders have ownership claims on the underlying securities) vs. Robinhood's SPV synthetic model.

4. The SEC's new crypto issuance rules (Regier) + Safe Harbor clause: tokens no longer belong to securities after the network is fully decentralized.

5. Fedwire settles for 22 hours a day and halts on weekends—but the real bottleneck often lies not in the infrastructure but in the operations and organization surrounding it.

Timestamps:

00:00 Opening

03:23 Stripe's acquisition of OpenRouter and model orchestration strategy

08:54 Paying for AI inference with stablecoins through MPP

11:00 Financing AI computing infrastructure and rising demand for private credit

14:26 Stablecoin card settlement lowers the threshold for small issuers

16:38 Trapped liquidity, cross-border payments, and stablecoin adoption in emerging markets

20:44 Rebalancing correspondent banking liquidity with stablecoin liquidity

26:24 Tokenized stock models, ownership, and synthetic tools

30:29 24/7 tokenized securities, lending markets, and index products

35:58 SEC crypto issuance rules, token issuance, and liquidity

39:06 24/7 financial rails, Fedwire limitations, and operational bottlenecks

Here are the takeaways from this episode:

Stripe's Acquisition of OpenRouter
Axios reported that this transaction exceeds $8 billion. OpenRouter is a single API that allows customers to access over 400 AI models and route tasks to cheaper models when the models become expensive. Stripe's revenue grew by 41% year-over-year in the first half of the year, with free cash flow increasing by 43%, and last year's total payment volume was $1.9 trillion. For Stripe, this acquisition represents about a 5% dilution, but the Collison brothers' firm bet marks the company's commitment to AI as a core bet for the next decade.

The Commission Structure of the AI Economy
Stripe processes most token billing through Metronome, which it acquired for about $1 billion, earning about a 2.5% commission on sold AI tokens; OpenRouter adds a 5% markup on inference. Combined, Stripe has about a 7.5% commission rate in the AI economy. Cuy believes intelligence is becoming one of the fastest-growing merchant categories globally, and OpenRouter is almost like "the Amazon of intelligence."

Ramp's Competitive Response
Ramp announced the acquisition of the router.com domain. Two leading fintech companies—Ramp's core narrative is "helping you save money," while Stripe's is "helping you build the entire tech stack"—arrived at the same conclusion: financing AI is the biggest cross-cutting opportunity in the next decade, or even a century.

MPP: Agents Pay Per Use for Inference
Ferdinand pointed out that OpenRouter is testing stablecoin payment endpoints using MPP (machine payments protocol). If agents have their own wallets, they can pay per use for inference from any model instead of prepaying and then slowly deducting. Infrastructure providers can receive payments almost in real-time through smart contracts at the moment the payment is made in the marketplace, rather than waiting several days for settlement.

AI Computing Financing Boosts Private Credit
Giants like BlackRock, KKR, Blackstone, and Nvidia are figuring out how to finance the AI boom and computing infrastructure. The scale of private credit and bond issuance is pushing up treasury yields—being able to issue corporate bonds at a 7.5% yield to build data centers while treasuries yield 5.3% is changing the entire capital market landscape.

The Real Demand for Stablecoin Card Settlement
Regarding the article on stablecoin card swipes by RAIN, Ferdinand concluded that large banks have no motivation or problems, and the opportunity lies with small and medium issuers and BIN sponsors. Enabling them to settle more frequently and reduce the collateral they previously had to post is beneficial for the entire ecosystem. It is not about solving the problems of JPMorgan or Bank of America, and that's okay.

Trapped Liquidity is a Real Issue
In card operations, program managers and BIN sponsors must deposit reserves due to weekend settlement delays. Using stablecoins to programmatically rebalance liquidity in nostro accounts is a very real, not fake news, efficiency improvement. Emerging markets will continue to lead stablecoin adoption because customer experience (quick access to dollars) and fintech economics are both improved.

Correspondent Banking Settlement Has Never Been Truly Challenged
Citi's TTS business is expected to achieve a net profit of $12 billion this year—over the past twenty years, retail has seen challengers like Revolut, brokerage has seen Robinhood, and commercial has seen Mercury, but dollar settlement has never faced challengers. Ferdinand believes the answer lies in the de novo banking wave: a new generation of fully licensed national banks starting from scratch with their own master accounts for dollar settlement, then optimizing global liquidity pools with stablecoins.

Two Models for Tokenized Stocks
Robinhood's model has an SPV holding the underlying securities, and token holders have no rights to those securities; Dinari pioneered the custodial model described by the SEC, where token holders have ownership claims on the underlying securities, including corporate actions and dividends. Robinhood has allowed users in over 120 countries to access 190 dividend-paying U.S. tokenized stocks, with on-chain RWA market share growing to 15%, with a total market cap of about $2.8 billion.

24/7 and Lending Markets
Anna believes 24/7 can unlock new functionalities like lending markets. Dinari's multi-asset index, developed in collaboration with S&P, combines stocks and major crypto assets, allowing end-users to buy a token that equals direct index investment in the index constituents. NeoBank end-users do not think about tokenized versus non-tokenized; they just want investment opportunities equivalent to those in the U.S.

SEC Regier New Rules
A tailored offering regime for crypto assets, with a 60-day comment period. Startups can be exempt from Securities Act registration for four years, raising up to $5 million; larger fundraising can reach up to $75 million within a year. Safe Harbor allows digital assets to no longer be considered securities after the issuer ceases all management activities and the network is fully decentralized. Anna is focused on acceptance: liquidity has always been a common issue in both early and late stages.

Fedwire and Real Bottlenecks
Fedwire settles for 22 hours a day and does not settle on weekends. But Ferdinand reminds us that the pain of those crazy bank cut-off times (waiting until the next day after 3 PM) is usually not an issue with the rail or infrastructure itself, but with the entire set of organizational constraints wrapped around correspondent banking. Once the technical layer is resolved, compliance, risk control, and operational models for 24/7 will create new bottlenecks—AI may also bring organizations closer to 24/7.

Ferdinand:

I truly believe that ten years from now, every major correspondent bank or peer bank will support stablecoin rails, and it may even happen in five years. These things will definitely converge, and ultimately it will just be another payment rail.

Host:

Two of the most innovative and fastest-growing companies in the financial services industry have independently reached the same conclusion—financing AI is the biggest cross-cutting opportunity in the next decade, or even a century.

Ferdinand:

You know that idea that you have to tear everything down and move everything to the blockchain. In fact, you don't need to abandon all existing infrastructure to seize the opportunity of technological advancement; you can layer new technology on top of the existing system.

Anna:

Robinhood, especially Vlad, they are incredibly effective communicators. They have the ability to accelerate people's attention and interest in the market for tokenized stocks, which I think others cannot achieve.

Host:

Welcome to Tokenized, a show focused on stablecoins and institutional adoption of tokenized real-world assets. I'm Simon Taylor, your host, author of Fintech Brain Food, and Head of Market Expansion at Tempo. Joining us again today is Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto at Visa. How are you? How have you been? Life is good, glad to have you here.

You really need to come here more often; every time Simon comes to the Bay Area, it's a great time. Also joining us is Anna Wroblewska, welcome back to the show, she is the Chief Business Officer at Dinari. How are you?

Anna:

I'm good, thank you so much for having me, Simon. I'm happy to be here.

Host:

Making his debut is Ferdinand Dabitz, Co-Founder and CEO of Augustus. How are you, Ferdi?

Ferdinand:

I'm good, thank you for inviting me.

Host:

Thanks for coming on the show, brother. I'm very excited about what you're doing at Augustus. But before we dive into today's exciting content, I need to remind the audience and listeners: the views of today's guests are their own and do not necessarily represent the positions of their companies. Please do not take anything we say as tax, legal, or financial advice; make sure to do your own research. Of course, I'm also happy to remind everyone that this episode is sponsored by Modern Treasury, and we had a great dinner with them a few days ago.

This episode is sponsored by Modern Treasury. Stablecoins are here, checks are still around, and they are not going away. RTP, FedNow, and new payment rails are emerging. The challenge now is how to integrate them all without slowing down. Modern Treasury provides a single API that supports both fiat and stablecoins, helping teams launch payment products, enter new markets, and serve more customers in just a few days.

Companies like Procore, Navan, and Morse trust it, backed by over $600 billion in payment history. Visit moderntreasury.com to learn how to adapt to the ever-changing payment rails smoothly and at scale. Alright, this week's headline story can only be one. The investor letter leaked by Stripe confirms various details about the company, including the acquisition of OpenRouter, with Axios reporting that this transaction exceeds $8 billion.

Some may not know, OpenRouter is a single API that allows customers to access over 400 different AI models, and if the models from Frontier Labs become too expensive, it can route tasks to cheaper AI models. Stripe also mentioned that their revenue grew by 41% year-over-year in the first half of the year, with free cash flow increasing by 43%. Of course, their total payment volume last year was $1.9 trillion, an absolutely staggering scale.

Before this, Stripe's valuation had already exceeded $159 billion in February. Additionally, there are reports that they are also working on a bid to acquire PayPal with a private equity firm. This is definitely big news. The Stripe Boys say the singularity has begun, and they are riding this tailwind. When you see a company of Stripe's size releasing news of this magnitude, what do you think? Yeah, it's quite interesting.

Honestly, when I first heard these rumors, I thought it was a bit outrageous for them to make this acquisition because it's not a small one; it's about a 5% dilution for them. But I do think their firm bet on AI is impressive. You really have to admire the Collison brothers. This kind of thing makes it clear that this is a founder-led company—just from the determination and scale of their bets, these bets may seem far from the core business from the outside, but I think they truly understand that the singularity has arrived and are executing accordingly.

Yeah, I saw Cuy post an astonishing statistic on X: Stripe is processing most of the token billing through their Metronome business, which they acquired for about $1 billion, earning about a 2.5% commission on sold AI tokens. But think about what OpenRouter does—it routes you to another model that may be cheaper but adds a 5% markup on inference.

So if you add inference together, 5% plus 2.5%, they now have a 7.5% commission rate in the AI economy. I find this perspective very interesting. Cuy, what do you think about this story? Too many thoughts. I think, as you said, intelligence is becoming a new merchant category—people are starting to buy intelligence on a large scale. It is one of the fastest-growing merchant categories globally.

And OpenRouter, I think it's almost like the Amazon of intelligence—it is a marketplace where you can buy any model. So, congratulations to Alex and his team; I think they have created an amazing product. I've been using OpenRouter for a while, and I think its developer experience is really excellent. I believe this is one of the biggest news stories of the year; it sits at the intersection of fintech, AI, and a bit of crypto.

Regarding some aspects of crypto and stablecoins, I'll elaborate on that later. And I think it may produce a similar effect to the acquisition of Bridge, which seemed to come out of nowhere… You know, I think for many people, there was some skepticism about stablecoins before; the general attitude was, "This is quite interesting."

Then Stripe made a founder's highly confident bet—saying, "We are going to acquire Bridge"—and this really ignited the entire stablecoin orchestration category, prompting a whole bunch of other companies to start thinking: wait a minute, shouldn't we also do this? How does this work? And so a whole bunch of new companies were founded. Now it can almost be said that model orchestration is replaying the same thing.

People are starting to realize that maybe we don't all want to use just one or two models. Maybe we are entering a world with many different models, and we need infrastructure to route between these models.

And I think an entire ecosystem and economy will grow around the question of how to efficiently purchase intelligence across many models and payment methods, paired with the right billing, the right… So we are just getting started, but I think we will increasingly discuss this topic in the show; it will become an important theme as we move into 2027. I firmly believe this is the theme of financial services for the next decade—how we finance intelligence.

Freddie, I don't know if you saw this, but Ramp announced the acquisition of router.com, this…

Ferdinand:

Yeah, I was just about to mention that. How clever, this move is so clever. You see Eric coming out saying, "Hey, we just bought router.com, which is a cooler domain," and "by the way, we also have this business." I think this operation is quite impressive.

Host:

Think about it, there are two companies whose positions are simply born to finance the intelligence economy and bill for it. Ramp's core is "we help you save money," and they are particularly good at squeezing costs out of your business; while Stripe is more like "we help you build the entire tech stack." These two most innovative and fastest-growing companies in financial services have independently reached the same conclusion: financing AI is the biggest cross-cutting opportunity in the next decade, or even a century.

And all those AI tokens need a way to be financed. Anna, thank you for picking up this topic. I would love to hear your thoughts on Stripe and OpenRouter if you have anything to say.

Anna:

I think this is the first step, and the next few years are likely to be very interesting. Clearly—I'm saying, you see, I come from traditional finance, and we look at this from a financial market perspective. So this makes me think: how will it affect the development of agentic finance? When you have access to many different options, my question always is: to what extent will they start to differentiate from each other? In what ways will they differentiate? How can you profit from it? Or what risks might emerge?

So, think about a few years from now, or maybe 12 months, or maybe 6 months—depending on how fast things develop. I think this is a fascinating development, a progression in this story—a story that I think we have all been eagerly watching for quite a while.

Host:

Can we talk about two intersections related to crypto in this story? I think they are somewhat relevant to this show.

Ferdinand:

Why not? This show is called Tokenized. There are many different types of tokens floating around the world.

I think the first is—you know, I saw you publicly addressing the folks at Merit Systems the other day, they posted that OpenRouter has been testing an endpoint with MPP, using MPP, or machine payments protocol, to support stablecoin payments, paying as you go, to purchase inference on OpenRouter.

And I think inference is one of the most interesting categories we see in X42 and MPP—think about it, if agents have their own wallets, they can purchase inference from any model on demand, paying as they go, instead of having to prepay and then slowly deduct.

So I can imagine OpenRouter has the potential to become one of the largest or fastest-growing merchant endpoints— you know, I think the ecosystem of MPP and X42 needs more high-quality merchant endpoints. Additionally, for us stablecoin geeks— we've been talking about this for years—marketplace payouts have always been a great use case. So what do you think OpenRouter does?

You pay OpenRouter, it is the merchant of record, and then it pays dozens of infrastructure providers that actually provide these inferences. So if you pay them in fiat, their operational tasks become much more complicated—they have to collect payments, aggregate, and say, "Okay, how much fiat do we owe these suppliers," and then pay those suppliers. And those suppliers have GPU costs, energy costs, and bills to pay.

I am very much looking forward to a world where you can imagine an agent purchasing inference on demand through MPP. At the moment the cost of that inference is paid to OpenRouter, they can automatically route the money to the infrastructure providers using a smart contract. Thus, infrastructure providers can receive payments from the marketplace almost in real-time, rather than waiting several days for the payment collected by OpenRouter to settle.

So we have been talking about marketplace payouts, and here we have an ultimate "intelligence marketplace" that has the potential to be one of the early adopters of cross-border stablecoin marketplace payouts—I think this will be a big deal. Did you see that Brex released a study about the fastest-growing spending categories for startups and growth companies, and Together AI is actually the fastest-growing.

Together AI is a service that allows you to run inference. And a startup going from signing the first contract to purchase intelligence tokens with frontier labs to renting inference has seen the median time drop from 24 months a year ago to 5 months today. So we are truly seeing everyone running down to the lower layers of the tech stack—from frontier models down, oh, this is too… very expensive.

I need to route between different AI models. Oh, this is still very expensive. I want to rent my own inference capabilities, plus with OpenRouter and MPP, those underlying neoclouds can get paid faster. So how we finance this entire tech stack, how we bill and pay, is a revolution.

But another revolution—I know you guys haven't missed this—is that giants like BlackRock, KKR, Blackstone, and Nvidia are really figuring out how to finance this wave of AI and computing infrastructure. And it seems that the scale of private credit and bond issuance itself is pushing up treasury yields. You know, if you can issue corporate bonds at a 7.5% yield to build data centers while treasuries are at 5.3%, then the entire side of the capital market is changing.

Host:

Yes, this is indeed a very fascinating area. I'm particularly curious about how this financing aspect will evolve over the next year. This is the kind of thing I wish I had started thinking about a few years ago. I really wish I had spent more time on this five or six years ago. You can't lead in every field. You can lead in tokenized stocks, but you can't lead in everything.

The last point I saw in that investor letter is that compared to 2023, even after this acquisition, they have actually bought back more shares, and the dilution is lower than it was three years ago; this cap table management is quite impressive. I want to take everyone into the next story. I don't know if you saw that Rain published a very simple article dissecting stablecoin card swipes. It sparked quite a backlash on X, and there has been a lot of discussion around it.

The core argument is basically: prefunding and settling through the correspondent banking network are limited by bank operating hours. So if I am a card issuer, I might have to reserve three to four days of cash outflow just to cover a weekend.

So if I am a card program like CAST or Dollar, and I settle a million dollars a day, to cover a bank holiday weekend, I would have to reserve four million dollars, and that four million—at least three million—cannot be used for advertising or business. But some say this statement is inaccurate and even a bit misleading, as markets like the EU with interchange caps operate very well, and large issuers often earn 3.6% interest from the Federal Reserve, and netting can improve capital efficiency.

So why is everyone so worried about stablecoin settlement? Cuy, why is everyone so worried about stablecoin settlement? Aren't all issuers completely fine?

Ferdinand:

I'm glad to see more public discussion, debate, and understanding of the details behind card settlement. I think there are actually several different concepts and viewpoints mixed in here, but the biggest point is: if you are a large bank in the U.S., settlement is really not a big problem for you. The system works very well today. They have little motivation to change the way they settle card programs; they are investment-grade, with very low risk. They like to hold onto funds for as long as possible. They don't need to post a lot of collateral. It is simply not an issue.

I think the opportunity for stablecoin settlement lies in lowering the barriers for issuing and scaling card programs. That is, smaller BIN sponsors and fintech enablement companies. This is a new class of issuers, with higher risks, lacking the advantages that large banks enjoy today. So I think the demand we see is coming from here.

Being able to settle more frequently with a fast-paced, native stablecoin neobank or fintech, thus reducing the collateral they previously needed to post, is very beneficial for the entire ecosystem. So I think this is one of those areas where multiple viewpoints may be correct, depending on which part of the market you are looking at. We believe stablecoin settlement has huge opportunities in the mid-market to long tail, which is very important for driving more competition and getting cards to market faster.

And I think over time, there will be banks—especially banks outside the U.S.—that will take advantage of this, but it is not about solving the problems of JPMorgan or Bank of America, and that's okay.

Host:

Yes, that's okay. Not all issuers are the same size, but companies of different sizes and capital flows still face many challenges in cross-border transactions. Who do you think is facing the most challenges in cross-border capital flow settlements today? Whose voices do you hear in your business?

Ferdinand:

First of all, I think the trapped liquidity issue is real; I don't think it's fake news, right? I've seen it in card operations. I've seen card program managers and BIN sponsors who have to deposit these reserves or are forced to do so due to weekend settlement delays. So I think, even at a certain scale, this is indeed real, and I believe this issue can be solved with stablecoins.

Then I think—Simon, to answer your question—the further you are from the U.S., the harder it is to move money quickly, right? And I think if you look at the adoption cycle of stablecoins, it is primarily a story of emerging markets. I think there is a deep truth here: the same responsibility includes improving customer experience—like getting dollars, getting dollars that can be transferred quickly across borders—and improving the underlying fintech economics.

For example, even if you use traditional correspondent banking—Augustus does this; Augustus is in many ways a modern correspondent bank—but we are still a bank; we are not L1, nor are we rethinking global capital flows from scratch… it is essentially a modern correspondent bank.

But one of the most costly and consistently costly aspects of correspondent banking is the liquidity trapped in nostro accounts—because you have to hold these balances in different regions to support correspondent flows. And I believe that programmatically rebalancing this liquidity with stablecoins is a very real, not fake news, efficiency improvement. So I do believe that emerging markets will continue to lead in the stablecoin space for a while, but I also think there are very real and observable efficiency gains here.

Host:

I know you have done a lot of work on cross-border users. What are your thoughts on the economics involved in different regions?

Anna:

Yes. I mean, ultimately—I think both of you have mentioned this—the core is: when money is in flight, it does not generate productivity, right? It does not generate returns, nor is it used for anything. So there is an international story here that I think is very important, especially—even within companies, moving capital can be very cumbersome. I am not from a payments background, but we do hear a lot about this. In terms of the utility of stablecoins in other scenarios—like investment—we have seen a lot of interest and adoption.

Any type of payment's usefulness depends on whether it can help you get what you ultimately want—whether that is earning some yield on your cash balance or accessing something. So, regarding the adoption we see—just to provide some background—we primarily enter markets in Asia and Latin America through regulated channels. And our Dshares have covered 85 countries, including the U.S. Now, having access to dollar-denominated stablecoins is itself a very significant international growth story.

I think that is a completely different topic, and we can dig deeper into it. But in all these regions, having both the dollar-denominated aspect and the speed aspect brings tremendous utility—right, the things you want, you want them now. A comparison I often use is: before Amazon Prime, no one asked for overnight delivery; then suddenly we all got used to it, and it became your default option, the baseline for how long you would accept waiting for something.

And I do believe we will see more and more of this— even from a consumer perspective, even in markets where this issue is not as severe, it will be like this, right?

Host:

I think that is a great analogy and aligns well with what we've been saying—expectations are changing. Exactly. And now you have a payment partner that can operate 24/7; I think this can extend to many different types of use cases. Ferdi, I want to hear more about your views on correspondent banking and its current state—how you are using stablecoins within it. You mentioned that you are not looking to completely disintermediate and create a completely different system.

It sounds like you want to use stablecoins to optimize the management efficiency of correspondent accounts. Can you elaborate on your approach?

Ferdinand:

Yes, I think correspondent banking, or wholesale dollar clearing, is a very fascinating industry, right? It is really strange—you take Citi's TTS, which is Citi's services business; Citi is probably one of the most iconic dollar clearing banks in the world. This is truly incredible, right?

On one hand, it is clearly built on decades of old technology, part of that massive institution, intuitively unable to act quickly; but at the same time, it is printing money like crazy—this year's net profit is expected to reach $12 billion. So you really have to think: how is this possible? Over the past twenty years, any part of the bank stack that has even slightly touched the surface has faced challengers, right?

On the retail side, there is Revolut; on the brokerage side, there is Robinhood; on the commercial side, there is Mercury, but correspondent banking—dollar clearing—has never faced such challengers.

I think part of the answer lies in the de novo bank wave we are seeing—getting a real banking license has been nearly impossible for a long time; now we have a small group of de novo, fully licensed national banks that can start from scratch (bare metal) on the dollar clearing side with their own master accounts. I think that is a very important factor.

On the other hand, my view is that we now have these new technologies that seem to allow a challenger to really break through in customer experience and efficiency in these businesses. I do believe stablecoins play a role here, right? On one hand, it is just another payment rail, particularly advantageous for certain routes and corridors—the market has proven this; on the other hand, it can also make the bank's back-end operations more efficient, especially in rebalancing global liquidity pools.

So I believe that being able to release the trapped capital in correspondent banks' global balance sheets and making the correspondent banking model much more efficient can be proven to be quite valuable. So I think this is where stablecoins can truly shine in the context of regulated banks and wholesale dollar clearing.

Host:

This is fascinating to me—these core details of global cash management and correspondent banking have now become some of the hottest topics in the fintech space. Ferdi, you know, this is what you are doing. Ten years ago, when I was doing global cash management at a bank, no one would discuss this in the fintech circle. Back then, neo banks were just some fun apps, and banks looked down on them a bit because they knew where the real money was made.

And now, the truly profitable part of that business, that franchise, is cross-border, and that is…

Ferdinand:

…essentially winning through massive scale, but there is a portion of customers who cannot benefit from this model, and I think it is really important to serve them well. So I think these two things can coexist—like the large banks mentioned in previous discussions, they are large, and they have no economic issues with scale; while that RAIN article talks about those customers left behind by this model.

These customers are looking for new solutions; they do indeed have trapped liquidity, and they want instant, 24/7 cross-border payments; they want opportunities for higher yields, while large banks previously thought they were not profitable or simply did not care about them. So newcomers can come in and capture this market.

Host:

Thank you for helping us break down this topic so clearly. Uh, we will take a short pause here to hear a word from our sponsors, and we will be right back. Stablecoin operations typically mean: wallets come from one provider, on-ramps come from another, and then your risk control measures have to be pieced together across these two. Visa's stablecoin platform easily solves this problem—you can mint, transfer, and manage stablecoins, integrating OpenUSD while continuing to act as your own custodian, all done in the same shared environment.

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Alright, the next piece of news: Robinhood's CEO Vlad Tenev is urging the U.S. to clear the way for tokenized stocks, as overseas markets are already moving forward. He calls this the early stage of a global tokenization super cycle, which is interesting. Uh, Robinhood has enabled users in over 120 countries to access 190 dividend-paying U.S. tokenized stocks. Of course, these tokens are backed one-to-one by the underlying stocks, but holders do not directly own them.

Uh, his argument about settlement references the GameStop incident in 2021—when collateral requirements from clearinghouses forced Robinhood to restrict buying. Uh, fintech nerds like me remember this well; uh, that was indeed a big issue. Uh, but he anticipates that if regulations allow, tokenized stocks will carry traditional shareholder rights, and then private companies and real estate will follow.

Well, since Robinhood's chain went live, the market share of tokenized stocks among all real-world assets on-chain has grown to 15%, with a total market cap of about $2.8 billion. Anna, this is exactly Dinari's business, so I obviously want to ask you first. What do you think about this news?

Anna:

Well, actually, the U.S. already has a path for tokenized stocks to exist. Uh, Dinari is the first to implement this path. Uh, we have been operating in the U.S. for about two and a half weeks since announcing this. Uh, I think a key point here is: it is crucial to draw a vital distinction between different tokenization models. Simon, you mentioned this point earlier, right?

In Robinhood's model, there is an SPV (special purpose vehicle) that holds these tokens—sorry, holds the securities that back these tokens—while token holders have no rights to those securities. Uh, Dinari pioneered the custodial model described by the SEC: token holders have ownership claims on the securities backing the token.

Uh, and then there are all the important matters that follow: corporate actions, dividends—other companies pay dividends to their synthetic token holders, etc. So, my point is that our reaction when we saw this news was: oh, interesting. Uh, you know, we are already doing this, and there is a path to follow. I can only assume that what Vlad is referring to is a clear path for synthetic tokens to exist in the U.S. But importantly, that is a different financial instrument, right?

In that case, what you are buying is not the securities themselves; you are buying another tool that represents the price of that security, along with certain rights that come with it. Uh, so they are different financial instruments, accompanied by different risks and returns. Uh, you know, we have always loved it when people talk about tokenization, especially securities tokenization—just as you pointed out, that is our forte, uh, that is what we do, so we enjoy the attention on this topic.

However, I want to say that the actual progress in the market has far outpaced many people's understanding, especially in the on-chain world—where the focus is on these synthetic tools, you know, they are useful for different types of purposes.

Host:

Uh, yes, my first reaction is: Robinhood, especially Vlad, they are remarkable communicators. You see the content they publish—you know, that marketing content, and Vlad's positioning—really done very well. I think many companies can learn from how they communicate their vision and how they run events; they execute very, very well. Uh, and just as Anna said, they have the ability to accelerate people's attention and interest in expanding the tokenized stocks market, which I think others cannot achieve.

There are a lot of structural details about these products, how they should be built, and a whole bunch of questions, and I am optimistic. I am not a securities expert, and these questions will be resolved over time, but it feels like you are starting to see the embryonic form of a retail-facing tokenized RWA market.

In the past few years, even a year ago, discussions about tokenized RWAs mostly focused on wholesale tokenized treasuries and tokenized money market funds, you know, not really retail-facing.

Uh, and it feels like every week… in the coming months, there will be more products focusing on the same question: how to bring the potential benefits of tokenization down to products that consumers and retail investors can truly access and understand, like stocks. I think it will be interesting to see what the final value proposition will look like. I know we have debated this repeatedly on the show: is it 24/7? How important is that? Is it collateral mobility?

Now there is a Robinhood Chain; can you lock up a tokenized stock and then borrow against it? How would that work? But I really think any asset management company that cares about the future and cares about the next generation of customers, the millennials and Gen Z, cannot help but look at Robinhood and think, "Okay, they are pushing the entire industry in a certain direction."

If tokenized stocks really become a trend, if people can buy them there, while they are currently trading traditional stocks through your brokerage, how do you plan to adapt to these technologies? And I think this will bring a lot of innovation to the entire industry.

Anna:

I completely agree. You see, attention is always a good thing; I think what is more important is the thinking about the next steps. Let's lay the rails first, and then you can start putting more interesting things on top, right? So 24/7, I think that is what people really care about. It can unlock some other functionalities, like lending markets, which I think is a direction everyone is paying attention to. You can build utility on top of these things, which is not possible with traditional rails; I think that is just a statement of fact.

The asset management industry will become super interesting. We have actually already supported 24/7. You know, obviously, in our synthetics dShares market, there is already a 24/7 market, which is super interesting. Last year, we also collaborated with S&P to create an index, which is a multi-asset index; deploying something like this as an ETF is very difficult.

In this case, it combines stocks and major crypto assets, allowing end-users to buy a token that equals direct indexing investment in the index constituents, right? This is not easy to achieve in a traditional environment. But once you start putting all these securities on the blockchain, you will create these very interesting asset management products and start deploying them. I think we will see much more than this.

My long-term expectation is that this will benefit retail investors, but the way is not to make most customers realize, "Oh, I am buying a tokenized stock," unless they are explicitly coming for the synthetic token. I think the places where interesting things will happen are— we see it with our customers—our NeoBank end-users, who do not think about this issue from the perspective of tokenized versus non-tokenized.

What they think is: can I get investment opportunities equivalent to those in the U.S. with the same transaction execution and benefits, right? My expectation is that a large number of consumers will emerge who can make their savings and investments more productive without needing to understand the operational details behind it. Just like most people do not really want to know how securities clearing and settlement work, right? Most of us actually do not want to know, maybe except for those present here—

Host:

Except for those present here.

Anna:

—right, they do not want to know how sausage is made, right? They just want to know it is safe, that what they get is what they think it is, and they have certain expectations about the regulatory framework, compliance, and whether there is insurance. But we want to help them make their portfolios more productive. I think that is the ultimate long-term strategy here.

Host:

There are several points that impress me. First, large financial institutions rarely act proactively; they usually wait until the market has grown before moving, which presents a huge opportunity for disruptors, but it is often companies like Robinhood that first grow the market. Whether it is entering the stablecoin space or earlier products, perhaps zero-commission stock trading, you will see traditional giants start to copy and paste these innovations five to ten years later, by which time the market is already large, and Robinhood has long captured a significant market share.

On the other hand, this week I spoke with three neobanks, and they all said they are viewing stablecoins and tokenization as a different cross-border method. So if I am a company primarily focused on domestic business in the U.S., that is my main focus, suddenly I have an international expansion possibility that did not exist before. And look at where Robinhood positions its tokenization platform; a large part of it is centered around this international expansion.

They have 27 million customers, the vast majority of whom are domestic, but they are now expanding their market share in the UK and pushing into Europe and around the world. So the default globalization possibility of the U.S. capital markets and U.S. companies is a very interesting trend. We will continue to monitor this. The last piece of news I want to discuss this week is the SEC's proposal for new crypto issuance rules.

This regulatory framework tailored for crypto assets, let's call it Regier, is a tailored offering regime with a 60-day comment period. So we will see what it looks like after the comment period. The core idea is that startups can be exempt from Securities Act registration for four years, raising up to $5 million; larger fundraising can reach up to $75 million within a year.

And the most critical point is this: Safe Harbor allows digital assets to no longer be considered securities after the issuer has ceased all management activities. I can do an ICO; I can launch a decentralized network, and once this network operates fully decentralized, and I… once the issuer completely exits, this token is no longer a security. So this does not count as a token launch step because we have not yet gone through the Clarity Act.

And just the day before this, the White House had a major press conference where CFTC Chairman Michael Celig talked about trying to bring Hyperliquid to the U.S. Next, we will likely see more developments in this area. Anna, what do you think about this? And what do you think about small-cap securities issuance? I think it is a bit like Reg A, if you are familiar with that.

Anna:

Yes, yes. I think that is an appropriate analogy. This is quite interesting; I can understand the logic behind it, and I think having something like this is a good thing. But I particularly want to see how the uptake of this kind of thing goes. In the past, I have talked to people who asked me: why not just do a token IPO directly, or like an ICO, instead of going through the traditional market's equity IPO? Think about it; I am not a public company, but you have to go where the liquidity is, right?

These markets operate like this—just like we have to find the largest body of water we can find. So I am very curious about how the acceptance will be and what the future will look like. I think our industry is changing very quickly; I think everyone has felt this deeply over the past few years. I could actually talk more about the policy level, but I am more curious about what practical impact it will have on companies in this industry. How will it affect company structures? How will it affect the liquidity of those tokens—or the de facto equity of new companies? Will it bring substantial changes to innovation?

That is what I find interesting about this news. I think the Figure team has tried this; at least Mike Cagney has talked about this repeatedly, right? But I do believe liquidity has always been an issue, whether in early or late stages. However, they have been experimenting with Figure's stock, and now they have gone public…

Host:

But doesn't this mean—if I am wrong, please correct me—that you can issue a token that initially is not a security, or say it starts as a security and then over time becomes not a security? So it feels like the biggest demand is to allow it to enter the crypto ecosystem and trade on Uniswap like in the early days.

And most people have taken the route of governance tokens on this issue; we have seen this in the crypto circle for years because people do not want something that belongs to securities, so they have to find a way to construct a token, and as a result, this token does not bring much actual value to holders. Right? So if there could be a way for a token to benefit from the liquidity of the crypto ecosystem while being legally compliant in its issuance, giving holders some rights and protections, that would be fantastic. But this is a super difficult problem to solve.

So I am very curious about how clarity and rulemaking will evolve over there, and whether it is possible to find that balance. Freddie, I am still thinking about how tokens drive 24/7. You might—I don't know if you followed the press conference yesterday with the CFTC, the Trump administration, and some crypto CEOs. What do you think about these macro moves to push tokenization to achieve 24/7?

As someone with access to a Fed master account and a global perspective, what do you think?

Ferdinand:

Yeah, I want to say that I agree with all of this. I think the only point I can make that is not so obvious is: sometimes we do underestimate the capabilities of existing rails, right? For example, we have been building this bank; I would study some rails, like Fedwire. Fedwire settles for 22 hours a day, which is already quite good.

Usually, those crazy bank cut-off times, like after 3 PM, you have to wait until the next day, that pain is usually not an issue with the rail itself, not an issue with the infrastructure itself, but with the entire set of organizational constraints wrapped around correspondent banking. So sometimes I do feel we need to be more honest intellectually: what are the real technological limitations, infrastructure limitations that can be solved with blockchain or any cutting-edge technology? What are the social and organizational constraints we have built around it?

Because I think without this analysis, we will run towards the wrong solutions. That said, for example, Fedwire does not settle on weekends, so even purely from a technical infrastructure perspective, there are definitely things to be done. However, this sometimes feels like a somewhat redundant thought that pops into my head; I feel existing analyses sometimes lack a bit in this regard.

Host:

That makes sense. I have seen many small and medium-sized financial institutions researching how to deploy private blockchains or set up a privacy zone on Tempo. We have discussed this many times; the gist is: this is a subledger of your general ledger (GL), but it just happens to run 24/7, can handle your tokenized deposits, can handle your stablecoins, allowing you to operate 24/7.

But then you need a 24/7 operational model; you need to manage compliance and risk 24/7. So you see, even if you solve the technical bottlenecks internally, a whole new set of non-technical bottlenecks will emerge. So building an organization that can withstand all of this is another matter. But I think there is an attractive idea here: I do believe intelligence will bring a difference here, right? And I… I think AI can indeed bring organizations closer to 24/7 operations, right?

For example, once the technical and infrastructure issues are resolved, I believe AI will give us a better opportunity at the organizational level to pull back human resources, allowing things to operate around the clock without requiring humans to also work around the clock, right? So I think both dimensions have new paths to explore. But I do believe that stablecoins alone cannot solve the infrastructure layer. This is an interesting point—what ways can banks safely and reliably use AI to operate in a way that is closer to 24/7?

But there is another question: if you believe that in the future there will be intelligent agents making decisions about how funds flow, it is hard to imagine this model running on infrastructure that is not 24/7. So if you are building products for agents and want a banking tech stack that will not become outdated in the next five to ten years… right. It feels like this is another driving force pushing the system to become more flexible. It has to operate more and longer than the existing tech stack. No one knows exactly when and how all this will happen.

But I think this is another driving force pushing us into the 24/7 currency era. Yes, you have to become more multi-rail, don't you? You have to support a bit of everything. I guess that is what you are doing, right, Ferdinand?

Ferdinand:

Yes, I truly believe that ten years from now, every major correspondent bank or peer bank will support stablecoin rails, right? It might happen in five years. I also believe that today it is not like that. So companies like Augustus can lead the market as both a bank and a native stablecoin player. But I think within five to ten years, these things will definitely converge, right? Ultimately, it will just become another payment rail.

I also think—this idea might be a bit heretical—you see, Europe's SEPA Instant is actually already 24/7, right? How should we think about that? I currently tend to believe that the real limitation on 24/7 availability is the operational side, not the payment infrastructure itself.

Host:

Usually, that's the case. Stablecoins are actually an excellent stalking horse for many of these things. But interestingly—Anna, do you have any final thoughts on this topic, or what we discussed today?

Anna:

Yes, following your point— we also engage with many institutional clients. You can imagine that everyone is interested in tokenization and stablecoins, and everyone is pondering how to use them. What we have observed is that when something can run alongside your existing infrastructure or directly overlay it, adoption becomes much easier. I think sometimes people have this idea—of course, there is an element of hype—that you have to throw everything away and put everything on the blockchain. But in fact, you do not need to abandon all existing infrastructure to leverage technological advancements.

You can layer it on top. That is how we build our business: whether you are a broker-dealer, a neo bank, or any type of fintech, you can layer it on top of existing operations, and it will work in parallel and integrate well with existing systems. And from our experience, if you combine the two, people are more willing to adopt it; they will see it as a complementary extension of their business rather than a scary thing that requires you to throw away all existing infrastructure.

Host:

I want to name the last segment "The Corner of Knowledge Honesty." I really love this phrase. I think this is exactly what we strive for in doing Tokenized—to get as close to the latest truth as possible. There are still a bunch of stories we didn't get to this week. RAIN released their agentic payments alliance, and I am very curious to see what happens next. Kraken is also launching U.S. stock trading for clients in the European Economic Area, which I believe is very relevant to you, Dinari.

Thank you all for watching and listening; I truly appreciate it. If you want to learn more about stock tokenization, a few weeks ago we had a great interview with Johan Kabat, Head of Crypto at Robinhood, which you can find on podcast platforms or YouTube to learn what Robinhood is doing on-chain. And Anna, if people are interested in Dinari and want to learn more, how can they contact you?

Anna:

Yes, follow us on X; our account is Dinari Global. You can also check out our website dinari.com—I know this idea sounds pretty Web 2.0, but many people are still looking. Then follow what we are doing, and just send us a direct message. We are always happy to build new connections, meet new people, and answer questions. I think people are absorbing information about tokenization very quickly now, but there are still many questions in this field: how it works, what it means, and what different models exist.

We are very happy to discuss these with everyone.

Host:

100%. Yes, absolutely, fantastic.

Ferdinand:

Thank you all for listening. If you are an international fintech or international bank looking to access direct dollar clearing, you can find us at augustus.com.

Host:

Cuy's account on X is Cuy Sheffield, and there's visa.com/crypto. You can find me on various social platforms, @SimonTaylor, shouting into the void, and finbrainfood.com, of course, tempo.xyz. If you want to see more of this show, please like, subscribe, and leave comments. I always tell you this because it is your way of thanking us. If you like any of our content, leaving a comment is the best way to show appreciation.

If you do this, you will hear more of our content. Take care, and see you next time.