WEBVTT

NOTE Open Interest — matthew-dawson-ethereum-institutional. Draft: automatic transcript (faster-whisper small.en) of the released edit, automatic speaker assignment (resemblyzer, 2 speakers), corrections applied from the editorial glossary and OCR of the burned-in captions. Not yet reviewed line by line.

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Thank you. Welcome to Panoramic Content Suite Singapore Token2049 edition. We got the MBS

2
00:00:07.760 --> 00:00:13.200
<v Kinsa Durst>In the backdrop with the nice little haze, a gradient over it. And we got a special guest

3
00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:19.120
<v Kinsa Durst>Today, Matthew, the co founder of Ethereum Institutional. I know you guys are fairly in

4
00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:25.280
<v Kinsa Durst>Terms of public awareness, new ish. Yep. But wanted to have you on to have dig deeper

5
00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:31.200
<v Kinsa Durst>Into what you guys are doing, learn more. So thank you for taking the time out of your day

6
00:00:31.200 --> 00:00:35.680
<v Kinsa Durst>To be here. Yeah, my pleasure. Great to be here. I like to kick things off with a little

7
00:00:35.680 --> 00:00:40.320
<v Kinsa Durst>Bit of introduction about yourself. I'm curious how you ended up at Ethereum Institutional. Yeah,

8
00:00:40.320 --> 00:00:45.600
<v Matthew Dawson>I started my career off in financial services consulting, fairly typical path for many people

9
00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:50.480
<v Matthew Dawson>Out of university. And at that time, I was getting more and more interested in crypto.

10
00:00:50.480 --> 00:00:54.720
<v Matthew Dawson>I think it's fair to say that for most people, at least those that got interested in crypto

11
00:00:54.720 --> 00:01:03.200
<v Matthew Dawson>Between like 2015 and late 2022. The reason we got excited was because of smart contracts,

12
00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:08.160
<v Matthew Dawson>Interoperability, verifiability, all things that were brought to us by Ethereum. And like since

13
00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:13.200
<v Matthew Dawson>Then, we've seen lots of new shiny objects and stuff like that, but was getting really interested

14
00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:19.040
<v Matthew Dawson>In Ethereum. And I thought, okay, I'm working in finance. Really, I think DeFi some was kind of

15
00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:25.040
<v Matthew Dawson>The flip. Okay, this actually is beyond just a chain. These are like new financial primitives

16
00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:30.560
<v Matthew Dawson>That will probably disrupt finance. And so I wanted to be on the other side doing the disrupting

17
00:01:30.560 --> 00:01:36.480
<v Matthew Dawson>Rather than being disrupted. So I took the leap into into crypto is working with a lot of startups.

18
00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:41.840
<v Matthew Dawson>At the time, there was a really massive institutional ecosystem. And then after a

19
00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:47.440
<v Matthew Dawson>Few years of experience with VCs and startups, the Ethereum Foundation was creating an enterprise

20
00:01:47.440 --> 00:01:53.040
<v Matthew Dawson>Team. So I joined the Ethereum Foundation and myself and some of my colleagues who co-founded

21
00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:57.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Ethereum Institutional with me, we built the enterprise team, started engaging banks, asset

22
00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:04.000
<v Matthew Dawson>Managers, fintechs, financial services firms. And we did that for the best part of the year at the

23
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:11.600
<v Matthew Dawson>EF. And then in July this year, we spun it out as an independent org. So the EF focuses on research

24
00:02:11.600 --> 00:02:18.080
<v Matthew Dawson>And development. And with the backing of BitMine, Tom Lee, SharpLink, Joseph Chalom, Joe Lubin,

25
00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:23.920
<v Matthew Dawson>And some Ethereum co-founders have a dedicated institutional adoption entity for Ethereum.

26
00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:27.760
<v Kinsa Durst>That's incredible. So you guys have been working on this for a while before spinning off.

27
00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:32.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Exactly. Which is nice, because it's not been like a cold start. It was very much a transition

28
00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:38.480
<v Matthew Dawson>Of many existing relationships from within the Ethereum Foundation. Bring those relationships

29
00:02:38.480 --> 00:02:43.920
<v Matthew Dawson>Over, building the pipeline further, and importantly, scaling. So at the EF, there's

30
00:02:43.920 --> 00:02:49.360
<v Matthew Dawson>Three or four of us. Now, we've also spent the first few months as well as obviously working

31
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:55.120
<v Matthew Dawson>With institutions, building our team. And so we have a head of APAC joining us in Singapore,

32
00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:59.120
<v Matthew Dawson>Starting at the beginning of November. We've got a head of technical strategy based out of

33
00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:03.920
<v Matthew Dawson>Abu Dhabi, who also leads MENA. And looking forward to having people join us in New York,

34
00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:10.240
<v Matthew Dawson>London, and elsewhere, Hong Kong, other markets, before the end of the year, so that we have

35
00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:15.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Both the capability. These people are coming from tier one banks having built tokenization

36
00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:20.880
<v Matthew Dawson>Within the bank, gone through that process. And so we're excited to bring those experts

37
00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:25.200
<v Matthew Dawson>Into the ecosystem to help the ecosystem, but also financial services firms that are

38
00:03:25.200 --> 00:03:30.000
<v Kinsa Durst>Going through that process. Yeah, that's incredible. You can dive deep into it,

39
00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:35.200
<v Kinsa Durst>Into all the different things you mentioned. But I think Ethereum is the OG smart contract

40
00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:40.880
<v Kinsa Durst>Platform. I think EVM has the widest adoption in terms of smart contracts and infrastructure support

41
00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:45.760
<v Kinsa Durst>As well. So super excited to see. I think you guys have all the basic building blocks and

42
00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:50.320
<v Kinsa Durst>Lego blocks and just need to push the institutions over the ledge.

43
00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:57.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Kind of, yeah. I mean, institutions care about a few things like security is paramount,

44
00:03:58.160 --> 00:04:03.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Financial assets at the end of the day, resilience, so that every financial market infrastructure

45
00:04:03.760 --> 00:04:13.920
<v Matthew Dawson>Or institution has to often meet like five nines or 9.999% uptime, SLAs. And Ethereum

46
00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:19.120
<v Matthew Dawson>Really the only chain that has continuously produced blocks since it started, and it

47
00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:24.160
<v Matthew Dawson>Started before all of the others. So that's a huge kind of signal for institutions. And

48
00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:29.680
<v Matthew Dawson>Because of that, like you said, because of the EVM, because of the deep and old ecosystem,

49
00:04:30.320 --> 00:04:34.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Most of DeFi was born out of Ethereum. And so we continue to have the deepest liquidity.

50
00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:39.680
<v Matthew Dawson>So it is kind of a default and we support them on that journey as well.

51
00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:44.480
<v Kinsa Durst>Yeah. I guess it sounds like you've been doing it for multiple years. We're curious

52
00:04:46.320 --> 00:04:53.040
<v Kinsa Durst>How the institutional approach to on-chain has changed over the years or what the recent

53
00:04:53.040 --> 00:04:57.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Trends are. I think we're seeing a lot of traction in terms of tokenization of stocks.

54
00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:03.040
<v Kinsa Durst>Robinhood just launched their own chain as well. Are they looking to launch their own chains

55
00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:07.200
<v Kinsa Durst>Like Robinhood or do they just want to tap into this permissionless smart contract,

56
00:05:07.200 --> 00:05:11.200
<v Kinsa Durst>Global smart contract platform? What types of demand are you seeing?

57
00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:20.560
<v Matthew Dawson>I think the institutional transition path or the roadmap thus far has been quite clearly

58
00:05:20.640 --> 00:05:27.760
<v Matthew Dawson>A move from private chains to public chains. So most institutional or enterprise blockchain

59
00:05:27.760 --> 00:05:32.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Efforts historically were private chains, and to be found most of them, like some form of

60
00:05:32.960 --> 00:05:38.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Private Ethereum, the Hyperledger, Besu or the likes, are consortium chain, which is like more

61
00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:44.400
<v Matthew Dawson>Admirable effort because you need participants to grow an ecosystem. But almost all of them failed

62
00:05:45.280 --> 00:05:52.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Because without lack of global access, liquidity, and use cases, it's very difficult to bootstrap

63
00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:58.560
<v Matthew Dawson>An ecosystem. So there's already a natural incentive to come to Ethereum because that's

64
00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:04.880
<v Matthew Dawson>Where everything is. And now from a tech perspective, capability within institutions,

65
00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:10.560
<v Matthew Dawson>And importantly, regulatory, there's a lot more comfort coming to public chains.

66
00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:17.600
<v Matthew Dawson>So that's been the big migration, and institutional assets is why. So lots of institutional

67
00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:23.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Assets are permissioned. So you have KYC, AML, you have control built into the token layer,

68
00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:30.480
<v Matthew Dawson>Into the contract, so you can freeze, you can move tokens if needed. That gives them a

69
00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:37.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Lot more comfort. So I still get the question, oh, can I build on public Ethereum? It's

70
00:06:37.520 --> 00:06:42.880
<v Matthew Dawson>Permissionless, yeah, the base layer, which is what gives a lot of its great properties.

71
00:06:42.880 --> 00:06:47.840
<v Matthew Dawson>But you can program in at the application layer, all of the controls you need. And privacy is a

72
00:06:47.840 --> 00:06:54.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Really big one as well. Now you have confidential tokens, you can have ZK enabled privacy,

73
00:06:54.640 --> 00:07:02.240
<v Matthew Dawson>Importantly, all confidential, but compliant. So you can give special access to either the issuer

74
00:07:03.200 --> 00:07:09.040
<v Matthew Dawson>Or the regulator, so that the regulator can not necessarily like day to day be looking

75
00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:14.880
<v Matthew Dawson>At what everyone does. It's more like, if there's an incident, and it has to be investigated,

76
00:07:14.880 --> 00:07:21.840
<v Matthew Dawson>You can go and review it. So now we're starting to have the building blocks to feel comfortable

77
00:07:21.840 --> 00:07:27.440
<v Matthew Dawson>Really moving on. I think the next big unlock is, okay, the assets are on chain,

78
00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:34.480
<v Matthew Dawson>What do we do with them? There's already a lot of use cases, but there's still a little bit

79
00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:38.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Of a bridge to cross in terms of, okay, let's get all of these permissioned assets into

80
00:07:38.320 --> 00:07:45.200
<v Matthew Dawson>Lending pools, like Aave has, Aave Horizon or Uniswap with V4 have like permissioned pools.

81
00:07:45.200 --> 00:07:50.800
<v Matthew Dawson>So it's now upgrading historical permissionless DeFi infrastructure to meet permissioned

82
00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:54.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Institutional assets as well. That's incredible. Yeah, one of our guests here was Figure,

83
00:07:54.960 --> 00:08:00.560
<v Kinsa Durst>Which originated like $7 billion worth of loans, putting it on chain, securitizing it.

84
00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:05.280
<v Kinsa Durst>I think a lot of these quality assets coming on chain is allowing for on-chain assets to not

85
00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:11.360
<v Kinsa Durst>Be idle and farm sustainable yield, which is super exciting. Yeah. And Vitalik,

86
00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:16.320
<v Kinsa Durst>Speaking of privacy, the latest thing that Vitalik posted was kind of like towards the

87
00:08:16.320 --> 00:08:22.080
<v Kinsa Durst>Thesis of this ZK-EVM for Ethereum too, that supports different privacy functions.

88
00:08:22.080 --> 00:08:28.160
<v Matthew Dawson>And ZK-EVM is interesting as well because a lot of ZK research and billions of dollars

89
00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:34.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Have gone into it. Thanks to so many great teams in the ecosystem, it's got a dual purpose. It was

90
00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:41.120
<v Matthew Dawson>A lot about scaling. So we see like ZK L2s, but it has obviously privacy properties as well.

91
00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:48.400
<v Matthew Dawson>ZKing the EVM is super interesting. And the Ethereum roadmap, I think, is probably under

92
00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:56.000
<v Matthew Dawson>Communicated and under understood. Ethereum today is nothing like Ethereum in 2016, 2015.

93
00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:01.600
<v Matthew Dawson>It was proof of work, now it's proof of stake. That in itself is huge, let alone everything

94
00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:10.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Else has changed. Currently, if you want to verify an Ethereum block, every node verifies

95
00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:15.680
<v Matthew Dawson>Each transaction. It will get to the point in the next few years where you just have

96
00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:21.440
<v Matthew Dawson>One prover proving that that block is valid. And so you can scale the size of that block

97
00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:28.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Tremendously. It requires a lot of compute, but then all of the nodes or verifiers will just

98
00:09:28.320 --> 00:09:33.920
<v Matthew Dawson>Validate that that proof is valid. And so the scaling through ZKing the EVM is going to be

99
00:09:33.920 --> 00:09:38.800
<v Matthew Dawson>Really tremendous. So Ethereum is scaling significantly already through Glamsterdam,

100
00:09:38.800 --> 00:09:43.120
<v Matthew Dawson>It's going to have the biggest scaling event in its history, and it's only going to accelerate

101
00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:49.360
<v Matthew Dawson>From there. So I still get the idea that Ethereum is slow and expensive, because we all remember

102
00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:54.560
<v Matthew Dawson>Paying like $300 to an NFT, but it's just not the case anymore. I do want to maybe get like

103
00:09:55.840 --> 00:10:02.000
<v Kinsa Durst>Brief sentence or two or a few words on why Ethereum is the best for institutions to come

104
00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:06.320
<v Matthew Dawson>On versus any other chain out there. Yeah, I mean, it's clearly the best. You just have

105
00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:10.320
<v Matthew Dawson>To look at the figures that the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock largest bank

106
00:10:10.400 --> 00:10:15.760
<v Matthew Dawson>In the world, JP Morgan, and the world's largest custodian of US Treasury bills, Bank of New York,

107
00:10:15.760 --> 00:10:20.480
<v Matthew Dawson>Are all actively choosing Ethereum. Like the majority of their funds, the majority of their

108
00:10:21.520 --> 00:10:26.080
<v Matthew Dawson>Money market funds or capabilities are built on EVM and Ethereum. So that's clear. And why

109
00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:30.800
<v Matthew Dawson>Is that the case? Because of the things we touched on, it is the oldest Lindy,

110
00:10:30.800 --> 00:10:36.640
<v Matthew Dawson>It's consistently been up and continues to produce blocks. So it's reliable. And it has

111
00:10:36.640 --> 00:10:42.080
<v Matthew Dawson>The most used cases, the deepest liquidity, and the largest developer base. So all of these things

112
00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:46.560
<v Matthew Dawson>Make it the perfect thing for institutions and for everyone else that wants to put on a blockchain.

113
00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:54.000
<v Kinsa Durst>One thing I like to also touch on with all the guests is on AI. Are there institutional

114
00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:59.600
<v Kinsa Durst>Interest in AI? How are you guys dealing with this agentic payments, blah, blah, blah? I mean,

115
00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:03.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Agentic payments, I've been on I think two agentic payment panels in the past

116
00:11:03.520 --> 00:11:12.240
<v Matthew Dawson>Two weeks here and in Korea. It's all a buzz. For good reason. It's absolutely, I do believe the

117
00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:18.720
<v Matthew Dawson>Case that agentic finance is going to completely transform most people's lives in a really

118
00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:24.800
<v Matthew Dawson>Positive way. SharpLink and Joseph Chalom recently came out with a research report,

119
00:11:24.800 --> 00:11:29.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Essentially estimating that hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be put back into the

120
00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:36.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Pockets of consumers through the fees that are compressed by AI agents, but also through the fact

121
00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:43.200
<v Matthew Dawson>That AI will now essentially provide financial literacy to everyone. And finally, it will bring

122
00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:47.840
<v Matthew Dawson>Essentially attention in an attention deficit economy where you don't have to pay attention

123
00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:52.800
<v Matthew Dawson>To everything anymore because the agent is there to support you. And so I do think that the

124
00:11:52.800 --> 00:11:58.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Transformation is going to be fantastic. Are institutions currently calling me up and saying

125
00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:06.000
<v Matthew Dawson>What were you doing about agents? No. I think the beauty of Ethereum of a general purpose blockchain

126
00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:11.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Is that it can facilitate everything. And so what is the purpose of an agent? Ultimately,

127
00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:17.440
<v Matthew Dawson>We need it to bring efficiency and add value. In order to maximally add value, it has to be where

128
00:12:17.440 --> 00:12:23.280
<v Matthew Dawson>The value already is. So it can compress fees or it can optimize for opportunities. And that's why

129
00:12:23.280 --> 00:12:28.400
<v Matthew Dawson>We need to continue building the building blocks that agents will use. Outside of, you know,

130
00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:34.560
<v Matthew Dawson>We've got x402, we've got 8004, all of these standards that are going to be influential in

131
00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:40.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Agents operating on crypto rails, but they're going to use stablecoins. And they're going

132
00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:46.400
<v Matthew Dawson>To use tokenized funds, tokenized securities, and smart contracts. And so all of those are,

133
00:12:46.400 --> 00:12:50.640
<v Matthew Dawson>I think, value drivers and use cases for the agents to really deliver with.

134
00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:55.600
<v Kinsa Durst>Yeah, I'm really curious to see all the unlocks that agents bring. One of the conversations that

135
00:12:55.600 --> 00:13:01.520
<v Kinsa Durst>I had earlier, actually with Brett, was it's going to change from monthly subscription model to

136
00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:07.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Supporting microtransactions again, because agents can handle these microtransactions. And

137
00:13:07.760 --> 00:13:11.680
<v Kinsa Durst>I just hate subscription models. I hate managing all those.

138
00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:14.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Although my AI subscription model is great value.

139
00:13:14.640 --> 00:13:17.920
<v Kinsa Durst>That is true. I'm glad I don't have to pay API for that.

140
00:13:17.920 --> 00:13:23.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Token maxing on a weekly basis. Yeah, so except to see all the unlocks that it provides,

141
00:13:23.760 --> 00:13:28.560
<v Kinsa Durst>I guess, in terms of five-year horizon, 10-year horizon, there would be huge paradigm shifts.

142
00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:34.800
<v Matthew Dawson>Yeah, I think it's a five-year one. Like we always, in every industry, get a little bit

143
00:13:34.800 --> 00:13:42.560
<v Matthew Dawson>Ahead of ourselves. Actually, in my previous role before the EF, as a VC accelerator that came out

144
00:13:42.560 --> 00:13:52.400
<v Matthew Dawson>With a very comprehensive agentic post-web thesis. And I still think that a lot of that aligns with

145
00:13:52.400 --> 00:13:57.280
<v Matthew Dawson>The direction we're traveling. But if you're too early on these things, then we get really

146
00:13:57.280 --> 00:14:03.040
<v Matthew Dawson>Excited about it. Oh, it's right around the corner. And it will come, and it will be

147
00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:10.000
<v Matthew Dawson>Transformative. But like with everything that is so transformative, there's a few key unlocks,

148
00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:16.160
<v Matthew Dawson>User experience, agent trust, all of these things that need to come as everything else

149
00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:18.720
<v Matthew Dawson>Is adopted with them. Being too early is a thing.

150
00:14:19.520 --> 00:14:24.720
<v Matthew Dawson>100%. We are still early, by the way. We keep saying it, but we are.

151
00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:32.080
<v Kinsa Durst>I believe so. Super cool. And as we are at Token2049, we're in the middle of your APAC

152
00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:37.360
<v Kinsa Durst>Trip at KBW last week. Is there any message or what are you looking to get out of these

153
00:14:37.360 --> 00:14:41.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Conferences? Any message you want to send out to the audience as we send out these highlight clips?

154
00:14:42.400 --> 00:14:50.800
<v Matthew Dawson>Yeah, I mean, crypto is absolutely global and borderless, and increasingly, so is global

155
00:14:50.800 --> 00:14:57.280
<v Matthew Dawson>Finance. All of the major financial institutions have an office in Singapore as well. So we find

156
00:14:57.280 --> 00:15:04.080
<v Matthew Dawson>That whenever we're working with a global financial institution, we have people based in

157
00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:09.280
<v Matthew Dawson>Every large financial hub, as do they. And so we have to, we manage that globally as well,

158
00:15:09.280 --> 00:15:14.880
<v Matthew Dawson>Because most of these digital asset teams are globally dispersed. So that's where we

159
00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:19.040
<v Matthew Dawson>Have all of our touch points. But most of the work really, I would say, happens outside of

160
00:15:19.040 --> 00:15:24.880
<v Matthew Dawson>The conference week. This is good for meeting new people and taking advantage of everyone

161
00:15:24.880 --> 00:15:31.760
<v Kinsa Durst>Being in one spot. Well, since Ethereum Institutional spun out, what are some

162
00:15:31.760 --> 00:15:36.320
<v Kinsa Durst>Exciting projects or announcements that you're able to share? Because I know institutions are

163
00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:39.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Very sensitive with this topic. Yeah, that's a good point, actually. A lot of the work we do

164
00:15:39.760 --> 00:15:45.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Is all behind NDA. So we're used to people building in public and announcements after

165
00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:51.200
<v Matthew Dawson>Announcements. We have to wait for kind of a big bang. One that came out last month was

166
00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:56.000
<v Matthew Dawson>Revolut launching their euro stablecoin on Ethereum. Revolut is one of the largest

167
00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:01.280
<v Matthew Dawson>Intakes in the world, so super exciting with that and for what's to come. And we've touched

168
00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:08.080
<v Matthew Dawson>A little bit already, but the largest institutions are deploying. So Baillie Gifford have launched

169
00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:14.400
<v Matthew Dawson>BAGEY, which is with Bank of New York. BlackRock announced 14 new funds on Ethereum. So there's

170
00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:19.520
<v Matthew Dawson>Two money market funds and 12 cash shares, which are being tokenized with Securitize,

171
00:16:19.520 --> 00:16:23.440
<v Matthew Dawson>Bank of New York, JP Morgan, and JP Morgan launched a few money market funds as well.

172
00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:28.080
<v Matthew Dawson>So really significant. And I think that we're just going to see that increase now, because

173
00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:31.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Every subsequent one's a little bit easier once you've gone through that process. So

174
00:16:31.760 --> 00:16:34.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Definitely a lot more to come. Those are some big names and

175
00:16:35.040 --> 00:16:40.000
<v Matthew Dawson>Big liquidity injected here. Without a doubt, yeah. I mean, multi-billions or any of those.

176
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:46.400
<v Kinsa Durst>Awesome. I did want to ask, I don't know. Yeah, it depends on you. But do you,

177
00:16:46.400 --> 00:16:52.640
<v Kinsa Durst>When institutions come and they want to get on team, do you recommend L2s or do you push them

178
00:16:52.640 --> 00:17:00.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Towards the L1? Yeah, I mean, L2s have, I mean, they've had a tough time, ups and downs.

179
00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:07.280
<v Matthew Dawson>I am a massive fan of L2s. I think that the L2 roadmap will prove to be a stroke of genius,

180
00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:12.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Because especially for an institution, and Robinhood is a great example and success story

181
00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:18.240
<v Matthew Dawson>As it's Coinbase and Base, the ability to have your own chain with a lot of control,

182
00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:22.960
<v Matthew Dawson>But not have to bootstrap a validator network, to be able to inherit Ethereum security,

183
00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:29.040
<v Matthew Dawson>Interop, and that rich ecosystem is so valuable. And I think we'll only see that increase as

184
00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:33.680
<v Matthew Dawson>L2 technology improves, as does interop, and we see larger and larger financial institutions

185
00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:38.960
<v Kinsa Durst>Leverage that. Yeah, I think as you were in KBW, GIWA chain is launching very, very,

186
00:17:38.960 --> 00:17:44.640
<v Kinsa Durst>That's right, Upbit, the largest exchange in Korea's, their own L2 on Ethereum.

187
00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:48.880
<v Kinsa Durst>Exactly. So yeah, we'll see how well they do following up on Robinhood's success.

188
00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:52.960
<v Matthew Dawson>Yeah, and I guess the opposite end of that spectrum is we see JP Morgan is on an EVM

189
00:17:52.960 --> 00:17:56.640
<v Matthew Dawson>Private chain, Kinexys, that does like $7 billion in volume a day now,

190
00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:02.560
<v Matthew Dawson>Increasing interop between private Ethereum chains and public Ethereum chains through

191
00:18:02.560 --> 00:18:09.600
<v Matthew Dawson>ZK Gateways or cross-chain solutions, and that will really help onboard institutions as well.

192
00:18:09.600 --> 00:18:15.440
<v Kinsa Durst>Okay. Well, everyone's gaining on chain. Yeah. And maybe one interesting thing that's

193
00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:21.600
<v Matthew Dawson>Different in this industry than many others is often what we see is like challenges and

194
00:18:21.600 --> 00:18:26.400
<v Matthew Dawson>New startups or particularly FinTechs really pushing the pace. And in some ways, we've seen

195
00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:31.760
<v Matthew Dawson>The FinTechs do that. But because the upfront investment for blockchain adoption is quite

196
00:18:31.760 --> 00:18:36.320
<v Matthew Dawson>Significant, what we really see is the largest institutions, like we talked about BlackRock,

197
00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:41.360
<v Matthew Dawson>JP Morgan, et cetera, really pushing the pace because they have both the resources,

198
00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:47.440
<v Matthew Dawson>Capability, and desire to both manage the initial risk, work closely with the ecosystem,

199
00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:50.960
<v Matthew Dawson>And to really lead the way. So it's kind of flipped on its head a little bit. Yeah.

200
00:18:50.960 --> 00:18:54.960
<v Matthew Dawson>And so then we'll see all of those learnings and capabilities picked up by the rest of the

201
00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:59.440
<v Matthew Dawson>Ecosystem, I think, and accelerate the rest of the adoption. Yeah. They're slow to start,

202
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:03.520
<v Matthew Dawson>But once they get rolling, it's impossible. Suddenly, then all at once.

203
00:19:03.520 --> 00:19:09.200
<v Kinsa Durst>Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Super exciting. And if the audience wants to find out more about

204
00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:14.160
<v Kinsa Durst>Or businesses, institutions want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to make that happen?

205
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:23.920
<v Matthew Dawson>Yeah. So our website is ethereuminstitutional.org. We're on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn.

206
00:19:23.920 --> 00:19:25.920
<v Matthew Dawson>And you're on Twitter as well?

207
00:19:25.920 --> 00:19:33.120
<v Matthew Dawson>I am on Twitter, ismiMatthew. We're going to start increasing our content as well.

208
00:19:33.520 --> 00:19:40.640
<v Matthew Dawson>With, obviously, an institutional focus. So I think there's still a lot to communicate about

209
00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:46.000
<v Matthew Dawson>What's already happening on Ethereum. We have by far the most institutional deployments,

210
00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:50.480
<v Matthew Dawson>So we need to start bringing attention to that, but also kind of documenting

211
00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:53.760
<v Matthew Dawson>Playbooks and success stories, how institutions can adopt it as well.

212
00:19:53.760 --> 00:19:59.280
<v Kinsa Durst>Yeah. I think success stories, playbooks, the more... I think it's really under communicated,

213
00:19:59.280 --> 00:20:05.280
<v Kinsa Durst>Like you mentioned, but there's a lot going on under the hood. So excited to see what happens

214
00:20:05.280 --> 00:20:10.160
<v Kinsa Durst>In the near future. Fantastic. Thank you for hopping on. Appreciate you making time.

215
00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:11.680
<v Matthew Dawson>My pleasure. Thank you very much.