Every Major Correspondent Bank Will Support Stablecoin Tracks in Ten Years

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 stablecoin, and 24/7 tokenized securities.

Ferdinand's judgment is straightforward: in ten years, every major correspondent bank or peer bank will support stablecoin tracks, and it may even happen in five years; ultimately, it will just be another payment track. 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 "routing markup + token billing commission" structure of the AI economy is forming.

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

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

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

5. Fedwire clears for 22 hours a day and is offline 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 tracks, Fedwire limitations, and operational bottlenecks

Here are the takeaways from this episode:

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

The Commission Structure of the AI Economy
Stripe processes most token billing through Metronome, acquired for about $1 billion, earning approximately 2.5% commission on sold AI tokens; OpenRouter adds a markup of 5% 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 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 and even the next century.

MPP: Agents Pay Per Use for Inference
Ferdinand pointed out that OpenRouter is testing stablecoin payment endpoints with 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, without waiting several days for settlement.

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

The Real Demand for Stablecoin Card Settlement
Regarding the RAIN article on stablecoin card swipes, Ferdinand concluded that large banks lack motivation and issues; 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 pledge is beneficial for the entire ecosystem. It is not about solving problems for JPMorgan or Bank of America, and that’s okay.

Trapped Liquidity is a Real Problem
In card operations, program managers and BIN sponsors have to prepare reserves for weekend settlement delays. Using stablecoins to programmatically rebalance liquidity in nostro accounts is a very real and not fake news efficiency enhancement. Emerging markets will continue to dominate stablecoin adoption because customer experience (quick access to USD) 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, there have been challengers in retail (Revolut), brokerage (Robinhood), and commercial (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 master accounts to do dollar settlement and then optimizing global liquidity pools with stablecoins.

Two Modes of Tokenized Stocks
Robinhood's model involves SPVs holding the underlying securities, with token holders having 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-bearing U.S. tokenized stocks, with on-chain RWA market share growing to 15%, totaling about $2.8 billion in market capitalization.

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

SEC Regier New Rules
A tailored issuance system 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. The Safe Harbor allows digital assets to no longer belong to securities once the issuer stops all management work and the network is fully decentralized. Anna is concerned about acceptance: liquidity has always been a common issue in both early and late stages.

Fedwire and the Real Bottleneck
Fedwire clears for 22 hours a day and does not clear on weekends. But Ferdinand reminds us that the pain of those crazy bank deadlines (waiting until the next day after 3 PM) is usually not an issue of tracks or infrastructure but rather the entire set of organizational constraints surrounding correspondent banks. Once the technical layer is resolved, the compliance, risk control, and operational models of 24/7 will create new bottlenecks—AI may also bring the organizational level closer to 24/7.

Ferdinand:
I truly believe that in ten years, every major correspondent bank or peering bank will support stablecoins, and it may even happen in five years. These things will definitely converge; ultimately, it will just be another payment track.

Host:
The two most innovative companies in the financial services industry, both growing fastest in scale, have independently reached the same conclusion—financing AI is the biggest cross-cutting opportunity in the next decade and even the next 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 overlay new technology on top of the existing system.

Anna:
Robinhood, especially Vlad, is truly an exceptional communicator. They have the ability to accelerate people's attention and interest in the tokenized stocks market, 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 Development 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 you made it here.

You really need to come here more often; it’s always a pleasure when Simon is in the Bay Area. Also joining us today is Anna Wroblewska, welcome back to the show, she is the Chief Business Officer at Dinari. How are you?

Anna:
I’m great, thank you for having me, Simon. It’s wonderful 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 having me.

Host:
Thanks for coming on the show, brother. I’m really excited about what you’re doing at Augustus. But before we dive into today’s exciting content, I need to remind our viewers and listeners: the opinions of today’s guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views 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’re not going away. RTP, FedNow, and new payment rails are emerging all the time. 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 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 changing payment rails smoothly and at scale. Alright, this week’s headline story can only be one thing. The leaked investor letter from Stripe confirmed various details about the company, including the acquisition of OpenRouter, with Axios reporting that the deal is over $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 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, which is absolutely massive.

Before that, Stripe’s valuation had already surpassed $159 billion in February. Additionally, there are reports that they are also brewing an acquisition bid for PayPal alongside private equity firms. This is definitely big news. The Stripe Boys say the singularity has begun, and they are enjoying the tailwind. When you see a company the size of Stripe releasing news of this magnitude, what do you think? Yeah, it’s quite interesting.

Honestly, when I first heard those rumors, I thought it was a bit outrageous for them to make that acquisition, as it’s not a small one, representing about 5% dilution for them. But I do think it’s impressive how firmly they are betting on AI. 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, which may seem far from their core business, but I think they truly understand that the singularity is here and are executing accordingly.

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

So if you add inference together, 5% plus 2.5%, they now have a 7.5% cut 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 at scale. It’s one of the fastest-growing merchant categories globally.

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

I’ll elaborate on certain aspects of crypto and stablecoins later. And I think it might have 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, and the attitude was, "This is quite interesting."

Then Stripe made a founder-led bold bet—saying, "We’re going to acquire Bridge"—and that really ignited the entire stablecoin orchestration category, prompting a slew of other companies to start thinking: wait a minute, shouldn’t we be doing this too? How does this work? As a result, 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’re entering a world with many different models, and we need infrastructure to route between these models.

And I think a whole ecosystem and economy will grow around the question: how to purchase intelligence across many models and payment methods efficiently, with the right billing, the right... So we’re just getting started, but I think we’ll talk about this topic more and more on 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, Ramp announced the acquisition of router.com, this...

Ferdinand:
Yeah, I was just about to say that. How sneaky, that’s a clever move. You see Eric come out and say, "Hey, we just bought router.com, which is a cooler domain," and by the way, "we also have this business." I think that’s a pretty slick operation.

Host:
Think about it, there are two companies whose positions are practically designed to finance intelligence economics and bill for it. Ramp’s core is "We help you save money," and they excel at squeezing costs out of your business; while Stripe is more like "We help you build your entire tech stack." These two most innovative and fastest-growing scaled companies in financial services have come to the same conclusion: financing AI is the biggest cross-opportunity for the next decade, and possibly even a century.

And all those AI tokens need a way to be financed. Anna, thank you for bringing up this topic. I’d 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 going to be very interesting. Clearly—I mean, you see, I come from traditional finance, and we look at this from a financial market perspective. So this makes me think: how will this affect the development of agentic finance? When you have access to many different options, my question is always: 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, um, think about a few years down the line, or maybe 12 months, or maybe 6 months—depending on how quickly things develop. I think this is a fascinating development, a progression in this story—a story that I think all of us have been eagerly watching for quite a while.

Host:
Can we talk about two intersections related to crypto in this story? I think they relate a bit 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 the other day, calling out the folks at Merit Systems, who posted that OpenRouter has been testing an endpoint on MPP, using MPP, or machine payments protocol, to support stablecoin payments, pay-as-you-go, for purchasing 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, pay-as-you-go, rather than having to prepay and then slowly deduct.

So I can imagine that 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. Furthermore, for us stablecoin geeks, we've been talking about this for years—marketplace payouts have always been an excellent use case. So, what do you think OpenRouter does?

You pay OpenRouter, which is the merchant of record, and then it pays dozens of actual infrastructure providers that offer these inferences. So if you pay them with fiat, their operational tasks become much more complicated—they have to collect payments, aggregate them, and then 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 really looking forward to a world where you can imagine an agent purchasing inference on demand through MPP. The moment the cost of this inference is paid to OpenRouter, they can automatically route the money to the infrastructure providers using a smart contract. This way, infrastructure providers can receive money from the marketplace almost in real-time, rather than waiting several days for the funds to clear after OpenRouter collects them.

So we’ve been talking about marketplace payouts, and here we have an ultimate "intellectual marketplace" that could potentially become one of the early adopters of cross-border stablecoin marketplace payouts—I think this could be a big deal. Did you see that Brex released a study about the fastest-growing spending categories for startups and growth companies? It turns out Together AI is actually the fastest-growing.

Together AI is a service that allows you to run inferences. A startup going from signing its 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 just 5 months today. So we are truly seeing everyone moving down the tech stack—from frontier models downwards, 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, and with OpenRouter and MPP, the underlying neoclouds can get paid sooner. So how we finance this entire tech stack, how we bill and pay, is a revolution.

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

Host:

Yes, this is indeed a very fascinating field. I am particularly curious about how this financing aspect will evolve in the coming 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 be ahead in every field. You can be ahead in tokenized stocks, but you can’t be ahead in everything.

The last point I saw in that investor letter is that compared to 2023, even after this acquisition, they actually bought back more shares, and the dilution level is lower than it was three years ago. This cap table management is done quite well. I want to take everyone into the next story. I wonder if you saw that Rain published a very simple article dissecting stablecoin card swipes. It sparked quite a backlash on X, with a lot of discussion around it.

The core argument is basically: prefunding and settlement through correspondent banking networks are limited by bank operating hours. So if I’m a card issuer, I might have to set aside three to four days’ worth of funds just to cover a weekend.

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

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

Ferdinand:

I’m glad to see more public discussion, debate, and understanding about the backend of card settlements, delving into the details. I think several different concepts and viewpoints are mixed in here, but the biggest point is: if you are a large bank in the U.S., settlement is really not a big issue for you. The current system operates very well. They have little incentive 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. This is not a problem at all.

I believe the opportunity for stablecoin settlements lies in lowering the barriers to 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, thereby reducing the collateral they previously needed to post, is a very good thing for the entire ecosystem. So I think this is one of those areas where multiple viewpoints can be correct, depending on which part of the market you are looking at. We believe stablecoin settlements have 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 leverage this, but it’s not about solving the problems of JPMorgan or Bank of America, and that’s okay.

Host:

Yes, that’s fine. Not all issuers are of the same scale, but companies and capital flow parties of different sizes 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 are you hearing in your business?

Ferdinand:

First of all, I believe the trapped liquidity issue is real; I don’t think it’s fake news, right? I’ve seen it in card business. 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 that 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 transfer funds quickly, right? And I think if you look at the adoption cycle of stablecoins, it’s primarily a story of emerging markets. I think there’s a deep truth here: the same responsibility includes improving customer experience—like getting dollars that can be transferred quickly across borders—and improving the economics of underlying fintech.

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’s essentially a modernized correspondent bank.

But one of the most costly and always costly places for correspondent banks is being trapped in nostro accounts—because you have to hold these balances in different regions to support correspondent flows. And I think programmatically rebalancing this liquidity in real-time through stablecoins is a very real, not fake news, way to enhance efficiency. So I do believe that emerging markets will continue to dominate in the stablecoin space for a while, but I also think there are very real and observable efficiency gains here.

Host:

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

Anna:

Yes. I mean, at the end of the day—I think you both mentioned this—the core issue is: when funds are in flight, they do not generate productivity, right? They do not generate returns, nor are they being used for anything. So there’s a very important international story here, especially—even within companies, moving funds can be very cumbersome. I’m not from a payments background, but we do hear a lot about this. In terms of the practicality of stablecoins in other scenarios—like investment—we’ve seen a lot of interest and adoption.

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

I think that's a completely different topic, and we could dig deep into it. But in all these areas, having both dollar-denominated aspects and speed brings tremendous practicality—right? You want something, and you want it 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’re willing to wait for something.

And I do believe we will see more and more of this—at least from the consumer perspective, even in markets where this issue isn’t as severe, right?

Host:

I think that’s a great analogy and aligns perfectly with what we’ve been saying—expectations are changing. Exactly. And now you have a payment partner that operates 24/7, which I think can extend to many different types of use cases. Ferdi, I’d like to hear more about your views on correspondent banking and its current state—how you’re using stablecoins within it. You mentioned that you’re not looking to completely disintermediate and create a totally 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 the whole wholesale dollar clearing, is a fascinating industry, right? It’s really strange—take Citi’s TTS, which is Citi’s services business; Citi is probably one of the most iconic dollar clearing banks in the world. It’s truly incredible, right?

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

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

I think part of the answer lies in the wave of de novo banks we’re seeing—getting a real banking license was almost 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 through their own master accounts. I think that’s a very important factor.

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

So I think being able to unlock that portion of trapped capital in correspondent banks’ global balance sheets, making the agency model much more efficient, can be proven to be quite valuable. So I think this is precisely 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 the hottest topics in the fintech space. Ferdi, you know, it’s what you’re doing. Ten years ago, when I was in banking doing global cash management, this kind of thing was not discussed in the fintech circles. 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 segment, that franchise, is in cross-border payments, and that is...

Ferdinand:

...essentially won by sheer scale, but there’s a portion of customers who can’t benefit from this model, and I think it’s really important to serve them well. So I believe both can coexist—like the large banks mentioned earlier, they are very large and have no economic issues of scale; while that Raine article talks about those customers left behind by this model.

These customers are looking for new solutions; they indeed have locked liquidity, they want instant, 24/7 cross-border payments, and they want higher yield opportunities, while big banks previously thought they weren’t profitable or didn’t care about them at all. So newcomers can come in and capture this market.

Host:

Thank you for breaking this topic down so clearly for us. Uh, we’ll take a short pause here to hear from our sponsors, and we’ll be right back. Operating stablecoins typically means: wallets come from one provider, on-ramps come from another, and then your risk control measures have to be pieced together across these two. The Visa stablecoin platform easily solves this problem—you can mint, transfer, and manage stablecoins, connect to OpenUSD, while still acting as your own custodian, all done in the same shared environment.

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

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

Hmm, since the launch of the Robinhood chain, 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 precisely Dinari’s business, so I’m clearly the first to ask you. What do you think about this news?

Anna:

Hmm, actually, the U.S. already has a path for tokenized stocks to exist. Uh, Dinari is the first to implement this path. Uh, we are already operating in the U.S., and we actually announced this about two and a half weeks ago. Uh, I think a key point here is: it’s crucial to draw an important distinction between different tokenization models. Simon, you mentioned this earlier, right?

In Robinhood’s model, there’s an SPV (special purpose vehicle) holding these tokens—sorry, holding the securities that back these tokens—while token holders have no rights to these securities. Uh, Dinari has pioneered what the SEC calls the custodial model: token holders have ownership claims to the securities that back the token.

Uh, and then there are all the important matters that come with it: corporate actions, dividends—other companies pay dividends to their synthetic token holders, etc. So, my point is, when we see this news, our reaction is: oh, interesting. Uh, you know, we’re already doing this, and there’s 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’s a different financial instrument, right?

In that case, what you’re buying is not the securities themselves; you’re buying another instrument that represents the price of that security, along with certain rights that come with it. Uh, so it’s a different financial instrument, with different risks and rewards. Uh, you know, we’ve always loved when people talk about tokenization, especially securities tokenization—just like you pointed out, that’s our forte, uh, that’s what we do, so we enjoy the attention on this topic.

But 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’re useful for different types of purposes.

Host:

Hmm, yes, my first reaction is: Robinhood, especially Vlad, they are truly remarkable communicators. Look at the content they publish—you know, the marketing content, and Vlad’s positioning—it’s really well done. I think many companies can learn from how they communicate their vision and how they run events; they execute it very, very well. Uh, and just like 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 remain optimistic. I’m not a securities expert, and these questions will be resolved over time, but it feels like you’re starting to see the embryonic form of a retail-facing tokenized RWA market.

In the past few years, and even a year ago, discussions about tokenized RWA mostly focused on wholesale tokenized treasuries and tokenized money market funds, which, as you know, are not truly aimed at retail.

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 to products that consumers and retail investors can truly engage with and understand, like stocks. I find it interesting to see what the ultimate value proposition will look like. I know we've debated this repeatedly on the show: Is it 24/7? How important is that? Is it collateral mobility?

Now there's a new player, Robinhood Chain. Can you lock up a tokenized stock and then use it to borrow? How would that work? But I really think that any asset management company that cares about the future and the next generation of clients, the millennials and Gen Z, cannot ignore Robinhood and think, "Okay, they are pushing the entire industry in a certain direction.

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

Anna:
I completely agree. You see, attention is always a good thing, but I think what's more important is thinking about the next steps. We lay down the rails first, and then you can start putting more interesting things on top, right? So 24/7, I think that's what everyone really cares about. It can unlock some other functionalities, like lending markets, which I think is a direction everyone is looking at. You can build utility on top of these things, which is something traditional rails can't do; I think that's just a statement of fact.

The asset management industry is going to get super interesting. We actually already support 24/7. You know, obviously, in our synthetics dShares market, there's already a 24/7 market, which is super interesting. Last year, we also collaborated with S&P to create an index, a multi-asset index, which is very difficult to deploy as an ETF or similar products.

In this case, it mixes stocks and major crypto assets, and the end user only needs to buy one token, holding that token is equivalent to direct indexing into the components of that index, 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 not in a way that most customers realize, "Oh, I'm buying a tokenized stock," unless they are explicitly looking for synthetic tokens. I think the interesting things will happen where we see it with our NeoBank end users, who don't think about it from a tokenized or non-tokenized perspective at all.

What they think is: Can I get the same trade execution and the same benefits, with investment opportunities just like those sitting in the U.S.? 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 don't really know how securities clearing and settlement work, right? Most of us actually don't want to know, maybe except for those present here------

Host:
Except for those present here.

Anna:
------ right, they don't want to know how sausage is made, right? They just want to know it's 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's the ultimate long-term strategy here.

Host:
There are a few points that impress me. First, large financial institutions rarely act proactively; they usually wait until the market has grown before moving, which is a huge opportunity for disruptors, but often it's companies like Robinhood that first expand the market. Whether it's entering the stablecoin space or earlier products like 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 way to cross borders. So if I am a company primarily focused on domestic U.S. business, that is my main focus, suddenly I have a possibility for international expansion that never existed before. And look at where Robinhood is positioning its tokenization platform; a large part of it is 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 worldwide. So the default globalization potential of the U.S. capital markets and U.S. companies is a very interesting trend. We will continue to monitor this. The last news I want to discuss this week is that the SEC has proposed new crypto issuance rules.

This regulation for crypto assets, let's call it regier, is a tailored offering regime, with a 60-day comment period ahead. So we need to 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, with larger fundraising potentially reaching 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 once the issuer ceases 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 is not considered an entry step for token launches because we haven't passed the Clarity Act yet.

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

Anna:
Yes, yes. I think that's an appropriate analogy. It's 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, when I talked to people, someone asked me: Why doesn't everyone just do a token IPO or something like an ICO, instead of going through the traditional market's equity IPO? Think about it, I'm not a public company, but you want to go where the liquidity is, right?

These markets operate like this------ just like we want to find the biggest piece of water we can find. So I really want to know how the acceptance will be and what the future will look like. I think our industry is changing very quickly; I believe everyone has experienced this in the past few years. I could talk more about the policy side, but I'm 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's what interests me about this news. I think the Figure team has tried this; at least Mike Cagney has talked about it again and again, right? But I do believe liquidity has always been an issue, whether in the early or later stages. However, they have been experimenting with Figure's stock, and now they are publicly listed......

Host:
But doesn't this mean------ if I'm wrong, please correct me------ that you can issue a token that initially is not a security, or say it starts as a security and over time becomes no longer a security? So it seems the biggest demand is to allow it to enter the crypto ecosystem, trading on Uniswap like in the early days.

And most people have taken the governance token route on this issue, which we've seen in the crypto space for years, because people don't want something that belongs to securities, so they have to find a way to construct a token, but this token ends up not providing much actual value to holders. Right? So if there could be a way for the 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 great. But this is a super difficult problem to solve.

So I really want to know how clarity and rulemaking over there will evolve and whether it's possible to find that balance. Freddie, I'm still thinking about the push for tokenization to achieve 24/7. You might------ I don't know if you followed the CFTC, the Trump administration, and some crypto CEOs' press conference yesterday. What do you think about this macro push for tokenization to achieve 24/7?

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

Ferdinand:
Yes, I want to say that I completely 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 the existing rails, right? For example, we have been building this bank, and I will study some rails, like Fedwire. Fedwire settles for 22 hours a day, which is already quite good.

Typically, those crazy banking cut-off times, like 3 PM, mean you have to wait until the next day. The pain usually isn't about the rails themselves or the infrastructure, but rather the whole set of correspondent banking that wraps around it. So sometimes I do feel we need to be a bit more honest intellectually: what are the real technological limitations, the infrastructure limitations that can be solved with blockchain or any cutting-edge technology? What are actually the social and organizational limitations we've built around it?

Because I think without this analysis, we will run towards the wrong solutions. That said, for example, Fedwire doesn't settle on weekends, so even purely from an infrastructure technology 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've seen quite a few small to medium-sized financial institutions exploring how to deploy private blockchains or create a privacy zone on Tempo. We've talked about this many times, the gist being: this is a subledger of your general ledger (GL), but it happens to run 24/7, can handle your tokenized deposits, can manage your stablecoins, allowing you to operate 24/7.

But then you need a 24/7 operational model; you need to manage compliance and risk around the clock. So you see, even if you've solved 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's an attractive idea here: I do believe intelligence will make a difference here, right? And I... I think AI can indeed bring organizations closer to operating 24/7, right?

For instance, 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 run around the clock without requiring humans to be on call 24/7, right? So I think there are new paths to explore in both dimensions. But I do believe we can't rely solely on stablecoins to solve the infrastructure layer. It's an interesting point—what ways do banks have to safely and reliably use AI to operate in a manner closer to 24/7?

But there's another question: if you believe that the future world will have intelligent agents making decisions about how funds flow, it's hard to imagine this model running on infrastructure that isn't 24/7. So if you're building products for agents, wanting a banking tech stack that won't become outdated in the next five to ten years... right. It feels like another driving force pushing the system to become more flexible. It has to operate more and longer than the current tech stack. No one knows exactly when or how all this will happen.

But I think this is another driving force pushing us into a 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's what you guys are doing, Ferdinand.

Ferdinand:

Yes, I truly believe that in ten years, every major correspondent bank will support stablecoin rails, right? Maybe even in five years. I also think that's not the case today. So companies like Augustus can lead the market as both a bank and a native stablecoin player. But I believe in 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 of around-the-clock availability is on the operational side, not the payment infrastructure itself.

Host:

It usually is. 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've discussed today?

Anna:

Yes, continuing from your point— we also engage with many institutional clients. You can imagine everyone is interested in tokenization and stablecoins, all pondering how to use them. What we've 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’s an element of hype—that you have to throw everything away and put everything on the blockchain. But in fact, you don't need to discard all existing infrastructure to leverage technological advancements.

You can overlay it. That's how we build our business: whether you're a broker-dealer, a neo bank, or any type of fintech, you can overlay it on existing operations, and it will run in parallel and integrate well with existing systems. And from our experience, if you combine the two, people are more willing to adopt it, viewing it as a complementary extension of their business rather than a terrifying thing that requires them to discard all existing infrastructure.

Host:

I want to title this last segment "The Corner of Intellectual Honesty." I really love that phrase. I think that’s exactly what we aim for in this Tokenized show—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 launched their agentic payments alliance, and I’m curious to see what comes next. Kraken is also rolling out U.S. stock trading for clients in the European Economic Area, which I believe is very relevant for you, Dinari.

Thank you all for watching and listening; I really appreciate it. If you want to learn more about stock tokenization, a few weeks ago we had a great interview with Johan Kabat, the head of crypto at Robinhood, which you can find on podcast platforms or YouTube to see 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 handle is Dinari Global. You can also check out our website dinari.com—I know this sounds pretty Web 2.0, but many people are still looking. Then follow what we’re doing, and just send us a direct message. We’re always happy to build new connections, meet new people, and answer questions. I think people are absorbing information about tokenization very quickly right now, but there are still many questions in this field: how it works, what it means, and what different models exist.

We’re very happy to discuss these with everyone.

Host:

100%. Yes, exactly, fantastic.

Ferdinand:

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

Host:

Cuy's handle on X is Cuy Sheffield, and you can find us at visa.com/crypto. You can find me on various social platforms, @SimonTaylor, shouting into the void, and also finbrainfood.com, and of course tempo.xyz. If you want to see more of this show, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment. I always tell you this because it’s 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 that, you’ll get to hear more of our content. Take care, and we’ll see you next time.

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