Transcription
With tokenized assets, everyone gives us data in different formats, in different time intervals, on different chains, and it's just a mess and a half. There are no standards, and so that's something we're trying to standardize a bit.
Out of all these assets that you are seeing day-to-day, which asset class do you feel is the loudest signal that tokenization has crossed from theory to practical, which is shouting that, "Okay, tokenization is inevitable?"
You know, it's it's just been a variety. Like I said, kind of hard to know who I can exactly share on, but what we do see at the end of the day is just business getting done. Um, people having genuine conversations, decision makers being present and active, and that's something we're really proud of and we just want to keep on growing the opportunity for. But there is one step missing still, which I would like for you to, you know, even try to break down in plain English. But what if someone wants to tokenize securities? Can you break it down into some easy explanations for the audience?
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Hey Jason, nice to have you today at What Are You Tokenizing? How are you doing?
Doing well. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Herman, I'm really glad to connect with you and I know the wealth of experience that you bring and the kind of work that you have been doing. I would love for the audience to understand. But before we start, where are you calling from today?
Yeah. Uh, usually we're based out of Miami. I'm in Chicago right now. So, slightly colder.
Amazing. Amazing. So Justin, obviously I went through your profile. I saw the work that you have been doing in STM and you know, spearheading the world's largest Ko token data hub. That's that's amazing. But before I get into the details of what you are doing right now and the kind of impact that you are creating in the tokenization world and a lot of curious questions that I have in my mind, I would love for you to share a brief intro about yourself and your past experiences with our audience.
More than happy to. Yeah. So, I started out really in consulting, helping different businesses from early stage figure out maybe their business plans or reviewing it, see what fits best. Um, and then we had established businesses as well that needed to pivot a little bit, maybe something wasn't working. And so, it was really cool to have an experience seeing businesses from across different industries. Did about 50 to 100 of those. Um, and then shifted over to do wealth management at a bank. Uh, and at the same time, I was also, you know, learning the tokenization space before just right before the bank, I had started also helping out at STM uh.co and learning, like I said, tokenization and kind of how it applies. So, uh, yeah, think of it as, you know, consulting, banking, and then a full-time STM.
Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. So, I'm sure when when you were consulting, there might have been a lot of uh, great use cases that you might have come across and this is something that's now coming in trend. You know, people who have consulted companies before, they are only helping them transition to Web3 because those people understand the nuances of those industries and they are better able to guide those traditional industries into the Web3 realm. So, amazing. You know, while we are on that topic, so I know, you know, you have been working in the Wall Street, Wall Street wealth management, that's a great industry, I'll say. Many people stay there for their lifetime, but you shifted towards tokenization, bringing capital on-chain. What was that moment when you decided to, you know, shift from Wall Street towards tokenization? What convinced you?
Great question. Yeah, I mean, it's uh, honestly, it was just how hard it was for to handle some clients' requests, honestly, especially when they want to invest into alternatives or even just rebalancing portfolios has a lot of steps involved. Um, and as I was learning to organization, how fast the atomic swaps happen or how fast you can move an asset and automatically change the ownership, that really sparked a light in me. I was like, "Okay, there's no way where this technology does not apply to traditional capital markets." And granted, back then it was 2020, 2021 maybe, uh, you know, when I decided to make that switch. And so, uh, it was, I don't know, it was a leap of faith, if you will, but I'm glad that I did. I got proven right a few years later when uh, JP Morgan and Apollo came out with their uh, Project Guardian initiative and proving that you can have, you know, if you have 100,000 portfolios that you have to rebalance uh, for your clients, it'll take about 3,000 steps. Now with tokenization, they really brought it down to a few clicks of a button, uh, which is phenomenal. Cash drag is also reduced as well because of that, which allows more capital to be deployed and earn yield and so forth. Um, and happy to give more details, but like I said, it was just that "aha" moment. I was like, "Yes, this this has to happen," and thank God it did and got proven right later on.
Definitely. I think most of us that chose this industry, uh, we are in this era of ours now, you know, we we can see that, okay, we have been proven right. It was a good decision. It was a good leap of faith, as you rightly said. Uh, I started back in 2019 as just a developer in Web3, and at that time, the city that I am in, they had no experience, no understanding of what blockchain is. And I know it's a cliché, but it actually was something I faced. Like whenever I said, "I want to learn blockchain and get into blockchain," people used to say, "Don't gamble with Bitcoin." That that was something I faced regularly. Now people use it too often as a phrase to educate people, but I actually faced that a lot. And I know that, you know, how difficult it is to take a leap of faith, especially when a person like you is already working in Wall Street, and you know what's a dream for most people. You're already working there, but still take that leap of faith. That's commendable, really. And honestly, I just want to give a quick shout out on that point to my CEO, Hurwig, because he started this back in 2017, even before, you know, I joined Dan, right? Like he started this whole thing, and security token advisor, security token market consulting, uh, you know, one of the first security token offerings. It's just even more vision there.
100%. We we had a separate uh discussion with her as well, and I got to, you know, know about that experience. I'm I'm really glad that, you know, uh, he, you, share that kind of vision, and it's a strong team building STM. No wonder is doing wonders in the market, right? So, amazing, amazing. And one thing that you mentioned really struck me, JP Morgan, you know, building assets on-chain. I think it's too fresh of a news. Just 1 hour before our podcast, I uh, saw another news that, you know, JP Morgan has finally decided to shift everything on-chain as well. They have done their pilots and they're now planning. So, great times ahead. But so, I understand Wall Street was just one part of your experience. You also had some other amazing, you know, work experiences that would have and are currently putting a lot of value into what you are doing in the tokenized market. I'm specifically hinting towards your days at Bank of America. So again, if it's something that you can answer openly, what were the pain points that you saw in the archaic system, so to say, that most, you know, investors and most uh, family offices and other such clients would look into when they want to explore tokenization? What were those pain points which makes people move towards tokenization, please?
Yeah, I mean, when I was at the bank, I mean, it wasn't really so much the investors themselves seeing these pain points. It was really the back and middle office of of the bank handling investment requests. So, for example, you, and granted, just for more context, I was a financial advisor, so really a little bit more on the client-facing side and prospecting and stuff like that, but you do have the side of the business that does have to execute the actual trades and whatnot. And so, just conversing with them and so forth. But to give you kind of paint a picture, if you will, you know, if you want to do a transfer, sometimes you have to collect information from investors and it's a lot of, or or other parts of the bank, and it's a lot of back and forth, a lot of emails, you're waiting on people. It could take weeks to complete a transfer, which is ridiculous. Um, and again, some of it compliance, I understand, but again, a lot of it just can be streamlined. And just access to information, not to mention just the record of ownership, of course, can be a lot faster. And that's a lot of what we see in tokenization today. But yeah, it was very time-consuming, very hands-on. Some banks, from, you know, what I know, you know, just have even different segments of the bank that don't even talk to each other very well, which is a whole other problem, right? And so that's just access of information, data integrity, because what we also know is that a lot of banks just run on Excel spreadsheets, honestly. A lot of institutions are still on Excels and and PDFs. And it's ridiculous because you think about the quadrillions of dollars or worth of assets that live on, just exist, right, worldwide. And to think that the financial rails that they run on are so old and and are susceptible to to mistakes is just insane. So that's why blockchain makes a lot of sense. And now, you know, fast forward years, where to your to answer your question on maybe investors and whatnot and and more the client side. Um, obviously, you know, to your point, you know, Bitcoin is the first thing that people kind of started understanding and people started wanting exposure, which is why now you see the crypto, Bitcoin, you know, the Bitcoin spy ETFs and and the other sorts, right, that have a financial wrapper that they're used to that also gives exposure to that. And of course, we're seeing that evolve more where people also want just direct ownership as well. But that's just one example.
No, absolutely. And and as you rightly said, that's just one example. When you were saying these things and mentioning, you know, people are still maintaining Excel sheets, there's still the financial industry which is still a way ahead of other industries. What I'm uh, talking about is a couple of years back, I was helping an AgriTech client who was building a blockchain-based solution for agriculture commodities. And I brought them to a small city in Punjab, which is in North India. And we went to the government department where this uh, commodity trade used to happen, where, you know, the procurement happened. They are not even using Excel sheets, they're still using handwritten databases. And that was a small city, right? So, a lot of India has digitalized already, right? It's it's reached in many places. And this was a small city, maybe a Tier 3, Tier 4 city, right? But the fact is that they were still writing it down every day. It's so easy to manipulate. Like obviously, Excels are also easy to manipulate, but this is another level of manipulation that can happen here, right? And makes one wonder what kind of transformation we are expecting, especially from tokenization. So, as you rightly said, this was just one example, many such assets that are there. And that brings me to my next question as well. So, I know I saw security, security token markets, and what they are doing. It's almost 70 billion of market cap that you are tracking, which is huge, which is not easy at all, and across 800 plus tokenized assets. Amazing. Again, kudos to that. So, I'm sure there's a lot of algorithm working in the backend. But out of all these assets that you are seeing day-to-day, which asset class do you feel is the loudest signal that tokenization has crossed from theory to practical? Right. Which which is shouting that, "Okay, tokenization is inevitable?"
Yeah. And I I think, I mean, it's no secret at this point that stablecoins have really proven the model here. It's tokenized cash at the end of the day, followed by tokenized treasury products like your liquidity funds and and treasury funds. You know, we've seen BlackRock's Fiddler on OSG, which today announced they were did a first transaction with JP Morgan's Kexus. Uh, which is interesting that we brought that up earlier, I think.
Yep. Yep. So, but but anyways, these two, I think, are the the headliners right now because again, they're they're not as sexy as other asset classes because, you know, they're standard 4 to 5% yield, etc. But what it does is that, A, it's helped institutions get their hands dirty and and get, you know, hands-on with tokenization with blockchain and in a low-risk type asset. But the other reason too is because, you know, it stablecoins are backed a lot of times by treasuries, right? And so if you can have the treasuries also on-chain, it provides a lot more transparency and accessibility to understand, you know, what's backing these assets and and the larger picture of what we're going towards. Tokenizing is just the first part. It's the easy part, actually. What else can you do with it aside from the rest of the value chain that we talked about earlier with back and middle office? You also can add value and utility to some of these assets. So, for example, you're seeing tokenized treasuries and products like that. For example, like Bidd being used for posting margin on a derivatives trade. And it's like, "Great, that's that's awesome." Like, why would you want to liquidate out of a money market fund, post the cash margin, then get it back and put it back into the money market fund? A, that takes time. B, you're losing yield in that time frame where you could just be earning the yield and using it for its purpose in the meantime. So that's just again, one example of why you're adding utility. And so to see this also growing and expand to other asset classes, especially of the risk curve, it's only going to keep growing from there. But to answer your question, I think stablecoins and yield coins are probably the the two headliners right now and front runners of like finding product-market fit.
Absolutely. And and, you know, this this also makes a lot of sense because in the past, we have seen Tether uh, facing these kind of SEC, you know, uh, challenges that they have to prove their reserves. And at the same time, when uh, EUL, you know, compliance kicks in and they are uh, removing stablecoins which cannot prove their reserves. This this is something that actually adds value to the whole ecosystem. It builds more trust and transparency, which adds on to uh, more use cases, as you rightly mentioned. And really amazing to see that insight. So, I believe that the audience will definitely be able to understand how this is moving forward. But there is one step missing still, which I would like for you to, you know, even try to break down in plain English. I know it's very difficult. There are a lot of jargon and a lot of complexities involved. But what if someone wants to tokenize securities? Can you break it down into some easy explanations for the audience?
Yeah, I mean, the first thing to remember is that tokenizing an asset is not going to be a magic wand and all of a sudden investors show up. Like, no, at the end of the day, these are still, to your point, securities. It's still backed by the underlying asset. And so you have to treat it as such. You know, they are securities, right? So, first and foremost is structure and legal. You want to make sure if you're in the US, especially, you want to make sure you're filing the right exemptions or doing a full registration. We've seen both. But figuring out what that structure is and how creative you want to get with the token, whether it's, you know, revenue share, profit share after a certain amount, um, if you want things to fully live on-chain, you want connected data to it, whatever the case is, but figuring out that structure. And then, of course, it's selecting the right people to work with. As I mentioned, anyone can really tokenize. It's not that hard. What you might want to look for in a service provider is, well, what other pieces of the puzzle do they fulfill? And by that, I mean, are they, at least in the US, but again, as it relates to other jurisdictions as well, are they licensed as either a transfer agent, broker-dealer, both, whatever you may need? Again, not legal advice, consult your lawyers. But are they licensed? Can they effectively issue these tokens and also re-issue them back if needed? You know, say an investor loses their keys to their wallet. Unlike crypto, where you're likely going to just lose it all, in securities, you still want to have that record of ownership to be able to burn those tokens, re-issue them over to the to the new wallet of that investor, for example. So, you want to have the right players in place. But, of course, on the flip side, what kind of investors are you targeting? Are you targeting retail? Are you targeting accredited? Both? Do you want the whole tokenization process to um, live under your brand and you're in the back end, you're kind of using other service providers essentially white-labeling, or do you not care and you'd rather have just everything under one roof, um, and and it's okay that it's on that service provider's, you know, webpage and platform regardless, and maybe they have value-adds of distribution and so forth. So, again, all questions that every issuer has to answer. We help a lot of people do that through Security Token Advisors, but really, it's thinking about the intricacies there and and who works well with each other and so forth. To summarize it up, it's legal and structuring. It's selecting the right people to work with, and then of course, your go-to-market strategy. You want to market these offerings again within legal bounds and and whatever restrictions apply. Uh, but figuring out the right lingo uh to to use. And I think something that a lot of people mistakenly do is they really focus on blockchain and the technology and it's like ERC whatever. It's like, "No, that's way too much information." Think about the investor, and this goes back to again the point of it's the underlying asset. So, tell the investor what it is they're investing into. Maybe highlight the benefits that they're going to get, like whether it's liquidity or collateral, man, whatever it is. Highlight the benefits, but you don't necessarily have to go right into the technicals. That's too much information. At the end of the day, the investor just needs to know what they're investing into and how easy it is to do.
Exactly. And that's the biggest mistake that's been going around in the market, right? So if I invest in let's say Coinbase today, I don't have to know what Coinbase is doing on the back end, right? I just have to know it's secure and something that I can access easily if I'm just a normal investor and normal client for them, right? And similarly, that's the mistake that people have been doing in blockchain, trying to explain too much into tokenization. But I think that fits really well with your description, and this is the kind of information we don't get through ChatGPT, right? That's where actual people and actual human beings with experience need to be there because I I can relate from an experience. Uh, I was helping a client tokenize some assets. We went to a few service providers, and then later on, we found out that we haven't even considered a proper KYC procedure, which is going to cost a lot if you're not doing it in-house. Then we have to pay so much in KYC that we are not able to generate enough profit to sustain that business. So many details in inside the process. Seems easier, but the journey is definitely very difficult. Not difficult, I'll say it takes a lot of time and needs the right guidance, as you rightly mentioned with the three points. Amazing. So this brings me to the next question and relates very well. So I know for a fact what STM has been doing and what, you know, the kind of services that they've been giving to the RWA community with the DAO and all the decentralized governance as well. But still, I would like for you to share a brief about what's the difference or what's the USP that STM brings to people which, you know, people cannot find on let's say Bloomberg or CoinMarketCap? What's the unique vantage point that you have?
Yeah, it's it's it's multiple. And to your point, by the way, you know, it makes total sense why you kind of need that guiding hand along the way. Um, I think that's also reflective in stmm.co as a platform to to answer your question, right? Because you're going to find some of those assets also tracked on, you know, your Bloombergs now, and you start seeing it a little bit more on the high-profile assets. But really, what sets STML apart is that we do track public blockchain-issued assets, like things on Ethereum, Solana, anything like that. But we also provide visibility into asset-level data, reference-level data, right? So finding the right filings, making sure that if there's ratings, linking linking out to them, if there's something to do with like a piece of real estate in the latest appraisal or the NAV of a fund, you can see those on stmm.co as well. But the other side to it too is is private permission blockchains and data that and assets that are tokenized there. I think a lot of people kind of oversee those a little bit because there's no direct visibility into them. Those are relationships that we're growing continuously and starting to talk about integrations with some of these institutions to provide visibility. And by that, I mean, for example, you know, JP Morgan Kexus, right, has and others, you know, have been some go-to examples, but no one has really been able to see directly into what's going on. And that's something that we want to do uh for the community. So onboarding those assets to stm.co. But for now, in the meantime, what you can see is about $30 billion worth of tokenized debt, which has been largely institutional, you know, been institutionally issued. And so, you know, maybe we're not directly plugged in, but what you can see is at least you can see how much was issued, who was involved, the terms of the bond, stuff like that. And just be aware that that exists. And of course, as we make those integrations, you can go ahead and see more details. But, you know, it's a starting point. And so, STM, really, we're tracking pretty much every asset class under the sun. If it's an investable asset that's on-chain, we track it. And so, we just try to provide as much visibility for our users as as well.
Amazing. And and, you know, when you were saying all this, something just came to my mind. This is what actually started this decentralized moment, right? When we go back to 2008 and the economic crisis and all the overused examples. This is exactly what was needed, and where we are now. I think that's where it was meant to be, that we could track the assets. We could see where they are being used, rather than just being inflated as an asset. And without going much into detailing that, but so, as you mentioned, you are tracking all these assets, while it's astonishing to see you are tracking so many assets across different chains, how do you manage that? I can't imagine even algorithms, you know, we keep on building new algorithms. What's actually happening behind the hood? Like, uh, let's say if I have to pinpoint the question, what's the, you know, uh, like I'm not even able to pinpoint the question as well here. So, how do you manage these assets, please?
Yeah, it's a great question. Um, there's there's a lot that goes into it. We have multiple data sources that we plug into or extract from, you know, the multi-chain, you know, we we work with aggregators and and ourselves to, you know, you know, plugging into them. I think, but taking a step back though, just to give some context, you know, the reason why public assets, public equities are so easy to track is like they're all standardized. The data is pretty standardized at this point, so kind of easy for anyone to kind of get visibility into that. Whereas with tokenized assets, everyone gives us data in different formats, in different time intervals, on different chains, and it's just a mess and a half.
Different standards. Yeah.
There are no standards. And so that's something we're trying to standardize a bit. But in the meantime, as we onboard them, we do try to clean it up as much as possible before we display it on the front end of the of the of the website. And so to to answer to kind of elaborate on the different sources, we have, of course, the blockchain that we, you know, plug into, of course, and extract from. Then you have the issuer themselves, if we want to interact with them and and verify some information or make sure that we get the details right on the offering, as well as the platform that the the issuance is hosted on or traded on. So it's the platforms, the issuers, the blockchains, looking at the SEC Edgar database and and see if the filing is there, and if it is, if we can link out to it. Um, eventually, we'll be plugging into a lot more DeFi as well, uh, such as vaults and so forth, because we also believe that those are going to be big uh, in in the tokenization space, and there's valuable data there on how these assets are being used. But, you know, it's it's just a grind, man. It's it's a grind of of aggregation, of understanding the intricacies. Not every token is created equal. So we want to make sure that again, we're standardizing that as much as possible and cleaning it up so that when you see it on st.co, then it's standardized. You're good to go.
Amazing. Amazing. That's definitely huge. Uh, that's the kind of work that makes a company big, and I'm sure that's the core behind why CM is doing such great work. And while you were mentioning this, definitely a huge part of this is the education that you have been doing, educating people about the different standards. When I say different standards, I automatically mean that no standards are there. Everyone has their own standard to follow, and it becomes too difficult to aggregate the data. And I could see your uh, challenges that you face. Definitely, I think that's why you have these initiatives, the newsletter that you have, the podcast that you are doing, and the events that you are doing to educate people about tokenization, bring them at a single place, and help them align towards a common goal. But while I was astonished to see the newsletter that you guys are doing, I had one question in mind. What's the content angle that resonates most with the uh, traditional finance audience versus a crypto-native one? Because when you're educating, you're educating two different people, one who are not ready to adopt the Excel sheet ones that you rightly mentioned, and the others who have their own standards, too self-righteous, too difficult to collaborate, and sometimes so. What's the content piece that works well with both of them?
Yeah, it it varies. You know, our our audience, you're right, it's both retail and institutional and everyone in between. Um, I think that for the retail people, it's it's probably going to be their "What's Dripping," which is our more kind of like Morning Brew like uh newsletter. A little bit more playful, you'll find some memes or GIFs in there, trying to break down the concept in easy-to-understand pieces. Um, and and we maybe it's a little bit more on the basic side, but at least people are understanding at least the concept of what happened, and we highlight a couple pieces of news there. Um, and a couple other updates. And then we have our Security Token Prime newsletter, which is maybe for your middle people where they understand tokenization. Now, we give a little bit more commentary and insight into again, pieces of news, but from a more advanced perspective. Um, and thoughts on, you know, what it means for the market, etc. We also highlight some some data insights in there as well, just from the data that we see of whatever happened that week. Um, along with our Security Token Show, which gets viewed by yes, retail, it's on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple Music, Spotify, wherever you want us to find it, but also, you know, heads of innovation at, you know, FINRA and other large names and so forth that that have told us that they enjoy the podcast and have been watching it for years, and at least it's their their rundown on what happened that week. But then for the institutional people, the the other end of the spectrum, it's probably going to be reports, uh, where we go a little a lot more in-depth, actually, into, yes, we use the data that we have, obviously, but we also do qualitative information and and research, again, figuring out, you know, if it's, if it's a larger report like the "State of Security Tokens" report, which encompasses basically the whole industry, it's going to be talking about, you know, big movements, who's working well together, where we see the market moving, etc. Or we have other reports that are more asset-class specific, like a real estate report, diving really into, again, it's not just residential or commercial real estate's, bringing it down a little bit more, different types, mortgage-backed securities, a bunch of other stuff, right, that's going on and what activity is happening there. So institutionals, I think, and naturally so, they're they're already used to reading larger reports, so that's that's maybe what they gravitate gravitate towards a little bit more.
Summarize what you're saying, while the industry is new, the ways to adoption are old-school ways that have been going on for so long. There's nothing new that people have to do to uh, transform to evolve from their industry, but just educate themselves. These are the kind of reports we have been using to educate ourselves and grow in the industry, right? When when we used to see reports by Deloitte, KPMG, and other such companies, that's a similar model that we are working with now. More reports, more the education, and more the adoption eventually, right? So, makes perfect sense. So, you know, keep considering these traditional moves that are helping the adoption of this latest technology and emerging tech. Uh, there is one other thing that you have been doing, which is something that traditional industries also do, but Web3 has been doing very differently. I'm talking about the conference structure. Web3 conferences, while stemming from the traditional conference criteria, but they have a different vibe altogether. And I know that STM has been doing Tokenize This, which has become its flagship conference. Contrary to common belief that conferences are just for networking or pitching your products and development ideas to investors and then getting marketing projects. What is the kind of standout success story that you can share with our audience? Like maybe a kind of issuer, investor, or partner that emerged from any of the conference? Like any example that can motivate the audience to treat conferences as conferences and not a party event.
Yeah, 100%. I think, well, first of all, crypto-native conferences are for sure a blast. They're very fun, but you're also inviting a lot of again, people that maybe aren't as serious about conducting business. They're they're there for the fun or um, of course, maybe they're they're fanning over, you know, certain speakers, which is always great. You want to, you know, listen to them, of course, and learn from them. And then you have the opposite end where it's very institutional and it's just, again, I think everyone's aware what that looks like. For us, really, what we're trying to build is an environment where, you know, and tokenization stemmed really from going to other conferences and realizing that there's no real concentration of tokenization content. You have maybe one or two, three panels max at other conferences, but nothing really getting into it. And so we wanted to build something where the tokenization industry can come into, and finance professionals and crypto natives to learn, dive deep, and the topics reflect that. Day one tends to be a lot more retail-friendly. You're covering the blockchains, you're covering DeFi vaults, your, you know, the some of the fun stuff. And then day two is a lot more institutional, talking about cost efficiencies, constant operational efficiencies, right? Um, proofs of concept or in-production use cases as well, which is always great. But at the end of the day, what really what Tokenize This is structured to do is to to conduct business. We invite heavy hitters. We invite people that are quality people, that are decision makers. You're no longer waiting in line uh of 15 people to talk to. They're right there. They're available. They want to learn not and network with each other, and not just institution to institution, but also to retail-friendly uh approaches as well, because of course, they would they want to learn from, you know, boots on the ground. To answer your question on success stories, I mean, we we've heard of some for sure. Um, not sure which of them I'm allowed to share on, but I'll give an example without the names, maybe. So, for example, we had an issuer that found the issuance platform that they wanted to go with at Tokenize This 2024. A year later, we saw them actually go live. So, it was like, "Oh, fantastic." And, you know, granted, a year later, because we there's, you know, some missing stuff and whatnot. But, nonetheless, that happened. That connection happened. An investment from one attendee into another company, uh, also happened. Uh, let's see what else. We've seen even just institutions partnering up a bit more that told us like, "Hey, we were kind of waiting to to book this call for a few weeks from now and like and then the follow-up, and we're like, "Nah, we can just hammer it out right now in 15 minutes and and call it a day," because they're already they're all there. And so, you know, it's it's just been a variety. Like I said, kind of hard to know who I can exactly share on, but what we do see at the end of the day is just business getting done. Uh, people having genuine conversations, decision makers being present and active, and that's something we're really proud of and we just want to keep on growing the opportunity for.
Amazing. And and I I think that aligns perfectly with what you are building with the RWA DAO structure. This is actual community work that you are doing, right? Even if it's not directly linked with STM, it's helping the industry move forward by making them collaborate in a more constructive environment, having the same. And you rightly mentioned, many conferences happen, RWA is obviously a theme in most of the conferences, but it's never a highlight. You don't actually get the quality connections or content that you need. And if you're focused towards RWA, and this Tokenize This conference is definitely one place. By the way, where are you having this conferences for the last how many years?
Yeah, 2023, we started it in virtual only. We just wanted to prove that we can put a good agenda together and that people will show up. So 2023 was virtual through Zoom Events. Um, and then 2024, we held it in Miami. That's where the company is based. And so just a little bit easier for us logistically and whatnot. Again, not to prove that we can host an in-person collaborative environment. We took lessons from that, but we ultimately realized, A, this year is really exploding with institutionals now understanding this technology, and B, we got feedback in the past, especially from people based out of New York that were like, "Hey," or or elsewhere that were like, "Yeah, we wanted to go, but Miami was just kind of out of reach or whatnot." So we figured, you know, let's move everything to New York. So Tokenize This was at the Glass House this past year, 2025 had a great turnout. A lot more institutions, of course, showed up. A little easier for them to take the subway or walk on over. Uh, and I think that that's where we're headed for next year. We want to I think repeat New York because it's just at the end of the day, kind of the global hub of finance, especially in the US. Um, who knows, maybe we explore doing it outside of the US as well. Another addition of tokenization.
I was going to ask that. Yeah, I was going to ask any plans for Token 2049? Because all of us, we have been traveling a lot to 2049, especially the Singapore edition. I've been attending it for the last uh, 3 years, and it's amazing the kind of people I see there. Obviously, it's being, it's very overcrowded these days. Too many people in crypto, almost hard to believe. But this is what we were working for, right? So, I think it has its pros and cons. But definitely, if you do plan to do anything in Token 2049 or something in the Asian continent, count me in. I'll be there.
Yeah. No, for us, I mean, and that's something that people have brought up too, is like linking up with other conferences like Token 2049 and others. And while we see value in it because a lot of people are already there and whatnot, at the end of the day, what we don't want is for Tokenize This to be seen as a side event or whatnot. It's like, "No, it's its own standalone conference because it goes so in-depth." To answer to answer that though, we are, you know, Dubai might be one of the locations. It could be somewhere in Europe. It could be somewhere, you know, London, maybe. We'll have to stay tuned and find out.
Who knows, maybe the Token 2049 team had a tokenization mindset only. That's why they named it at Token, not Crypto or Web349. Who knows? Know, eventually it also becomes a good partner for that. But yes, I totally understand that uh, the whole essence of the event is to keep tokenization separate as a big industry that it's becoming with players like Apollo coming in and JP Morgan coming in. It's definitely where institutions are moving and the world is moving. And uh, definitely makes sense. So, you know, taking a step back, while we considering the industry as a whole and discussing different possible assets that are there that are being tokenized, I know I saw your, you know, experience and that you have evaluated 100 plus businesses in prior consulting roles. So, what traditional industry verticals in your experience do you predict will have the next big wave in tokenized assets?
Yeah, I think now that as retail is starting to pick up on this, first, they're picking it up through maybe RWA-related utility and governance tokens, but they're also starting to understand the actual asset, the tokenized securities part of it. So with that in mind, I think the industries that will do best will probably be anyone that has a strong fan base or member base. So, for example, Pressman Films did a tokenization on Republic, where and Pressman Film is the one that behind like American Psycho and also other big movies, right? And they were essentially tokenizing three existing IPs and three new ones, all together packaged. Obviously, if you've seen American Psycho and you're a fan and you believe in the people behind it, you're probably going to be likely to invest, right? Um, we've also seen Watford FC out, you know, also, you know, they're they're a soccer club, all or football club, uh, also tokenized, right? So again, it's fan-based. Those are loyal fans that want to to jump in and have a piece of ownership there. So I think anything like that, or if you're an existing company that's maybe not necessarily fans, but you have loyal customers that you can then offer potential perks to as an owner, right, a part owner, verify on-chain that they're part owner. Maybe they get a discount on something or renew subscriptions, I don't know. But anything like that, I think will be the probably the most applicable for tokenization right now, at least now that again, retail is starting to pick up on it. And then over time, of course, other assets will also make their way on-chain. They all have their value proposition as to why. I think, you know, but I'm gearing my answer towards maybe what's going to be the most eye-catching and attractive to retail investors.
When I uh, think back on the use cases that I've seen, you know, even though it wasn't a success, but Starbucks trying to tokenize their loyalty program and other such players tokenizing their loyalty programs and now exploring blockchain for loyalty programs. That makes sense because that's the most loyal customers that you have, and you're trying to engage them on a regular basis and manage it at scale, which is not easy with traditional systems. Many systems have failed, like Pepsi's system and American Express and other travel industry-related tokens as well. They were not able to fulfill that scale of customer base, and blockchain might be the answer. Makes sense what you are saying. And I believe one other uh, good aspect of this whole conversation is that when you mention apart from, you know, loyal customer base, where the most volume is stablecoins, for example, global payments. That's a very obvious use case of tokenization, if people don't think about it, right? And I think that's the most active one that's been getting adoption. People have been calling 2025 as the year of tokenization, like stablecoins as well. More people are adopting it day by day. And I can't remember, there was some news today as well of stablecoins being accepted as a payment method in some big company. Every day there's news. So that's definitely the most fan base or the most customer base. That's where the magic lies for tokenization. Amazing. Jason, coming to the next question, uh, I was uh, wondering, you know, uh, what, you know, kind of initiatives that STM is might excite the audience in the near future? Obviously, we have seen a lot of things till now and, you know, the prediction for the near future. But what are something that you can share with the audience that they should keep an eye out? They should track what STM is doing. Any tool, dataset, partnership? What what is something that might excite the audience?
Uh, yeah, you know, a variety of things for sure. The first one is, you know, stmm.co. We launched it in beta uh, back in a month ago, you know, at Tokenize This. Uh, market.com is still live. That's our, you know, for reference if anyone wants to go check that out. That's where everything is available and you can plug in as we migrate everything over. But I would say keep an eye on stmm.co though, because that's where we're moving to. It's a brand new interface with a lot more features and tools coming to use soon. Whether it's the preset tabs where you can easily filter out, you know, different ecosystems or charts that you'll eventually be able to customize yourself, or eventually have portfolio trackers and a bunch of other things I can't even share yet. So, but there's going to be a lot of innovation happening and and tools, like I said, for the users on stmm.co to really get a full picture, a customized picture of, you know, what their holdings are, what their assets are, and so forth, and and what they want to see. We also have the RWA Foundation uh that we've uh managed as well, which is essentially, well, as the name implies, a foundation for the RWA industry. And so you'll see our 30 plus partners, you know, starting to work together on solving some real-world problems, as well as for the individual members, you can join us on Telegram. There's going to be a DAO, the Wally DAO, that will also be coming soon and reaching TGE. We did share that it will be on Solana with our partners at Work and so forth. So keep an eye on Wally DAO as well, a little bit more for the crypto natives. And Wally Fest will be happening later this year in Miami. So more details to come there.
Amazing. You know, look, definitely I'm planning to join Wally soon. Uh, there is one interesting tokenization use case that I'm working on with one of the top cooperative societies in India. It's the third largest cooperative society in India, and we are planning to build a tokenization of uh, the produce that they capture, as well as the society that they have, tokenize good behavior, your loyalty points, and all of that. So I'm intending
to join Wallet House soon as soon as that thing comes up, you know, I figure it out in terms of details. But so stmm.co definitely is a place for people to check out. But let's say if you have to keep an eye out for the news, which is the first platform that you use to announce such kind of news, it's the newsletter, the event, conference, the podcast, or some PR. What do you use first?
Well, it depends on which news you're referring to because it depends on the time of the week. You know, Mondays is uh our our newsletter, Security Token Prime Insights, where we cover basically everything from the past week and anything that might have been mentioned over the weekend. Uh so that's be your freshest there. Uh then you have What's Dripping on Wednesdays, which will highlight something from early that week. You know, we just dropped one today, so we covered news that came out yesterday, right? That's as fresh as it'll probably get from one of our publications. Aside from, of course, follow us on X and and and LinkedIn. Um, and then last but not least, of course, the Security Token Show, which is the culmination of all news that happened that week, commentary, interviews as well, featuring some heavy hitters and and people building in the space. So, like I said, it depends on when that piece of news came out and and how recent you want to have it. So, trying to follow all of them. So whichever day of the week you are seeing, there's some uh way to get the best news of RWA out there from STM, and you just have to be all omnipresent, I'll say, in the ecosystem.
>> Exactly right.
>> Perfect. Great. So uh I was really glad to have you today at the podcast, Jason. While we are getting towards the end of the podcast, there is one last question that I have and uh, you know, it's kind of a uh two questions converted into one. While there are many CFOs that I've been working with for different purposes, there is always one question that stands out. How exactly do we get into tokenization? Why we should consider it? Right? And while I know the answer is not that simple, even if we try to put it in one single paragraph, it still won't quench your thirst. What is the best resource out there that you would recommend to such CFOs or financial executives who are curious about blockchain and curious about, you know, tokenization for their digital assets? Any book, podcast, any newsletter besides STM, of course. So what's the best resource you would recommend?
>> Great question. Yeah. Um, well, of course, uh, do have to give a slight shout out though to my partners that wrote uh Blockchain Explained. It's a book that kind of just explains it. Uh, it's on Amazon. But aside from that, uh, you're asking for other sources. Uh, there are great podcasts out there. Banklist does a phenomenal job of having great speakers on there and kind of diving into the weeds. Our Shin also has her Unchained uh podcast that has been going on for a while now. I'm sure people will subscribe to you as well. Uh, especially as you bring on even more guests, right? And then last but not least on the newsletter side, uh, I would say maybe like Crypto for Advisors that Coindesk does. They always have, and that's specifically for like financial advisors and types. So talking about maybe new trends, whether it's crypto or tokenization, we see both topics getting hit on again, how it relates to that. There's also an Ask an Expert section where they have some quick Q&A in there that could answer some of the questions that CFOs or RAAS might have. So, yeah, those are kind of the main recommendations.
>> Amazing. Amazing. That that I think covers a lot of good news outlets or places to connect. So again, thank you so much, Jason, for picking out the time today. I I think this this was great. Uh, the insights that you shared really will help a lot of people listening to this podcast. Just to uh clarify, you know, we have a lot of young audience and a good mix of Web2 audience as well. That's uh that has joined us in the past. A lot of universities where we have set up centers of excellence and helping students understand more, you know, latest technologies and trends in the industry. I'm sure your insights you shared with us will help them a long way to explore tokenization in a safe manner and in a more directed manner, understanding all the nuances of the industry. I'm really thankful for you to be here today and wish you a great day ahead.
>> Arman, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great conversation. You have some good questions. Uh, it's been a pleasure and for anyone that, you know, does need a resource, don't feel afraid to reach out. We're we're very collaborative and we like to provide as much value as we can to really grow the industry. Uh, and that starts with education. So, thank you. Amazing.