Many see DeFi as the future of finance, and the regulated financial industry we are in today is called as 'TradFi' by the crypto world.

There are very few fortunate practitioners who play a role in bridging these two industries. In this episode of Tokenize, we speak to Sophie Bowler, Chief Compliance Officer at Zodia Custody. Sophie is certainly someone, who brings her years of experience as a compliance expert to bridge TradFi and DeFi.

Zodia are backed by Standard Chartered and bring the TradFi rigour while still staying nimble and innovative like DeFi.

In this episode, we discuss the key areas that DeFi needs to focus on, engaging with regulators and working collaboratively and the role of institutional custodians in bridging the gap between the two worlds.

In this episode of Tokenize, I sit down with two Blockchain OGs. Efi Pylarinou and Anton Golub, who have been involved in the Crypto space for a good part of a decade.

We structured this discussion such that each of us would bring our favourite three trends and one risk we are keeping a close eye on for this space.

Interestingly enough, all three of us had the same first hot trend we are excited about. And Efi stole the show with explaining why the first hot trend - BUIDL - tokenizing money markets is so significant.

Anton and I ended up playing catch up with Efi's brilliance throughout the episode! Hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoy recording this.

Yes, the approvals of the Bitcoin ETF was a major milestone for the crypto industry. But when we say Bitcoin ETF in this context, we mean the US based ETFs being approved by the SEC.

But, the crypto ETF industry has had regional leaders for years now. 3iQ are pioneers within the crypto ETF industry and have been based out of Canada.

In this episode of Tokenize, we have Greg Benhaim - Head of Funds at 3iQ talking to me about ETFs. Greg has the right mix of experience across traditional finance and cryptos and is quite close to the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystem.

We talk about Ethereum ETFs and all the innovation that is happening within traditional finance to get closer to the crypto ecosystem.

I recently joined Marinade Finance, leading their institutional growth capability. When I mentioned about it to my mom, I had to explain what Marinade did - and what crypto staking was.

I had to go back to retail banking. A retail bank is healthier with more depositors and deposits, and the bank offers an interest on these deposits. It is a cringeworthy comparison if you are a native crypto person though.

To celebrate my new job, and to explain to my own friends and family, what I was doing there, I had to do this episode with Michael Repetny. Michael, Marinade's core contributor calls crypto staking as exercising your right in a democratic set up - on a blockchain.

Did you know that if you bought a longstanding crypto like Solana or Ethereum, you could stake it and earn returns in the tokens, while also making returns as the token appreciates in value (if it does)?

Michael and I get into the details of how Proof of stake works on Solana, what staking is, different variations of staking, its relevance to traditional financial services, ETFs, restaking and MEVs (towards the end).

For years the Crypto industry has suffered from reputational issues. Despite several institutions trying to get the thumbs up from the US regulators for their Bitcoin ETFs, it was only in Jan 2024 that milestone happened.

Yet, there have been several European and Canadian ETFs that have had their regulators' approvals for years now. They have managed several million dollars of cryptos through their ETPs all these years.

I am glad to bring James Butterfill, Head of Research at Coinshares for a discussion on ETFs on Tokenize this week.

This will be the first of many ETF discussions where we expand on what ETFs are, who the key stakeholders are, how the BTC ETFs have done and what lies ahead for TradFi firms that are looking to innovate around digital assets.

It was not long ago that I was involved in the play2earn web3 gaming space

Play2Earn founders were trying to solve a difficult problem - in fact a number of them. Onboarding gamers in millions and staying sustainable in a Play to Earn game economy. It was a struggle for startups with limited resources to take on that task.

Unlike DeFi projects, gaming projects needed a number of skills from graphic designers, level designers, game strategists, economic modellers, smart contract engineers and the growth guys. There was a point in time in 2022 when I felt this was a problem for the well funded large organisations to solve.

Until I met the Honeyland team I didn't have much conviction in the space. Honeyland have not only created a gaming ecosystem in the Play2Earn style, they have also launched it to a web2 audience.

For a normal web2 gamer, the web3 infrastructure is hardly noticeable.

In this episode of Tokenize, we move away from the TradFi world, into the world of gaming. We have Corey Wright from Honeyland.

We discuss everything from building a sustainable gaming ecosystem, what went wrong in 2021 and what the learnings have been. We are just getting started, again, and this time with more hope!

What are Layer 2 Blockchains? 🎯

I recently read an article describing Layer 1 and Layer 2 Blockchains. If Layer1 Blockchain was a city, L2 chains are skyscrapers. Basically, L2s offer scale where L1s are starting to max out.

Despite being L2 chains, sometimes these Blockchains punch harder than the L1 they sat on.

Polygon developed by Polygon Labs is certainly one of them. They have been a lot more mainstream user focused than most other Blockchains.

That is demonstrated by their commitment to working with mainstream brands.

By the end of 2023 they had the following brands working with them - Nike, Starbucks, Reddit, Mastercard, Adobe, Disney, Meta, Adidas, Mercedes, and Google Cloud.

In this episode of Tokenize, I talk to Polygon's Global head of institutional Capital - Colin Butler

We talk about his efforts to bring in institutional capital into the crypto space, but don't miss the part where he expands on how Polygon is thinking of tapping into cross chain liquidity.

We live in a world of tech jargons. AI has captured the imagination of all tech geeks and futurists since the rise of ChatGPT, generative AI, LLMs, you name it.

I now use ChatGPT and Bard more than Google.

In this episode of Tokenize, I had the opportunity to talk to a very likeminded Digital assets guru - Nitin Gaur, the former head of digital assets at State Street.

Nitin is a published author and a very modest AI expert as well. We explore the world of digital assets, tokenization, and how AI is going to add to the fun ride we are on.