The discussion highlights the significant evolution of crypto exchanges into "super apps" or "universal exchanges" by integrating traditional finance (TradFi) assets like tokenized stocks and ETFs, blurring the lines between centralized and decentralized finance and signaling a future of consolidated investment platforms.
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Um good afternoon everyone. Thank you
for joining the exchange 2.0 discussion.
I am particularly very excited to talk
about um sort of like how exchanges have
evolved over the years. I've been
working at exchanges for the last five
years just recently joined on. So um I
have seen and witnessed sort of like the
evolution in terms of how this um
exchange platforms has adapted into
truly a super app. There are you're able
to do literally everything within an
exchange platform right now. You can
invest there's wealth management. Um
there are bots already in it and now
we're introducing tokenized stocks and
ETFs. So now we are seeing sort of like
this blurring between a trapy platforms
and a D5 platform. So with me we have
leaders um in the industry. Um so I will
ask them to introduce themselves.
>> Oh great. Well, thanks for having me uh
today. I appreciate it. My name is uh
Peter. I'm the CEO and founder of
blockchain.com. Uh we've been helping
people and then later institutions be
part of the crypto financial system
since 2012. So, we've been at it for
quite a while now, as I'm reminded
sometimes. Uh, and today we have about
40 million uh, retail customers around
the world, about 2,000 institutions that
we do various sort of business for, and
we transact about one to one and a half
trillion in volume a year. Uh, we're
also a major supplier of liquidity
across the ecosystem. Um and we uh have
sort of helped incubate, invest in or
launch a lot of the sort of more
successful projects and companies across
the space today. Uh and so yeah, we have
a pretty broad sort of view across the
whole ecosystem. And one of the things
that we're most excited about is
bringing sort of more assets from the
traditional finance world into the
crypto world. Um particularly the sort
of really interesting and high quality
assets that our customers are are eager
to have access to.
Hi everyone, I'm Gracie Chen. I'm CEO of
Bitgat. Bit is a top crypto exchange uh
established seven seven years ago. Um
according to coin geko coin market cap,
we are typically top five in terms of
trading volume among other offshore
exchanges. So one key strategic change
that we are having right now or facing
in this industry is exactly what the
title point out from crypto to stocks as
main pointed uh we are all partners with
them and big partner with mainly on
being one of the distributors for their
tokenized US stocks and ETFs and I think
according to your data published in
December we contribute about 90% of that
volume so that's definitely a lot of
tractions that we are seeing from our
retail users who are interested in um
trading tokenized US stocks and ETFs. Uh
we have 120 million users coming from
more than 100 countries. So definitely
also want to explore other opportunities
with you guys audience anyone who want
to expand or collaborate with an
exchange like us.
>> Thanks. Thanks for having us. Uh Michael
Shalov, I'm the CEO and co-founder of
Fireblocks. uh we provide infrastructure
for uh institutions and enterprises
mostly financial institutions over 2600
financial institutions that are using
our platform and that includes
everything from wallet settlement
technology uh tokenization and uh access
to defy orchestration and many other
things. Um so you know we basically last
year uh there was about $6 trillion uh
worth of uh transaction volume that uh
went through our platform and about 40%
of our client base are what you would
define as like exchanges super apps neo
banks basically the category that is uh
financial institutions that are facing
uh retail clients. I think like you know
when you aggregate probably over a
billion of uh retail clients across all
those uh platforms and definitely kind
of what we've seen front and center in
the last 12 months or so is the
convergence or basically the adoption of
traditional assets into those platforms
and uh which I think makes a lot of
sense for uh anyone who is able to offer
digital first experience and also
probably something we're going to talk
is a bit of how the incumbents, right,
the old school Troutfi are currently
looking at it and what are they going to
do about it.
>> Thank you very much. Um Peter, um diving
straight in, right? Um you've been sort
of like in this industry for quite some
time, right? Since 2011. Um so, so you
have seen across the various cycles, you
have seen sort of like the evolution in
terms of how exchanges has adapted over
the years. um what is your perspective
with regards to how are the platforms
evolving and now integrating tokenized
stocks and ETFs um into offering how are
you seeing the competitive landscape
with say trafi super apps
>> yeah it's an interesting question I
think you know crypto exchanges are for
the most part um in the business of
growing and harvesting sort of retail
trading flow so almost like a payment
for order flow model um And you know
with that said like most of the real
liquidity in sort of the top five
digital assets is predominantly you know
in one or two derivative markets and
increasingly for Bitcoin it's in the
CME. So what we see is you know sort of
with tokenized equities the liquidity
obviously for those assets is in the
traditional financial markets and to
some extent you know you see these
assets issued on chain and then they're
going to be distributed to retail due
the sort of exchanges brokerages like
ourselves etc but the real liquidity for
those assets will remain sort of where
it's always been. And so one of the
things that we think will be an
interesting transition to watch is sort
of the transition of liquidity of crypto
assets moving away from a lot of the
sort of cloud-based more retail oriented
exchange platforms back into the sort of
on-prem traditional finance trading
venues. Um which whenever I say that the
crypto people kind of in the room get a
little upset. Uh but we're already
seeing that transition happen live in
the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum. price
discovery is almost exclusively on the
CME at this point and I think we'll
continue to see that across any assets
that are very successful. I think for
assets like you know that are smaller
like a new new project or a new ICO of
course the liquidity for those will
predominantly be in crypto native
exchanges and I think that will
predominantly happen on dexes actually
but I think for assets that really get
to scale you'll basically see them
almost emulate what we see in tokenized
socks and so I tell people that like as
a platform offering tokenized stocks
getting good at setting up that
infrastructure hedging across Stratfi
and crypton native venues is super
important because I think that that's
probably how price action develops
across the entire market.
>> Thanks. Um and and Gracie, I know that
um BitGet's focus has been kind of like
launching what you call the universal
exchange, right? Can you talk a little
bit about that sort of like initiative
at BitGet? Um and then how have you sort
of like prioritized Stratfi integrations
within the platform?
>> Sure. Um so the in the crypto world
there are two terms CEX and DEEX
centralized exchanges decentralized
exchanges um a little bit like uh
bipolar and and people just think it's
either CEX or DEX. In our opinion it
doesn't really explain what we do
anymore since 2025. We still hold very
high um security. you know, all of our
users need to do KYC, that kind of
standard that's very similar like a UEX,
but at the same time, we offer lots of
onchain um kind of uh tokens, including
of course on tokenized stocks and ETFs,
but at at the same time uh actually
millions of uh um onchain DAX kind of uh
trading assets as far as they are
launched on top five uh public chains
that we integrated including Ethereum,
BSC and Solana etc. They are tradable
like our users can just put their
contract address of this token and start
to trade it using the the USDT and USDC
etc the infrastructure on on um
exchanges. So we we feel either DEEX or
CEX can explain what we do now and we
came up with this term UEX universal
exchange. It's not just a marketing
term. That's something I want to
highlight. Uh although it sounds very
much just like you guys created a new
term. Uh it is a trend. What I mean by
that is if you look at the exchanges
um we are all sort of offering more
assets. It's not just big but big is
leading this conversation. Uh Coinbase
co everything exchange they're also
exploring offering stocks and uh uh
crypto as well as some other RWA
products. Uh Binance wallet also listed
on those stocks. But that is a trend
that lots of offshore exchanges are
heading to. Uh we just tend to call it
universal exchange to explain what we do
exactly. So universal exchange means
universally asset coverage at this at
the same time using for example AI as a
tool to help our users gather
information, place some trades and also
still hold very high standard for
security and protection. We have
actually the second largest protection
fund in our industry which is 700
million um a aumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumum
aumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumum
sort of fund. So that as an insurance
kind of uh uh establishment there just
in case any of our users were hacked or
uh lost money due to instable system. Um
that has been very very important like
holding the trust and the credibility as
well as being able to offer a good
amount of products to our users have
been the key focus for us. uh but we
just feel universal exchange is a good
term to summarize what we do now and I
think it is a trend for the whole industry
industry
>> and and Michael like um Fireblock serves
what 2,600 institutions you mentioned um
so that spreads amongst neo banks
wallets exchanges and so forth right how
have you seen that demand in terms of
tokenized stocks and ETFs um amongst
those platforms
>> yeah so uh I actually like the UX
because we call it the everything
exchange change, but it's a
>> it's it's the same thing.
>> Yeah, it's it's a better term by the
way. So, we'll start using it because we
have a blog about it. Love it. Thank you.
you.
>> Yeah. Um but look, I mean it is a trend,
right? The trend right now is that I
think anyone who has any form of financial
financial
app that is targeting uh retail users is
trying to expand to a horizontal
offering that includes everything,
right? I think that uh probably like you
know Coinbase definitely like kind of
were the one to maybe set the marketing
tone but I think that there are actually
quite a lot of different uh providers
that are to a certain degree front
running them. You know from our
standpoint first of all our goal was to
actually set up the infrastructure for
them to be able to do it. We recently
acquired a company called dynamic that
is doing uh onchain wallets for uh for
exchanges and and retail apps and fintex
that is actually a critical component to
do this uh uh successfully. So you can
have basically a separate a segregated
account that is uh kind of non-custodial
account that also eases the regulatory
uh experience with a custodial account
and of course the access across all the
different uh blockchains. I think the
maybe like you know the the biggest
brand that maybe frontr running a lot of
it right now
we've seen is like is Robin Hood um so
they clearly came to all this from the
very traditional space of competing with
the interactive brokers and uh it trade
and so on and I think when they were
solely in the United States it was very
clear that stock trading is done through
the brokerage in the very traditional
way they but They also had a very robust
infrastructure to power crypto. When
they decided to expand to Europe through
the acquisition of uh Bitstamp and uh
also uh probably soon in into Canada uh
they figure out that actually doing it
through a tokeniz uh formulation uh
gives them the ability to go into this
basically acquire license but then
immediately deploy the technology and
immediately deploy the capabilities. So
if you're actually now downloading a a
Robin Hood app in Europe, the experience
from user experience looks the same
trading Apple stock, but you actually
see this kind of chain act icon on the
left uh corner, top left corner of their
screen, and if you click on it, you can
actually see the onchain transaction for
the settlement. Um, so I think that this
is the direction of travel pretty much
for everyone. I think that there will be
probably a bit of a mix on based on the
demographic of the users that you are
servicing what type of tokenized assets
outside of stable coins which I think
like stable coins is like ubiquous right
but like what other assets people will
start offering successfully on on their platforms
platforms
>> and and Michael you touch upon um sort
of like um infrastructure right so like
stable coins has obviously scaled
because the infrastructure has been
there right um you know like what do you
look at from an infrastructure lens
standpoint um for us to be able to
really scale in terms of adoption across
tokenized stocks and ETFs? Yeah, I mean
my observation and again I think that uh
Gracie and P you guys probably will have
a more nuanced view on that
from a technical standpoint. My sense is
the infrastructure is actually there or
at least like you know in our layer of
the stack the infrastructure is there
because the same technology pretty much
that we provide people to deal with
stable coins or with any other so to
speak RWA is actually suitable for
dealing with uh tokenized stock right
it's it's actually asset agnostic uh it
seems to be that the main difference is
actually the regulatory treatment right
that is happening across different
jurisdiction and liquidity, right? But
I'll leave it to
>> Yeah, I would say that the big
difference is, you know, in the stable
coin world, there's enormous liquidity.
Like we can move billions, you know,
from banks to stable coins and back and
forth across all of them a day and have
I think it would be very challenging to
move a billion dollars of tokenized
equities in one day right now. Um,
probably impossible actually. And so I
think a big, you know, I don't know if
it's technical so much because I would
agree with you that it's it's sort of
all the same technical infrastructure,
but from a sort of market operations and
market liquidity perspective, there's
definitely a pretty long buildout to do
before, you know, the liquidity for
tokenized equities matches, you know,
stable coin liquidity or even sort of
liquidity in the stock market itself.
So, I think, you know, there will be a a
relatively, you know, medium-term
buildout of that, but I don't think it's
a very technically difficult challenge.
And I I know it's something that you
guys at Onondo are working on quite actively,
actively,
but I do think it'll be several years
before, a year or two at least before
the market operations side can match
like a very heavy demand for tokenized
equities. and and as we are looking at
sort of like um scaling adoption rights
um I think in the earlier panels um
someone touched upon utility right um
and and crazy like um I think bit has
sort of like innovated with regards to
you know truly the integration of
traffic products how are you sort of
like thinking around bringing utility of
those tokenized stocks and ETFs onto the
platform for users
>> yeah so big is pretty big in perpetual
and futures trading and there were users
who uh or partners who asked us if uh we
can enable uh using tokenized US stocks
for example as a collateral to do prop
trading. Uh I find that a bit
challenging because the users have a
have a difficulty to understand why they
should do it. We understand that they
don't want to sell it but it seems that
maybe a loan product around that may be
more visible and that is something we
are discussing with uh our partners and
you know internally to see if our users
really have a need like that. Uh another
landscape around this is also around
regulation. Uh in my opinion regulators
are like your parents annoying but
necessary. um we do need to collaborate
with them and and on each individual um
jurisdiction the offering can be very
different but I'm I'm sure compliance
and regula regulation is another reason
that we're a little bit a little bit
hesitant about offering uh even even
just tokenized stocks to all our users
we can't cover other regions.
>> Yeah. thing on that theme of regulations
actually like how are you looking at
regulations at a global scale, right?
Because um like how are they looking at
um sort of like where are the sort of
like geographies that are most
constructive when it comes to um
offering this type of products and where
do you see more fragmentation?
>> Um so Mika is one region that exchanges
are paying closely paying close
attention to. Uh we we are applying for
our Mika license and it should be done
very soon this year. Uh US is another
big market that exchanges have problem
with you know other than Coinbase,
Kraken, maybe Crypto.com. These are more
crypto US-based exchanges who grow up
from this market that feels very
comfortable uh and have the
infrastructure of running it. All the
offshore exchanges are very hesitant
about entering the US market because the
compliance cost is really high. You need
to get federal license, individual state
license and and all of like sort of
rammitance and then custodia different
licenses just too many licenses there.
Um yeah, our parents asked for a lot of
things. Um and and then in Asia I would
say Dubai and maybe Hong Kong are also
leading some of the regulation
innovations especially Dubai uh under
the VRA framework. Um Hong Kong is a
little bit back and forth. I think they
were very optimistic and crypto friendly
around stable coin and rwas last year
but maybe central government of China
have kind of put a put a hot on that and
and they went back a little bit. Um
Singapore was very supportive before FTX
collapsed but I I think Tamasic the
Singapore um government fund lost a lot
of money in FTX.com and FTX us. And
after that we saw Singapore backing uh
backing off a little bit. So it's a very
dynamically changing landscape in terms
of global regulations. Uh but I would
say right now Europe, US, you know,
certain cities or regions in uh Asia uh
are more crypto friendly and have fairly
reasonable frameworks for regulating as
exchange business as well as RWA and
stable coin kind of innovations.
>> And bringing home a little bit, um
Peter, I know that you're very sort of
like involved in the Clarity Act, right?
And then the SEC has published a
statement around tokenized securities um
sort of like recently. Um do do you mind
sharing a little bit in terms of your
perspective on what has the
conversations been around that?
>> Yeah, I've been doing policy meetings uh
in DC since 2013 which has been uh
fascinating and I would say the the one
thing I say is like from where it
started in 2013 to today it's largely
just improved. So, you know, give it
long enough and we'll get to a good
place. But, um, and there's funny
stories I can tell about that, not on
stage. But um you know the biggest irony
of the regul global regulatory landscape
for crypto today is that Europe the EU
is the first major geography to come up
with a dedicated and implement a
dedicated harmonized framework across a
major market which if you'd asked me 10
years ago if Brussels would figure out
how to do it first I would have bet very
heavily against it if there was a
working prediction market at the time.
But that's what's happened. So in
Europe, you know, and there's things
about Mika that we don't love. There's
things that we love, but at the end of
the day, there's a harmonized framework
for digital assets across all the EU,
which no other major market or region
has. Um, I think that, you know, you're
going to get that this year in the UK as
well. So the FCA is moving from a
registration to a full license, uh, from
an authorization regime to a license
regime. So that'll be harmonized. Uh, I
think you're right that Singapore was a
leader a couple of years ago and we hold
a Singapore license. So, we've been
through um a lot of interesting
conversations with the regulator over
the last couple years with MAS.
>> I think they've been a lot less
enthusiastic post the FDX crisis.
>> Um, and then I think this year we will
get the Clarity Act in the United States
which will clear up a lot of the things
that you've talked about with state and
federal preeemption and what have you.
It is difficult. We maintain all of
those licenses in America and they are
duplicative and it is hard sometimes
even to figure out which set of rules
you should listen to because they are
sometimes in conflict.
>> And one of the things that I tell uh
folks in DC where I've been spending a
lot of time lately is that you know it's
really not about the fact that the
industry doesn't want to be regulated.
It's that we want to be regulated in a
consistent harmonized framework that
allows us to build businesses in a
predictable fashion. And also that
framework doesn't change every four years.
years.
>> Well, that's going to happen. That's
just America. Uh it won't change every
four years because it's very hard to
pass bills, but the interpretation of
those laws will will change. But you
know, that's a 20% variance I think that
you can think of and I think it'll
largely be in a much better better space
in another 12 to 16 months. Well, one
thing though to say about it is that I
think that through this implementation,
especially with regard to the SEC, we I
hope that we will see implementation
that actually is kind of pro- innovation
and uh takes into account what the
technology is actually able to do for
consumer protection and liquidity and uh
removing risk from the system and is not
really geared to preserving the kind of
old order business models, right?
because that's actually not given and to
a certain extent actually with
tokenization in Europe I don't think it
was like you know fully resolved uh so
to speak under Mika and Miffett
>> all right um so fast forward sort of
like um I think the Traty panel um sort
of like gave their future predictions in
terms of what does a sort of like future
of investment would look like um on the
crypto exchanges and sort of like wallet
side like how are you guys seeing sort
of like say fast forward to 2030 like
how would this sort of like um space
look like?
>> 2030 four years later um I think RWA
will grow a lot. Um I have a very
controversial saying that our coin
season may never come. So for the crypto
business it's probably a little bit
tricky and that's why we're going
universal exchange, right? Like just
diversify the asset coverage. But I'm
sure RWA is growing a lot like right now
tokenized US stocks is only less than
0.1% of the trapi US stocks. So lots of
growth potential over there. But not
just tokenized stocks but tokenized
almost everything. Uh tokenized uh uh
gold, silver, commodity as well as uh um
money market fund etc. They all have
lots of growth potential. Peter.
Peter.
>> Yeah, I think that people will use
primarily one app or two apps to trade
sort of anything, you know, whether it's
an event driven trade, which we call
prediction markets, but are really just
event- driven trades or equities or
commodities or, you know, whatever it
is. I think people will trade almost
everything through one integrated
interface where is sort of a whole lot
of concern or even awareness of the
infrastructure that they're trading in
on top of. Um, and just because that's a
very benal prediction. Uh, the other
thing I'd say is I fully believe that
there will be another altcoin market
wave because markets are very uh the
minute you think that they're done, they
they come back and hit you again. So now
I'm just on the uh we're always, you
know, there's nothing new under the sun
program. Um, but 2030 is a long ways out
and I'll have hit the mandatory crypto
retirement age of 40 by then. So I won't
be responsible for any of these predictions.
predictions.
Michael, anything to add?
>> Yeah, I mean I think that I spent a lot
of time with the not only with the
people on the crypto side and the crypto
native side, but also with the execs of
uh some of the most traditional banks.
It's pretty clear to me that they're
going to be dragged into this uh by uh
kind of market forces because at the end
of the day the the consumers, the
retail, the the users, right? Uh they will
will
they won't like stick to experiences
that are outdated and clunky. They will
all move into experiences that are uh
the most advanced experiences that they
can can can you know uh sign up for. And
therefore I think that this will impact
uh those institutions as well. I think
there will need to be a lot of
alignment, a lot of investment, a lot of
education over there. But I think it's
also inevitable that the biggest
institutions in New York City will have
to offer that as part of their entire
kind of uh offering.
>> Well, thank you very much. Um that's all
the time that we have and that's a wrap.
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