Bringing Preferred Shares On-Chain: Parker White on Building Apyx

0:01Kinsa Durst Welcome to panoramic content suite Singapore edition right alongside Token2049

0:07Parker White In 20 so something

0:08Kinsa Durst like that We got a special guest over here. Thanks for taking time out of your day got the founding contributor at Apyx His name is Parker, but I let him do the self introduction momentarily. Welcome. Thanks.

0:22Parker White Have me. Yeah

0:23Kinsa Durst Yeah, let's get started with the self introduction What was curious in terms of kind of like your personal journey and how you ended up at Apyx today. Sure

0:33Parker White So I got into crypto back in 2017 Was in kind of traditional finance prior to that doing a lot of fixed income trading and that kind of stuff at a multi-billion dollar asset manager in Texas and and So got into crypto kind of fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole throughout most of 2018 had a startup with some buddies on the side and really Started to learn about you know, what Bitcoin is about hard money sovereign money and At the end of 2018. I kind of left traditional finance and joined Kraken so Fast forward six years about at Kraken for about six years throughout that time held a number of different roles and Really spent time developing a lot of relationships and going deep Into all areas of crypto, so I remember, you know the first DeFi summer back in 2019 2020 with you know, the launch of Uniswap and compound and The Aave rebrand from ethlens to AVE and and so kind of the real formative days of on-chain finance

1:45Kinsa Durst crazy days crazy

1:46Parker White days. Yeah, I remember specifically meeting Hayden When he just had one employee and that was his like assistant so in

1:55Kinsa Durst San Francisco

1:56Parker White Maybe this was a virtual stuff But his assistant actually lived in Houston and I grew up in Houston in Texas, which was you know, pretty cool so Fast forward to last year and me and a couple other Krakenites or former Krakenites We launched the first non Bitcoin Treasury Company DFDV so this was a Solana Treasury Company and Was one of the best performing stocks on the entire NASDAQ in 2025. It's pretty cool. Yeah So you guys were

2:30Kinsa Durst one of the first ones to do it before even I think like Kyle Samani launched

2:33Parker White his yeah Yeah, so we did it we launched in at the beginning of April 2025 mostly others kind of happened in the summer and summer and fall, right but We were and continue to be at DFDV very on-chain oriented and so we saw Strategy and obviously you've followed them very closely but we saw what they did with STRC back in July of 2025 and many people don't know this but Stretch was actually the number one IPO of 2025 the largest IPO Which is kind of unheard of for preferred stock much less, you know like crypto company so like kind of a first for a whole bunch of different categories if you will and So, you know fast forward to the end of 2025 and we saw stretch continued to grow continue to be marketed and strategy really Realigned their whole business around stretch stretch became the flagship product for what they were doing

3:38Kinsa Durst Stretch is the product?

3:41Parker White That's right. Yep. Okay, so they'd launched three other preferred stock prior to that And they had different characteristics Most were or the ones prior to that were fixed rate fixed dividend rate. Some are convertible Some are not different seniority, but this one was Variable rate and so the idea was rather than having a fixed rate and a variable price You would have a fixed price and variable rates and so The idea was to bring down the volatility which would attract more capital And so stretch STRC continued to grow throughout 2025 and towards the end of 2025, you know, we've been watching them very closely Sailors are talking about bringing stretch on chain and the idea was to create Essentially what he calls digital money, but the idea was to Take some of the market share from the non yielding stables like tether like circle and so on and Create something that you know, the whole world Could would be interested in owning that would generate, you know up to double digit yield So we started building Apyx the idea was to create kind of a structured Product structured asset that would use the yield from STRC and from some of the other similar instruments by other companies blend it with some cash bring it on chain and create essentially like the perfect yield bearing instrument For everyday DeFi users and just general kind of crypto holders So we launched Apyx in February of this year and Congratulations, thank you. Yeah, it and it was it's been a pretty wild ride So we in the first about I think was 9 10 weeks grew from zero to about 500 million in TVL Which was you know, pretty nice. Yeah, I

5:55Kinsa Durst Heard you guys are like the largest holder of STRC on chain as well. Is that correct?

6:01Parker White That's right. And one of the largest holders of STRC individual holders of STRC in the world. I think maybe the BlackRock ETF PFF has a little bit more but beyond that we are you know, I'd say a top five holder of STRC in the world You know TradFi DeFi anything which is pretty

6:18Kinsa Durst cool. Yeah, and you guys purchased on chain

6:21Parker White So we do a mix of buying through brokerage account and then also we have got a partnership with xStocks crackens, you know tokenization

6:30Kinsa Durst Platform

6:31Parker White that's right And so we are the number one holder of xStocks as well. Well

6:38Kinsa Durst xStocks. Yeah Kraken has their own exchange X stocks tokenized stocks. That's

6:43Parker White right.

6:43Kinsa Durst Yep. Very cool Yeah, I do want to touch on how exactly Apyx works given this Holding of STRC and tapping into the liquidity here Maybe we can quickly tap on that, you know, you have apxUSD apyUSD and the government is token So maybe you can give a quick overview of your product and then we can have into the details from

7:06Parker White there. Sure so the general idea here was to Use the standard two token model that crypto kind of knows and loves with generating yield So as with most of these two token models That you know, maybe Athena popularize but you know Sky has and many of these others apxUSD is kind of the base asset But it does not pay any yield natively so you just hold a PX USD and it's designed to trade in line with the basket of Assets, which you know, the idea is 90% of the time it just trades at $1 Obviously we've seen what happens has happened to stretch over the last couple months but I think you know going forward and long term that's going to be a bit of an anomaly and Generally speaking stretch will trade around par and so APX will trade around $1 Very straightforward, but it's not generating any yield and so users can then stake it and receive apyUSD and apyUSD right now pays a 13% yield and So that is an ERC 4 6 2 6 the yield is you know, just updated every block and so You talk about stretch or SATA Or you know even DFDV's CHAD paying daily.

8:32Parker White Well, this pays like, you know every single block and so Users, you know get that 13% yield it's composable within DeFi You can borrow against it. So some folks say hey 13% is not enough. You can loop it up Yeah, get you know, 20 30 40 percent you can do the PT/YT thing lots of other things you can do with it, so Kind of again that two token model APX USD no yield Stake it you get apyUSD Now you might ask well, why would anyone hold APX USD doesn't pay any yield There's a bunch of things you can do with apxUSD So the the biggest way or the biggest thing that people do right now with it is they'll just lend it So the APY holders like to borrow apxUSD because there's no basis risk They share the same collateral pool. And so the only way to get liquidated if you borrow APX is If the interest differential goes against you and then you don't unwind the position so by and large that almost never happens and so it's just a positive carry no price risk and so The APX though has to come from somewhere and so people can lend the APX and make you know 10 maybe 11% yield typically lending it And so that's you know a great way for people to generate yield right now Of course, there's also points farming on APX and we'll be adding other You know reasons to hold APX Over time so that's kind of the you know, some of the things you can do with APX even though natively it doesn't pay any yield

10:09Kinsa Durst gotcha The yield a lot of the yield is generated by the holdings that you guys have a lot of it coming from stretch That's right. Gotcha For people who are interested in stretch, so I think which majority of your Users and customers are as well. I think you touched on a little bit in terms of utility of Your stablecoin, but why should they use your product versus just buying stretch themselves? directly or Using any other stablecoins. Yeah. Well, how do you how do you differentiate? What's what's your main selling point here? Basically? Yeah

10:49Parker White so a Lot of our user base actually doesn't have access to stretch directly So and this is the beauty of any kind of tokenization is that anyone anywhere in the world can get access to? apyUSD on chain now there are certain Geos that we as an issuer don't deal with you know sanctioned geos But once the asset is out there in the world like we don't control You know who buys it who sells it who does stuff with it. It's out there in DeFi, right? and so a lot of the users Can't get access to a US brokerage account for a whole variety of reasons. Maybe US brokerage accounts aren't supported in their country You know, maybe they're some countries have US brokerage accounts, but there's you know, pretty large minimums in terms of The amount of capital you have to have to even get access, you know to get one of these accounts opened So that's

11:47Kinsa Durst accredited investors. Yeah, just some

11:49Parker White countries. It's like yeah, look we're not like mass market So you can get a brokerage account, but like it's really hard. Yeah So that's the you know, the kind of the first differentiation relative to say stretch in a brokerage account The other reason though that people might want to hold APY over holding STRC natively or even STRC like tokenize like via xStocks is the kind of on chain Liquidity and the on chain functionality and so for example a lot of brokers don't offer margin against STRC Or if they do maybe they offer you know 50% LTV So you can do like one, you know, like 2x leverage one turn of leverage and So, you know going on chain there are a lot of other things you can do you can borrow at much higher LTVs You Can get you know convert your variable yield into a fixed yield?

12:49Parker White And You can trade 24 7 365 So for a lot of folks especially over in this side of the world in Asia That's really attractive because if you want to trade stretch during US market hours, you basically gotta like stay up all night, right? and so that on chain Flexibility composability all of that means that some folks that do actually have access to native stretch Still would choose to use APY USD or apxUSD because of all that flexibility and that composability And the use cases they are going to continue to grow as liquidity continues to grow I mean the projects only really been around for six seven months and so You know as we were around for 12 months 24 months and that Ecosystem really grows and liquidity grows.

13:42Parker White I think the case for holding these preferreds in the on chain package instead of straight in a brokerage account I think that case is only going to get stronger

13:52Kinsa Durst right makes sense in terms of on chain accessibility. Are you guys mainly? Live on Ethereum is that where the majority of the LP comes from or where we should say the biggest flow has been

14:02Parker White Yeah, so Ethereum mainnet is where we initially launched and is where the majority of the flow has been but we are on Solana as well more recently Obviously Solana is very near and dear to our heart on the DFDV side and then we're live on a couple other L2s Base, BNB. We've got another one that we're excited about coming very soon and You know, we will expand to some other chains selectively, but I think Long term Ethereum and Solana will be kind of the two main anchor

14:33Kinsa Durst chains. Those are I think those two are the chains with

14:36Parker White Yeah, yeah

14:39Kinsa Durst And I didn't know this but it sounds like x stocks have certain limitation in terms of when you can trade them liquidate them Etc. They are tokenized stocks, but they don't have the same flexibility as liquid assets on chain From what you mentioned? Yeah, so, you know xStocks you

14:58Parker White can trade it at any time. Okay, but the primary mint and redeem function You know mostly happens during US market hours the spreads get wider During you know non market hours But generally there's not a lot of market makers for x stocks and so Sometimes like liquidity just may not be there especially on certain names So stretch is one of the bigger ones And so there's typically good liquidity, but sometimes like, you know, it's not there. Yeah

15:33Kinsa Durst Do you guys have seen pretty solid success with stretch? I did have a question on Other types of assets, you know, you don't say you're exclusively holding stretch on your website But I do see that stretch because it is Ideally pegged or ideally holds a certain specific value while the APY can't be variable I did see that it's very aligned with your product design right now But do you see yourself or are you already holding other types of? DAT assets or do you see the future of maybe coming years you guys integrating other types of assets as well?

16:14Parker White Yeah, so Within our flagship product apyUSD and apxUSD We hold Basically our eligible universe is any instrument that's designed to have a fixed price so similar to stretch So you've got Strive's SATA. It's a great example. You've also got DFDV's CHAD and These assets kind of make up the investible universe but we think there's probably gonna be more of them over time and so to the extent that we can you know diversify this Improves liquidity because if we need to sell we can tap these multiple assets multiple pools of liquidity it adds some Diversification which is great for you know reducing Management team risk and even asset risk, right? You've got CHAD, DFDV's one on Solana The others on Bitcoin.

17:14Parker White Hopefully one of these comes to Ethereum like a variable rate kind of designed to be fixed price one and so this will kind of improve the resiliency of Our collateral base which ultimately is what drives you know the price and the yield on the asset So that's one thing You know beyond that what's been really interesting is We've had a number of entities come to us and Ask about tokenizing their yield baskets So these are typically you know private assets. Maybe it's a single asset. Maybe it's a pool of assets and We've built the infrastructure the legal infrastructure the technical infrastructure the on-chain infrastructure to launch an asset Have it be successful have it grow and so expanding beyond the You know the digital credit prefs We think there's actually an opportunity to kind of open up our platform and Tokenize other pools of yield and ultimately we see Apyx or Apyx as a credit platform a structured credit platform a Place where users can go get different types of yield different risk profiles different, you know return profiles and Kind of know that on the back end you're gonna get a kind of a standard package.

18:51Parker White You're gonna get a clean legal structure You're gonna get good smart contract audits. You're gonna get off-chain reserve attestations You'll get a real-time NAV feed you'll kind of get all these things that you would like to see out of the box so in a sense, you know you can stroll into the the McDonald's of credit here and you can get different menu items, but you know on the back end It's gonna kind of share some of the same You know supporting features right

19:21Kinsa Durst right, I mean, I'm assuming You guys aren't stuck with DATs either Like as long as that yield bearing asset holds a certain stability stable value You guys would able to and if it's tokenized you guys would be able to hold them provide those yield back to your stablecoin holders yeah,

19:37Parker White that's right. And the the other cool thing is, you know, we're not limited to Tokenized assets we can actually be the ones to tokenize the assets so You know, we've got brokerage accounts we've got bank accounts we've got legal structure in place where somebody could come to us with You know some kind of credit fund or You know, maybe it's an SPV that has a bunch of yield bearing assets It could even just be a bunch of bonds that are you know issued by public companies we have a lot of flexibility on what to launch and You know, the main thing is just Putting together things that are attractive to people on chain,

20:26Kinsa Durst right? But

20:26Parker White otherwise we've got the structure We've got the infrastructure and we can replicate it For other assets, which is pretty cool. That's

20:33Kinsa Durst incredible. Sounds like token 2049 very Institutional conference is the perfect kind of playground for

20:38Parker White you guys. Yeah, absolutely. It's

20:40Kinsa Durst a productive week so far

20:41Parker White Yeah for sure

20:42Kinsa Durst that is there for the audience maybe institutions that are there Is there a specific message that you want to say or a certain type of announcement product? Product launch you guys are having anything you would like to kind of mention to people here in Token2049

20:58Parker White We've got a couple cool product launches we've got a new chain that we're very excited about and then I Think it'll be we'll probably be live. We're launching a monad. Oh, that'd be cool. Nice and then So we'll be launching on Monad pretty excited about that and then beyond that we've got a

21:19Kinsa Durst couple of other

21:20Parker White assets that we're gonna be Rolling out So we haven't come out and said and I don't know exactly the timeline on when those are gonna be released So I'm don't want to announce them here But between now and the end of the year we've got two to three additional assets that we are gonna be launching they're kind of in the roadmap in the works and I think by the end of the year It'll be much clearer that Apyx is a platform not just a single asset issuer So that's what I'm very excited about and then in q1. We've got some really cool stuff coming around the governance token and So, you know stay tuned for that and Yeah, we'll keep building

22:05Kinsa Durst yeah awesome Before I let you go. I had I did have one more question, which is I think really important for any an on-chain finance Infrastructure platforms out there, which is risk What how do you deal with risk? I know STRC is a very stable product But it does have a certain amount of volatility itself. I mean, it's not a stablecoin How do you I know I know you guys are diversifying your assets. How do you manage these type of risks as a company? Yeah, so, you

22:38Parker White know our role is in large part kind of an issuer so the idea is We provide a lot of transparency around what's in the collateral base for any given asset and then we basically You know provide all that transparency and We say basically we're not going to change things This is the way it is and so a user can assess the risk for themselves So for example, you can go on our dashboard. You can see what the allocation is between stretch between cash. You can look at You know about you know backing apxUSD and then you can say okay.

23:23Parker White Well, do I want to take on that risk? I Know what the allocation is and then our users can kind of decide for themselves. So that's kind of like the first part Of course on the you know non financial risk side you've got things like smart contract risk So we've got a number of different audit partners that review, you know, all the contract updates our team You know engineering team they've been in the space for quite a long time 10 plus years in the crypto ecosystem for some of them So, you know, they kind of know what they're doing And then you know, I'd say the last piece going back to some of the financial risk is Some of the products that we're going to be launching The goal is to get the financial risk The goal is to provide different stratification of risk and so users can say hey, I want a little bit lower yield and less risk and Or you know, I want more yield.

24:24Parker White I want more risk and so to give people more opportunities to Access Yield With the corresponding level of risk that they're comfortable with so you can already do some of that today For example, you can lend USDC on Morpho or on Kamino against some of our assets and you can generate, you know Six seven eight percent yield on your USDC that's higher than you might get elsewhere the risk of course that you're taking is that the asset drops and then There's you know liquidation is for some reason not able to fully You know resolve things You know a little tangent. We're very proud that during the whole Stretch, you know drop all the way to $70 and then repeg or a rebound We didn't have any bad debt and any of our lending markets, but you know, there's always that risk there So some users may say hey, I want to get exposure to this idea, but I want lower risk by say lending but we're gonna be adding more ways for users to kind of tailor the yield and Risk that they're comfortable with and so we kind of just again, you know to summarize we kind of Lay it all out on the table and then allow the users to decide, you know what they want to do, right?

25:51Kinsa Durst Transparency is key to key benefits of of on chain ecosystem financial ecosystem for

25:57Parker White sure. Yep

25:59Kinsa Durst Nice very cool. Those are being questions I had Yeah, anything else if you want to touch on AI agents AI whatever

26:09Parker White Yeah, you know, I think on the AI side and just in general like the really cool thing about bringing yield products on chain is They become fully accessible and fully composable. Yes, and so to the extent that You've got you know, idle pools of capital. They can now start generating yield or balances and So as you're gonna have more and more agents being active on chain, there's less and less of a reason for capital to sit idle Most of the reason today that capital sits idle is convenience. It's humans saying well I'm gonna spend this in a week So like it's not worth me clicking the buttons to do a swap but an agent has none of that cognitive load Involved in making that swap and so if an agent's like yeah, look I've got some cash.

27:04Parker White I'm gonna have it parked for a week It makes sense to flip it into something that's gonna generate yield To you know, not just have idle balances and waste money basically and so I think the more that you can reduce the friction of Getting in and out of a yield bearing asset and the more ubiquitous you can make it, you know available on more platforms And in more places with more liquidity, I think that's gonna grow the usage For you know all forms of AI agents whether that's the more classical like, you know, ml type models or you know the newer agents and I think you're gonna see more and more yield product issuers want to get their products tokenized because it just opens up this whole new world of You know, it's whole new user base because you know, you're not gonna have on the TradFi side you're not gonna have agents subscribing to a credit fund or Using a brokerage account to buy stretch that's just too difficult You know wiring money takes multiple days to move it around so once it's all on chain once it's all there it becomes accessible to agents and I think it's a you know, pretty powerful thing.

28:19Kinsa Durst Right, right. I can't wait for Wait to delegate all my yield farming to my agent. Yeah Yeah, it sounds super exciting I'll be checking out but the The products myself. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us for the podcast really good having you.

28:36Parker White Thanks for having me