The Year of Crypto IPOs; Company of the Year 2025 Revealed - Security Token Show: Episode 300

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Happy, huh?

Speaker C: Friday, everyone. It's that time of the week. It's time for the security token show, which means we've rounded up the latest and Greatest tokenization news. RWAs are on fire. And I'm glad they are. For episode 300, we're your host. I'm Herwig. You can call me Happy. And of course, I'm joined by Kyle. And wow, what an episode we've got for you today, Kyle. How are you, my friend? You are across the entire planet, uh, for me right now, I believe.

Speaker A: That's right. That's right. You know, it's summer, which means that yet again, back again, I am in Southeast Asia. As you can see, I've got my, uh, my Bali's finest, uh, clothes on here as I'm in, uh, in Indonesia for the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, uh, Bali 2025 event. So helping them with figuring out how to leverage tokenization within their ecosystem. Um, judging some competitions, some startup competitions, and doing a whole lot of fun stuff before I kick it into the rest of, uh, the trip here. Heading to Korea Blockchain week, where I'll be with Flip and a team there talking about everything. Tokenization and security tokens in Seoul, South Korea, before bouncing over to Singapore for token 2049. Yet again, the. The boy is back in Singapore. So doing. Doing a whole trip before I wrap it up back in New York City, going back across the pond to do Red Swans tokenized real estate event. So a lot of really great things going on over the next month.

Speaker C: Always spreading the gospel of tokenization all around the world. I love it, Kyle. And as, uh, you can see, I'm filming from home today, not from the office. And I'm getting a little. Little friend here. So a quick guest appearance. Oh, sequoia, for episode 300. Everybody, this is my guy,

Speaker B: M. Uh,

Speaker C: well, with that, let's get right into the market movements. Well, we've got for episode 300, our regular contributor back again, Nico Pantelis, partner at Blue Bay Ventures. How are you this week, Nico?

Speaker B: Good, gentlemen. How are you? I'm calling in from Dubai again. Yes, home base, the new blockchain capital of the world.

Speaker C: Guys, everyone's getting ready and in gear for the oncoming wave in crypto, in RWAs and everything. Good, I'm excited. But wow, what a week this week, guys. Uh, as you can see from the title, everyone, it's the year of crypto ipo. So I think I'm just going to start right into kind of the Wall street side of things. Uh, before we get into the IPOs, let's first go over to NASDAQ, one of the premier exchanges, right, that hosts a lot of the public equities in the country. And now they made a big move. They say they have filed to trade on chain equities. This of course means that one of the two major exchanges really outside New York Stock Exchange be the other one, uh, is now pushing for tokenization. I think that's a huge, huge signal, uh, to the rest of the market, uh, to the rest of the world even, that this is now a technology that will be embraced by the biggest and the best capital markets in the world. It is not quite like we've seen with X stocks with uh, Denari with uh, now on the global markets. This is sort of web 2.5. They're going to kind of do, I think their permissioned way, ah, slow way of getting to this, uh, but they're going to leverage the technology nevertheless. Nico or Kyle, anyone want to take a first stab at this big news? What you got?

Speaker B: This is uh, my home territory my whole life. I grew up with the nasdaq. I worked um, indirectly on the NASDAQ my whole life. So this is very, very important. Look, ah, these tradfi companies have been preaching and shouting, uh, that they will do stuff on blockchains and something with tokenization and stuff like that. Every cycle, every top of the last cycles, everybody was all on the blockchain bandwagon. But this one hits different for me this time. This seems like we are finally here and this will be the new platform where we will all be operating on in the future, which is decentralized blockchains. So yeah, big one, Very big.

Speaker A: Yeah. Look, I think we thought we all saw this coming the minute that ice, the New York Stock Exchange owner invested in Tzero. Right. We knew that, that there was no way that these different markets that are clearly competitive to each other weren't going to, to kind of race against each other and all these different technological innovations. It only made sense for NASDAQ to get into this because they are clearly the exchan most of the tech stocks end up listing on. Most of the innovation in this industry tends to go towards nasdaq. So it makes sense that they're going to try to follow in the footsteps. I think they're seeing what like Robinhood for example is starting to do and thinking, all right, like we don't want to lose, we don't want to lose market share to Robinhood, um, or something along those lines. I Think that there's a lot of outside market pressures that are starting to push them, which you remember from, I don't know, a main topic from four years ago. Um, I've been saying for so long that I always saw kind of the challenger institutions, those, those medium sized regulated entities, um, being the ones that were going to drive the change because they were going to adopt these things quickly. And then you're going to see some of the legacy players realizing that they have the threat to lose market share because of these new technologies. That's exactly what we're seeing here in my opinion from nasdaq. Um, but that doesn't change the fact that it's pretty incredible. It's exciting to see the questions really are going to arise and what, how do they actually define tokenizing, um, or on chain these, these types of concepts. Right. We know what uh, how the industry describes them, we know how we talk about them colloquially, but both of those things are different. And certainly the third thing will be very different, which is how NASDAQ and the regulators view these things and how they are structured. Oftentimes it's often much less technologically innovative than many enthusiasts may hope. So it'll be interesting to see what on chain trading actually means. Is that just you, Is that something as simple as just watching, watching these things on chain or is it allowing for primary ledgers to occur on chain? Those are two things that could potentially happen, one of which much more impactful than the other.

Speaker C: Yeah, let's be real. This is going to be a crawl, walk, run, emphasis on the crawl for NASDAQ right now. Tokenization. But of course the outside pressures from the startup wave of the X stocks and the Denaris and the on those, you know, they're absolutely going to bring and Robinhood, you know, going to I think force that acceleration to running uh, over the next few years as opposed to over the next decade. That is the hope here. But uh, NASDAQ is the home also to many of these. This year's, you know, crypto IPOs, uh, all of which seem to touch tokenization one way or another. Circle the stablecoin RWA company going public. You got Galaxy that has been tokenizing in the, and has now tokenized their own stock, uh, on Solana using Super State. Right. So they're obviously touching it. And then last and they tokenized the violin. Uh, but of course now we see both figure and Gemini, which Gemini is already supporting tokenized stocks abroad. It's obviously going to be part of their overall roadmap and there's big attention of them as a huge crypto company in general. The Winklevi, by the way, own a huge chunk of bitcoin. I think it's over a percent, if I'm not mistaken. It's a crazy amount. Uh, but needless to say, we also have Figure, which, you know, has tokenized tens of billions of dollars of helocs, as well as has a huge ecosystem with provenance and figure markets and a lot of other, uh, things in play, uh, with, you know, under the helm of Mike Cagney. So two huge IPOs, both Today Live, and I believe it was yesterday for Figure. Uh, what do you all think about this? All trading on nasdaq, who is now also looking at tokenization.

Speaker A: Finally I have, you know, I host a weekly show on the Wolf Financial channel. We do a lot of those podcasts and they've been good to the security token market team for quite some time. And on that venture capital show, I talk so often about my disappointment in just the tepid IPO markets. I'm just such a big believer in the public markets. Nico, kind of to what you were talking about of NASDAQ hits so close to home, it was. That's where I learned how to do a lot of this stuff too, is by trading tech stocks back in the day when that was maybe a little bit less crazy as it is today. But, but I think it's just so exciting to see these businesses actually going public and facing the music of, of coming to, to retail markets in a compliant manner. Um, I think it's an incredible accomplish company like Gemini. Um, and so this is really exciting for me to see. We've now seen Circle be very successful on the open markets. Core Weave, which has been really successful on the open markets Galaxy then went public as well. So there have been a lot of crypto companies recently or crypto adjacent and core weaves case companies that have gone public and have had a lot of success. Even Figma went public and had $100 million of Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Something that we'd never seen before. On their prospectus, they talked about the rofer to potentially tokenize their shares in the future. This is, this is like discussion and dialogue that we would have, you know, just would have never happened just two years ago. And how much could change in the matter of maybe even less than that, Maybe one year's time is a really, really stark contrast. It's incredibly exciting. Um, as we've talked about so often, I do feel like there is a Real tangible moat that comes from being a public company. Um, in the sense that there now is a responsibility to shareholders for regulators in a different way than for private businesses. So for that reason I think these are really great ways entrench the crypto industry in the public markets and in the, the New York Wall street based capital markets infrastructure is by going public. And so to see more and more of these companies doing so is just a tremendous accomplishment.

Speaker B: Yeah, the market is ripe for these kind of deals at the moment. Um, also the companies have grown to a stage where these are IPO worthy companies. Um, Dan Tapiero with his Dante Fund really saw that very good a few years ago where he started investing in companies like I think Kraken and Durabit and all these. Durabit has been taken over by Coinbase now. But uh, he saw a really good uh, coming. He's also a Tri Fi guy. So we Tri Fi guys, we know what's coming. And NASDAQ also sees is this thing coming and it's there. The traditional traffic people, especially the Wall street crowd is at the point where at the phase of like, if you can't beat him, we need to join them because otherwise we're going to miss this big new boat which is decentralized software. And software is coming to eat Wall Street. That's in essence what blockchains will do. And so if NASDAQ and all these other players from Wall street want to be a part of this new, new venue, they need to get their act together and start playing. Because the guys from uh, Uniswap and Hyper Liquid and all these other new platforms will crush these, uh, thread, uh, five platforms. So yeah, I think it's a good, good thing that everybody's joining the party. You know, get over the hatred and the foul mouthing and all this other stuff that has been going on in the past and look to the future and uh, yeah, join hands. Join, join the team.

Speaker C: Yeah. No. Well, well said, Nico. The transition of Wall street embracing crypto on all fronts is clearly happening, as described by both of you guys. And just to take one step further for Nasdaq, they're also investing $50 million into Gemini as well. And Gemini is going to be rolling out custody and distribution. Uh, so that's a pretty big win for Gemini I would say as well. The uh, you know, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss should be pretty happy right now, I must say. Pretty big smile on their faces I imagine. Uh, but the institutional wave as we know hasn't stopped there, I think. Another big market movement, as we like to say on this segment, is Fidelity. Okay? Fidelity in partnership with uh, Ondo in this case, has launched their own FDIT token, the Fidelity Digital Interest Token. And this is Fidelity folks, not Fidelity International, as we have reported on in the past, who has also tokenized abroad out of UK. This, this is the big dog in the US Fidelity, uh, over 200 million backing into it already. And interestingly it is 99% backed by Ondo's OUSG. That's their institutional product. You may recall earlier this year it was OSG was 100% backed by Bidle. Uh, now I believe it is more diversified. But you see this trickle down of now you got Bittle supporting osg, which is supporting fdit, which is going to be, you know, in the hands of all different types of customers and ecosystems. We are uh, going to be in for an interesting ride. But uh, also a testament to Ondo, you know, making big moves along their global markets, but clearly hasn't stopped their initiatives along treasuries, along fund, uh, uh, tokenization, which they also do, clearly. Right, so great to see that that still has the full, um, pedal on the gas if you will. Uh, but any insights or takeaways from either of you?

Speaker B: For me, it's uh, of course, big thumbs up for Ondo. The team. They're doing fantastic things out there in the, especially in the stratify markets. Getting, getting people some religion on the other side of the, you know, of the rails. Come on over. It's good to hear, um, Fidelity, I think Fidelity, together with Franklin have been kind of in the crypto slash blockchain have been on this bandwagon. Not that outspoken, but uh, they have been active. So it's not, it's not crazy for me to see them being a first mover again, you know, in this, uh, in this ecosystem. Um, yeah, good, good, good stuff. Uh, this, this will um, open up more doors, get more activity on these blockchains, you know, get, get traditional parties and finance, um, institutions looking at this new space and scratching their head and thinking, hey, should we do something on these blockchains? Because look at them, you know, Ah, I'm talking about, ah, the vanguards of these worlds, these old gray institutions which are not moving and are saying that blockchains are still for criminals, which is kind of crazy. Getting crazy at this moment. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, yeah, well, look, if people don't know, Fidelity, uh, is the largest issuer of uh, treasury products in the world, um, by a huge margin, um, their money market fund is the largest by 3 or 4x, uh, second place. They are an enormous issuer of these types of fund products. Um, and so um, this is a big vote of confidence because they presumably have way more than $200 million that they can deploy into these types of products. They can, they can bring a ton of capital into this space. I think they've got close to 1.2 trillion if I'm correct on these issuances. So um, 200 million is a drop in the bucket. Uh, 1.6 trillion. My producer Jason uh, corrected me there. So even more than what I had thought, I was a little nervous there on the numbers just throwing one out there without any backed substance. And it was actually an underestimate. Um, so because of that this is a pretty big vote of confidence I think and uh, an exciting one to see them getting involved in this because I'm also a big fan of Fidelity with the fact that, you know, with their ETF product which is a very competitive one, obviously BlackRock's has been more successful by a. And Grayscale has been more successful from fees generated. Um, I think Fidelity is the most sustainable. They actually custody their own Bitcoin in house, which I think is a really cool um, initiative. And it shows they understand this market, they understand the risks associated. Um, and uh, and so I think for a lot of reasons Fidelity is a great business partner to work with because they get it at a fundamental level. Um, and are a private company, family owned business which I think is really cool.

Speaker C: I'm excited to see them get active in the game for sure. Uh, and if you are been listening for the last 15 minutes and you're in Tradfi and your firm is not looking at crypto, well then got news for you, you better act fast because it is clear that Tradfi is embracing crypto. Absolutely love this conversation. If you need one more thing to go off of this is what we're going to end on is the fact that the SEC chair himself is basically once again embracing tokenization. Came as an advisor from securitized before and now chair Paul Atkins, uh, in a new keynote speech has basically come out and said that they are ending this endless legal uncertainty for the crypto markets. Not just talking about RWAs and on chain tokenizations of securities, we're talking about most traditional crypto issuances. He once again reaffirmed that the stance that they have is that most uh, cryptos do not fall under the securities guidelines, uh, and therefore not under their purview. Uh, that's A big statement and a very different statement from what we saw in the last, uh, you know, administration. So very exciting times ahead, I think, for the crypto markets in general. Of course, this is not a blanket statement to say, go out and do whatever you want. There are still laws in place. They're going to go out and enforce them. If you're clearly going to offer a security or an RWA to the market, there are rules to follow. But it does mean that the age of daos and defy and many more native project tokens are going to hit the market again. Uh, and finally Americans are going to be able to participate, which I think is awesome for not just us Americans, but for the whole market. Uh, so, uh, any ending comments here from nico on episode 300 here on the show regarding this or anything else you want to bring up.

Speaker B: I think, I know many people don't love him, but I think Trump has been the best thing that could happen to crypto since ever. You know, this is a big, big thing he did, putting in crypto savvy people, crypto people who know crypto, who understand crypto in these, uh, important positions in these federal or in these government, uh, entities. It's very important for industry and also for the Truck 5 community to come in because indeed, they need some, some guardrails, some guidelines, some rules like we all have in our life, which is a good thing because that's what society makes everything work in society. So we need it also in blockchain, but it will be coming. And like I said, Trump has been the best thing for crypto in this

Speaker A: cycle, in my opinion. Yeah, it's exciting. It's really, really exciting stuff. Happy to see this. Honestly, my first thought actually goes to send positive vibes out to many of the crypto developers that got, uh, swept under the toe with respect to the previous administration. Um, there's a really aggressive administration previously that, that, you know, just laid down the hammer on so many companies that if you're one of those founders now, you're looking at it like, really, like we had to, we had to get screwed and lose all of our business when, when, you know, all these other guys get to go through. So that was honestly the first thing that I thought about was like, man, it must be unfortunate if you were, you know, Abra or some of these that were trying to do a lot of these initiatives back in the day. Um, and again, they made mistakes for sure. But, um, it's interesting how much a regime change can impact an industry. Um, and so I Think it's a wonderful thing, but it's just interesting to think about the poor one out to all of our fallen friends over the years that were well meaning but just uh, couldn't quite get it done.

Speaker C: As they say, Kyle, uh, pioneers do take arrows. Uh, so unfortunately the settlers are going to get to move it after that. But uh, this is where we are. I don't think, uh, the fact that There is over 200 billion in stable coins also has something to do with waking up America, uh, to what's happening with crypto as well. Uh, it's just an exciting, exciting time, uh, that, you know, you're right, Kyle, but uh, we, we now get into we. At least it's better now than late than never, right?

Speaker A: We're still standing.

Speaker C: Still standing here. 300 episodes later. Uh, and on that note, Nico, thank you for all your contributions. Go ahead.

Speaker B: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: The industry's getting strong. What a great note to end on, uh, there, Nico, for all these episodes that uh, you've been supported. And uh, with that we've got an incredible rest of the show. There's even more news to talk about. So, you know, I want to get right to it with that, Nico. Thank you, uh, for joining us.

Speaker B: Thanks guys.

Speaker C: It just so happens to work out that episode 300, uh, is an opportunity to announce something huge. Our first ever live initiative by the RWA Foundation. If you haven't heard the episodes before, we have put together a new organization formed with over 40 founding members in the RWA RWA industry across all parts, uh, in order to onboard a billion users into rwa, starting with crypto natives. We've got lots of plans, we've got lots of ideas we put out there, including the Wally Dao that you can go check out at Wallydao XYZ. But starting on Monday, September 15, 2025, the first ever RWA pod will be revealed to the world available to stake. That means you and anybody else. They'll be able to take USDC on base as well as on Arbitrum, on Ethereum, on Avalanche, and on Sonic, as well as the native tokens of those cryptos to deposit. And in return, you're going to get over 10 different RWA project tokens, including Wally itself. The first time ever anyone can earn Wally Pre TGE will be through this RWA pod. We're revealing the amazing 10 RWA projects across again. All sectors that you're going to get exposure to to staking on Monday uh, launching at 11am M. Eastern as well as the Twitter space is going live at 2:30 Eastern. So join us then. But that's the big news. The RWA pod is going to help us launch Wally. We're actually taking the underlying yield and converting that into stable coins. So we're actually supporting the RWA industry as well. So if you like what that's all about, just go to wallydao xyz. Make sure you follow us on Twitter wallydao or RWA Foundation. And with that, so much more amazing news to get back to it this week. So let's move on to the token debrief. Kyle. Wow. Um, for episode 300 we are not getting a break. There is a storm of news. All good.

Speaker B: This is a crazy week.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So per usual I think I'm just gonna sort of start to get into it and you offer me some comments here. We'll try to try to break it up by segment here as I'm seeing the the news here. But I do want to give a shout out. Anybody listening that next week I will be at RWA Summit in New York and that Monday I believe it might be completely booked. But hit me up and I might be able to get you in uh, the capital markets and cocktails institutional RWA event, what I call pre game to the RWA Summit will be happening that Monday right nearby, uh, in Brooklyn. To the RWA Summit. So check that out. It's on Luma. Uh, good folks hosting that over there. Uh, but also Kyle, tons of new offerings and not just lots, but billions. Okay, Billions in value we got starting off Minnesota St. Cloud Financial Credit Union bringing us the Cloud dollar. Loving the Cloud dollar as a name. Uh, it is with Metallicus and Deland Cuso. Deland Kuso. Either way, two firms I personally have not heard of. Maybe you have, Kyle, but good for a credit union being wise on tokenization and getting into the stable coins and gain with the Cloud dollar. Uh, Ant Digital over in China. Huge uh, push into an $8 billion energy assets play. Actually 8.4 billion. 60 billion won in energy assets coming on chain. Huge sector. Just goes to show you people are always asking predictions how much is going to happen? Billions at a time folks. Billion dollar bonds, tens of billions in energy assets, real estate and tens of billions funds goes on commodities, etc. I gotta stop Cancer Fitzgerald. Uh, they are going big with news, uh, regarding a BTC fund that apparently has gold downside protection. This is a unique product, I gotta say. Maybe blending the best of both worlds. Some might look at it between digital gold and physical gold. Uh, Black Manta launching their first EU offering on the Canton network. Uh that is pretty big deal. They're also a validator um but Black Manta now going to be bringing tokenized assets to Canton uh through their European structure. Hash Key is launching a half a billion dollar Datco digital asset treasury company bringing uh in folks uh of course into the Hash Key ecosystem and Farmway to tokenize 100 million worth of almond orchards. 50 hectares in Georgia of almond orchards getting put on chain. I kind of want to own a piece of that. I'm m not gonna lie. Kyle, what do you think about these offers?

Speaker A: Well um, you know first off shout out to Black Manta partner that uh we've worked with at STM for quite some time. I've been working with uh, with Global Settlement recently um on their launch on Canton. We actually with Global Settlement just got approved to be a validator on Canton as well. So I think this is another opportunity to work closer with the Black uh Manta team as well as the Canton network at large. So excited to really dive into that ecosystem and get to know it a bit more. I mean hey almond orchards. I agree Herway I'm a commodities guy. I've been saying this for like the last year straight M and here's another agricultural product coming on chain. I think it's really cool. It makes sense especially for agriculture where the supply chain really does matter because 12 hours is the difference between something spoiling and not and you have to have temperature control and all these types of things. It really does matter how the things get handled. Throughout the life cycle of this asset class I've spent a lot of time with a family office outside of South Florida uh that does a lot of this type of product and so learned um a lot about this industry. It makes a ton of sense from capital financing streamlining perspective as well as to track that supply chain. So a really cool thing for Farmway to start getting involved in.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And just the beginning I think in agriculture in general. Uh but also moving on to some big announcements. Alloy uh X um was acquired by Solomon officially which is pretty big news. Um, Alloy X had a big starting to make some big moves in the tokenization of gold space. So I imagine that this will parlay into Solomon's strategy. Let's say um, the Canton foundation welcomes also bnb, Paribas and hsbc. And congratulations to Global Settlement on that Validator news. Some sneaky alpha that I'm not sure is Live yet. So really really uh good stuff Kyle. Love to see that for global settlement uh 21x who we've been talking about on the show here now is their secondary market live. We, we said that they went live earlier this year with their primary market. Now you can trade in a European venue uh on chain securities in a secondary manner. I'm excited to see what kind of volume comes to 21x. Historically not a lot to secondary markets in the RWA space. Uh hoping this is different this time. Uh uh previously ixSwap ixs has announced an upgrade to a Dex 1.5 in order to start bridging in more liquidity for their tokenized assets. Always love hearing news around that. Our CHAX over in the UK announces a pool tokens capability. If you want to check out funds comprising of tokenized funds on Hedera uh in a pool uh go check out that news from our chax, ubs Digi FT and Chainlink they're partnering up for on chain fund operations in Hong Kong uh for their cyberport, blockchain and digital asset pilot subsidies uh scheme. So as we know Hong Kong has their stable coin bill. Many other activity going on out there. Love to see this kind of partnerships come into play. That's what the governments many times need uh for pilots to work smoothly. Hyper liquid does mean it also can go slow but should mean we see those published results. Hyper liquid has made a lot of waves in the crypto space. They surged onto the scene with their token and uh their deck and now they are planning a stable coin usdh uh and they've been doing what we saw some others uh start to do with their stable coins like sky with their Grand Prix their hyper uh liquid is now also figuring out and accepting proposals for who wants to back that stable coin uh with I believe Biddle and centrifuge and many of the other usual suspects already putting in proposals uh fireblocks. They've launched their network for payments with over 40 different providers for a global stablecoin payments network powered by Fireblocks. Pretty clever. Uh next stocks uh announced the next NX market M in the Philippines at the Hong Kong summit. Uh next stocks being out of Labuan so nice little combination in Southeast Asia going on over there uh for RWA activity. And finally Kyle before we move into more news uh stablecoin standard has welcomed particular as its newest member. In particular I was being forward thinking and the rating side of things and a lot of other output they put for the industry. Great to see them joining up any Thoughts, comments, insights you have on any, any of these news pieces, Kyle?

Speaker A: Yeah, this is a fun announcement segment. I thought it was interesting. I love that we, uh, aligned the IXSwap and RTX articles one after another because it's a pretty cool example of how the efficiencies in the smart contracts tokenization space are actually absolutely true and are there. And I think the best way to describe that is that you, uh, have ixSwap, which is a decentralized market that is upgrading their decks to bridge liquidity. And archex, which is much more of a centralized system, announced their pooling tokens capability which improves liquidity within their system. And so in a lot of ways, a lot of these things begin to converge, emerge as, uh, everybody's trying to accomplish the same thing, which is more liquid global markets. It's cool to see it being attacked from different sides and different angles to create market innovations. Um, but I do think that it just clearly points that directionally we're heading in one direction. If you didn't get that from, um, Nasdaq trying to do on chain tokenization, if you didn't get that from Robinhood doing stocks tokenization, at least take a look at two very similar companies that have been in the industry for the same amount of time. One decentralized, one centralized, and they're both kind of heading towards the same direction. Uh, there's no real other way to do the scientific method to measure, uh, the similarities between the trends in the market. So I thought that was just a cool thing to compare back to back, uh, that you did a nice job there.

Speaker C: Well, I'd say one thing's for sure, Kyle, it will be inevitable. Liquid RWAs are coming. It's why we're all switching to this technology in the first, first place, among many other reasons.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: It just takes time. Uh, and now we're finally starting to see the fruits of the labor of the industry start to come together with even more ways to, uh, bring liquidity fill that gap, as they say. And uh, as we have pointed out in the market movements, in fact there's a lot of institutional activity, a lot of great regulatory updates. There's more now to cover broadridge. Uh, their DLR has crossed 6.9 trillion in monthly volume. That's their repo network. 6.9 or, yeah, 5.9. Sorry, almost $6 trillion a month in, uh, in repos. That's crazy. As reported by Kaiko. Quickly moving on to the scene in RWAs for reporting on a lot of this information, as we saw also Partner with Canton, uh, earlier. And uh, also really cool news. Kyle Zell's parent company, uh, which is owned by a bunch of banks, uh, has also announced that they're going to be launching a stable coin. The company is called Early Warning Services and it is actually owned by bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One and pnc. Uh, so so many different conglomerates or coalitions or partnerships for stable coins coming out, uh, yet none of them are here yet. But wow, so many being announced. But obviously many Americans have now become accustomed to Zelle as it became a default for most banks to now send payments instantly for folks at least under a certain sum. So I think a pretty good use case for stablecoins. There's a river of pennies to be saved there, not to mention maybe more use cases inside there. Uh, and then uh, BlackRock also big news going beyond their now biddle fund. Rumor has it they are, according to Bloomberg confirmed going to be tokenizing their ETFs. Not surprising here. We've been talking on the show about how this is going to be the future, but BlackRock being one of the biggest, if not the biggest ETF provider out there. Right. Uh, this is a big deal as they now start to call it. Go more mainstream on their business with tokenization and Franklin Templeton partnering up with Binance. Okay. For new on chain products that they're going to be, I assume Franklin Templeton and other products that are going to be coming, uh, to the market. Apologies for the phone call there, but you know, Binance starting to cozy up again to the US as the US welcomes all crypto companies now and Franklin Templeton being first to jump on this. Hopefully uh, Benji and other things will benefit. Uh, finally on the regulatory front, the US SEC and SIFMA have made a seven agenda item list on innovation and trying to make exemptions to support innovation. So check that out if you're a regulatory nerd like me and the Japanese fsa, uh, adjusts their crypto regulation to now include securities laws and reduces the crypto tax rate to 20%. Uh, as if that's going to hopefully entice more people. Uh, but an interesting tax rate nonetheless. Kyle, what are your thoughts on this institutional update here? Man. Wow.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Six trillion in monthly volume. Like that's a bonkers number. Like I just like, like, just as like a normal person sitting in a chair at a desk, you're like $6 trillion monthly on their distributed ledger repo platform. Uh, it's just crazy.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker C: that doesn't even include JPM. Right. So we're talking about, I think they reported 4 trillion. We might be at 10 trillion a month. I want to know what is the market share right now of on chain or dlt at least versus the traditional market? Because it's gotta. It's got to be starting to get pretty big, right? Or is it still.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Big of a market?

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker C: You tell me.

Speaker A: Yeah, look, I wish, I wish I had an answer there. Um, but just again, we're at 6 trillion in monthly volume, so any number I would have thrown out that would have sounded reasonable, like I could be totally off base, it sounds like by potentially orders of magnitude. But, uh, but that's just really, really cool to see. And it just shows, I think Broadridge, and we've. We've talked about this internally for a long time. They have to be one of the biggest winners of this technological innovation that no one talks about. I feel like there are a huge dark horse that, like, there's a. There's a chance that five years from now, we look back or 10 years from now, I look back and it's like, wow, Broadridge was kind of, uh, this generation's X, Y or Z company that just like, we're early on this trend, just like, absolutely blew it out of the water. And next thing you know, they're like the next Citadel or whatever. In terms of this particular market. I could see it just because of how successful they've been in this industry and how quickly they're able to grow. Um, and by the way, love the sea of pennies analogy. I haven't heard that one used before. I thought that was just funny and a very true one with respect to how these things work. So that was definitely the big one that I was watching. Um, we'll see what the SEC does. Um, I'll believe it when I see it. Um, but in this case, I think in the US They've done pretty well around actually pushing through regulation, so hopefully that continues. Um, so all good stuff.

Speaker C: I'd be curious to see where these BlackRock ETFs also land. Is it going to be through the securitized infrastructure, which is not really known for stock trading? Right. As we see with ETFs. Are they going to be more like these strangely distributed kind of on chain ETFs that don't have a kind of trading venue?

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker C: It's going to be very interesting. Right? Just a subscription redemption model only exclusively. It'll be very interesting.

Speaker A: Don't forget One of the biggest, one of the biggest anchors. One of the biggest anchors of. Of the Biddle Fund is Ondo. And now Ondo also has a competing broker dealer ATS as well. So there, there is some competition in that game for securitized. That uh, that seems serious than we've seen in years past where they were really the only serious player in town. That is no longer.

Speaker C: I would be curious to see. And man, what a show that we now have to end with. Not our regular Company of the week, but it's episode 300, isn't it, Kyle? So it is time to announce 2025's Company of the Year.

Speaker B: Foreign.

Speaker C: That's right folks. As you might be gathering, there's some big news also that we have to say that episode 300 will in fact be the Security Token Show's last. It is of course not the end for Kyle or I. There will be much more. And you can keep subscribing to our newsletters and all our content on social media as well via stm. But given that this is the last episode of the year and in the show's history, possibly we are going to announce a Company of the year for 2025. Kyle, no one does a better introduction than you. So go ahead. Why don't you get us all spiced up and ready and hot in anticipation for who is this year's early but uh, official and maybe final Company of the Year by the Security Token Show.

Speaker A: Well, her way to that is a tremendous introduction and if I can piggyback on that just for a second and walk us through the annals of history, this, this has been such a fantastic opportunity for us to cover on this show thousands of companies and articles and headlines and media over hundreds and hundreds of hours of real posted production and thousands of additional hours of research and everything to actually make this show possible. Probably 10 hours per episode for 300 episodes. Um, if I had to guess, at the very least, if not significantly more, especially when we were doing the live action with uh, three or four full time people on the job. So, um, this has been just a tremendous opportunity and we've covered some of the the largest, brightest, most successful companies in the industry with an award that I think will last the test of time. The Companies of the Year awards are written not in stone, not just on chain, but are galactic revelations of the importance of humanity. And the reality is here that the companies that have won this award will forever be enshrined with a light, with a warmth of glory that has never before been seen. And May never be seen again. The light is so strong and bright and incredibly honorable for these individual companies. And we have one more to add to this legendary collection of companies. We started all the way back in the day. Her wig and Tzero won the award and we had INX winning the award. JP Morgan wins the uh, award. Republic wins the award. Blackrock wins the award. And I think we may have one more. Or maybe not. I don't remember if I'm missing one. Um, but either way, Herwig, this is a really, really important award. So I look forward to being able to announce it with you today.

Speaker C: Well, Kyle, this is a pretty big deal. In fact, I don't think there are, are any other winners. We've been doing the show for six years, you know, so presumably five, five winners here running after it. This is a big one, the final one, one that we have to also say, hey, you know, this is not just for this week, this is for the year. And we've still got a hot four essentially months left, maybe three with the holidays and such, right? But a lot can happen, especially in crypto and this red hot RWA space. So we really have to kind of be, you know, futurists here. We have to use our foresight and predict the future and say, hey, who is absolutely going to be the company of the year for 2025? And there are a lot possibilities, aren't there, Kyle? I mean it was not an easy back and forth given that there can only be one. Was it, was it there?

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker C: Huh? It's difficult.

Speaker A: It was tough. It was tough. There were some incredible companies that did some unbelievable things this year. I mean you look at a company like Robinhood that has embraced crypto and has been doing that for a year or two now, but now is embracing tokenized stocks, is embracing private market trading and is doing so much for retail adoption. You'll get a company like that and say they had a very fair shot to win a company of the year award. Um, and I think was, ah, a very close winner. You've also got other companies, her wig, like Circle, for example, the largest US based stablecoin product, one of the more successful IPOs that have come to market and done some amazing things, um, has a really strong shout. Do you have any other honorable mentions that you think deserve a quick note before we, before we announce our winner?

Speaker C: Gosh, I mean, just anybody that crossed that billion dollar TVL mark, Centrifuge, Stoker, many, many others, uh, that I might be blanking on, but it's just A huge testament right about just how many assets are coming on chain. It's an enormous amount. It's so exciting, so many different applications and it's hard because you could look at it from an institutional perspective, right? Just look at now Fidelity, just look at how blackrock won recently. But we also have have State uh, Street moving in pretty heavily as another big asset manager. Now we know bank of America is going to launch Stable Coins. Uh so it's, it's really hard to say hey like what's the biggest thing that is going to make a lasting impact generationally forever, right? For 2025 is the company that made it happen for RWAs this year. Kyle, should we start a drum roll?

Speaker A: What do you think?

Speaker C: This is as good as our sound effects get around here. Episode 300 Company of the Year for 2025 for putting 10 over 10 billion in tokenized assets on chain. For creating an ecosystem that is licensed, licensed across from centralized to decentralized. Uh and of course with its powered by its own blockchain ecosystem under the helm of one of the pioneers of FinTech, this year's 2025 Company of the Year here just IPO'd not done yet. Now I'm done. Is of course figure Company of the Year by the security token show final winner congratulations figure.

Speaker A: This is probably the biggest news for them today of anything that's going out because Company of the year award is unrivaled in terms of their publicity. It also just so happens to be a convenient day because they did as you say just go public today on um, the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. So they are official or Nasdaq. Excuse me, um, and so they are officially a public company. They have the largest non bank HELOC lender, home equity line of credit lender. They use their own internal blockchain as you mentioned, provenance to do the tokenization. They launched a decentralized marketplace that allows people to provide liquidity and bid against rates on home equity lines of credit with which they anchored with a $25 million investment into their own decentralized tools. They are doing everything, doing it the right way. They have a regulated yield bearing stablecoin registered as a security and they have a non registered non security yield accrual based stablecoin. They have gone through every hoop, every ladder. They've done it all the right way and they've really built kind of their own full on ecosystem to make this stuff happen. And just a tremendous winner and a Philadelphia Eagles sports fan CEO. I mean come on, this is Just uh, a full 360 degree victory for figure.

Speaker C: Now I think that might have tipped

Speaker A: it over the edge.

Speaker C: Uh, there go birds. But uh, absolutely well deserved congratulations to Figure. You know the, the IPO as well is a big step forward to attracting and legitimizing this whole space. And what Figure is doing and tens of billions is just the beginning. It might be hundreds of billions very, very soon. Maybe as soon as next year. Uh, and I'm very, very excited for Figure. So with that, Kyle, that is the final episode of the Security Token Show. Huge shout out to everybody who's ever worked on this show, who's ever been interviewed on this show, whoever has helped us make this possible. To you Kyle, as my co host, uh, for everything. And I will give a shout out to uh, also our contributors by the way, like Nico, thank you for showing up today and all the others that have pulled up. Um, but company of the decade for somebody who has not exactly made company of the year because there was always just something shinier happening that year for the space. Uh, I gotta give it to Securitize Kyle. We got their opening belt right behind me for when they first launched. They were just doing amazing things. So I do want to kind of give them that shout that in the long haul here since we can't keep going. Uh, Securitize, Carlos and team, you guys are doing great, great, great things. But there could only be one winner every year for making the biggest moves. You know, try ipoing or something. I don't know, uh, with that. Ah, Kyle, any closing thoughts from your end?

Speaker A: Well look, it's uh, it's been a tremendous journey here at the stm, um, business and all of the Security Token show media that we've done. Thank you so much to all the listeners, to the people that bought our book, um, to people that co signed the very first letter that Herwig and I penned to the SEC six, seven years ago. Um, that episode one was, was collecting signatures. We got 30 or 40 signatures that we sent into the SEC and and Herwig himself was. Was credited in that document as to those changes that we all co signed together. And uh, it's been one hell of a journey and uh, it's just been a tremendous honor to do that alongside you. Herwig. I, I uh, you're a brother and such a dear friend to me. It's been a tremendous ride. Raising capital, building businesses, growing um, revenue, hiring a team, firing a team, doing it all. So it's been uh, it's been a tremendous journey and I couldn't be more thankful and humbled and honored to be a part of it. So shout out to you. Shout out to Jason for sticking it out through the long haul and everybody along the way. It's been such a great, great journey. And it's only up from here for all of you us.

Speaker C: Shout out to Jason indeed. And everybody that's helped again, make the show possible. And Kyle, building STM into a powerhouse of the RWA space. Absolutely love it. Now you're doing amazing things over at Global Settlement and beyond. Uh, again, keep up with us. We're on social media, we're on Twitter, we're on LinkedIn. Just search our names, you'll find us. Uh, and with that, everybody for one final time, go check out the RWA pod on Monday. Now just get one final time. Happy tokenizing.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Sam.

Speaker C: Um.