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Are Institutions Coming To DeFi?
Recorded: Aug. 27, 2025 Duration: 1:02:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been so long I came out of my party with you
I feel alone, feel at home, feel like nothing is true
She took me to a place that my senses gave way
Turning round, shutting down, the people say Climbing up, killing town, let them give you some Thank you. Cause everybody else knows what they're taking tonight.
I just want to play it right.
We're gonna have that tonight. I I've been walking the line of my own.
Lift me up to the stars, we are coming home.
I only got a taste, but we're out of time.
We get sold in the cold, physical divine.
So free, send me out on the the run Lift me up to the sun
To the sun
We're gonna die
We're gonna die
It's the way
That you fake it
I know it's to me
But I
I just wanna play you right
We're gonna get there tonight
I just wanna take you down.
We're going to bring you home. We're going to bring you home. Oh, my God. I just wanna take you down, we're gonna bring you home So so
so GM, GM, everybody. Welcome back to another banger show with Zibu. Zibu is a programmable,
decentralized settlement protocol for global B2B finance, powering $10 billion in cross-border payments. Today, we're talking about our institutions
coming to DeFi, and we've got some incredible guest speakers to dive into this conversation
with. And as always, we've got Tree in the co-host spot with me, building growth engines
in Web3 and comms at Zebu Official. Tree, how is it going today, homie? You're excited
official treat. How is it going today, homie? You excited for the show?
for the show.
Good morning. Good morning. Really excited for this one. Yeah, it's been great today.
How are you, Jack?
Dude, I'm good. I'm good. The weather is a little unusual in the UK. What I mean by that
is the sun is currently out in August, which, you know, that's not usual. But I'm feeling
good about it. I'm feeling good about actually getting some vitamin D for a change.
No, it's great to hear.
It's great.
Yeah, I know.
I've heard the weather out there.
It's pretty crazy.
One day it's sunny, one hour it's sunny, one minute it's sunny, and then it's rainy, and
then it comes back.
But yeah, we have a really great panel today, a really great conversation, and I'm super
excited to get this thing going.
Awesome.
Yeah, me too.
I cannot wait.
And as mentioned, incredible guest speakers that Zibu have lined up today.
And for our listeners, if you are excited for this type of show, I think it's really
important to still provide education during times of up markets, which we're in right
now.
So get the likes out, get the retweets out, anything you can do to show support.
And definitely follow Zibu and the other guest speakers on stage if you do like the content that we provide you today and speaking of guest speakers we have
centaur with us today the institutional defi layer we have infinify with us today higher yields no
leverage better than banks we've also got eric with us today the head of ecosystem at nubaru
chain nubaru chain is the web free hub ushering in the next era of money. We've also
got Rank with us today. Launch your DeFi fund. Build a transparent on-chain track record. Deploy
no-code algo strategies. Attract investors and earn performance fees. And so look, basically,
we've got a lot of builders in the industry. This sort of conversation isn't brought to you by
creators. It's brought to you by actual developers and builders in this industry, founders, co-founders, senior members of the team really diving into this because that's exactly who honestly knows before anyone else does what's going on because usually that's where the strategy lies and that's how they're building.
So I cannot wait to dive in for our speakers. If you've not been on a show with myself, Tree, or the ZBoo team before,
quick TLDR about how we run these shows, and then we're just going to dive straight in.
Basically, we're just going for organic conversation today,
so you guys get the mic when you want it, essentially.
When I say this, I do need a helping hand from you.
So there is a hand raise function, no pun intended.
You can find it by the hot plus function.
You click on that bottom right-hand corner of your screen, right next to the comment section and you'll see like a little hand raise basically
get the hand in the air we'll get the mic straight over to you that's as simple as i can put it now
if that isn't incentive enough we do also have jack points on the show jack points are the most
worthless points in the entire crypto space maybe even the world but you do get jack points every
time you raise your hand in the air.
At the end of the show, we'll bundle those points together
and we'll see who gets the W, who gets the win today.
Winner won't get anything though, just very, very clear.
When I say worthless, I mean it.
No utility, please don't hit me in the DMs afterwards.
Jack, what do I do with these points?
Absolutely nothing except for gamifying a show.
But if you do catch me IRL,
my arm can be twisted to get you a pint.
If you've got enough Jack points, Jack, what's going on here? You're giving me all these points.
I can't do anything. Yeah. I'll grab you a pint or coffee, whatever you prefer. But you will have
to find me. It will have to be in a bull market. Otherwise I will hide from all of you guys. If
it is a bear market, because I ain't, I ain't buying beers or coffees when there's a bear market because I ain't buying beers or coffees when there's a bear market in town.
So find me soon. Okay, guys, that's it. Let's dive in. Really should be a fun one today.
Honestly, a really educational one as well. So I cannot wait for this for our speakers.
Tree, I'll throw the question over to you first, and then we'll see if we can get some hands up from our speakers. Are institutions coming to DeFi? What's your take on this? Do you think
they're coming?
Yeah, I would say the answer is definitely yes. We've seen massive changes over the last couple of years specifically. And I even saw yesterday how the US government's going to be putting all
their economic data on the blockchain, which is massive. In terms of regulation, in terms of DeFi,
doesn't mean much. But in terms of the acceptance of blockchain across the markets,
it's a massive step.
So in terms of that, the regulation that's been kind of aligned over the
over the next little bit.
And then also stable coins has been a massive push towards DeFi.
You see that with the price action of Ethereum.
We've had, I think, like $450 billion of, like, the Ethereum inflows on the ETFs are actually
outweighing the Bitcoin ETFs now. So there's massive, massive moves coming, as well as the
regulation on different compliance. And that really helps products to be available and to develop. So
once we kind of have that baseline set, you'll see a lot more products
come into the limelight. We have amazing products now that are just trying to kind of, you know,
maneuver in between that gray area of what's compliant and what's not in different regions.
But, you know, we've seen more and more day after day, more compliance and push towards DeFi.
more compliance and push towards DeFi.
Yeah, yeah.
I've definitely seen this my side as well,
just speaking to projects on panels.
I've seen a lot of people build in that sort of understanding
that actually we need to be a little bit more institutional friendly.
Like, you know, like we actually have to build ourselves now,
not just for retail, but also for institutional players.
And then you've got that, right?
You've got these digital asset treasuries.
That term just keeps getting thrown around,
but it is important.
It's the micro strategies.
It's also, you know, a couple of ETH plays
on that side as well,
where these like traditional stock companies
are buying a bunch of Bitcoin or Ethereum
or other assets as part of their treasury portfolio.
So yeah, yeah, really interesting stuff. I cannot wait wait to dive into it and we've got some great speakers with
the hand raise already coming in for some early jack points let's get the mic over to centaur i
think your hand was up first mike over to you yeah thank you great to be here interesting points
regarding ethereum uh was just mentioned because because the crypto treasuries,
we did reports on that recently.
And for example, Ethereum treasury holdings were I think around a billion in April and
they're close to 20 billion now.
So I think it shows some of the interest that's coming there.
It's a typical rotation of the market that we've seen in previous cycles, only it's much slower and much larger.
The institutions, they are just moving at a different pace, but they are moving in much larger volumes.
In terms of DeFi, we develop a lot of strategies for institutions to participate in protocols
and a lot of larger players, they are not looking to hold just Ethereum, right, or just
some Bitcoin or an asset.
They want to outperform the market and DeFi way the way to do that really and if it means even just getting a
few percent that is extremely beneficial and there have been a lot of blockers for especially
traditional financial institutions to do this the main one regulation like was mentioned but also
infrastructure problems like custody of assets, and then certain risk
in DeFi, right? I mean, there were a lot of hacks, especially like around the last cycle,
that didn't really inspire confidence. Like if you were, I don't know, innovation manager at the bank,
I think you would have a hard time arguing for deploying assets in in defy but this always is changing quite rapidly so
public sentiment is changing we're seeing more interest and with the infrastructure improving
this interest can actually turn into real value as well yeah look on the regulation and also the
the capital injection side i think they they have really, really good takes.
I think that is something that is shaping the industry right now.
And, you know, just that security to get involved.
And then once those big players come in, people start, you know, questioning, hey, well, if they're going in, why?
And shouldn't we be getting exposed to this stuff?
So I think that's really where the conversation lies today, right?
Is our institutions coming to DeFi? Yeah, yeah, I think that's really where the conversation lies today right is are institutions
coming to defi yeah yeah i think that's that's a definite how quickly are they going to come in
and what's the impact like what's the impact of these guys coming in and how are they entering
because i think for me one of the questions i still have is are institutions coming into DeFi in a way where it's like, hey, this industry is,
and when I say industry, I mean finance, is going to be disrupted. And if we don't get
a foot in the door right now, we could be left behind. Is that the thinking behind some of this
involvement? Or is it more of an exposure play and right now our institutions more dipping their
toes in and they you know they just want to diversify and they realize this is a product
that they should have diversification in right now that's really interesting to me i'd love to
hear what you guys have on those thoughts and but first let's get the mic over to infinify
who's been incredibly patient infinify mic over to Of course. Great to see you guys today. Good to see you, Jack.
So, at least from my perspective, I think the answer is, well, obviously yes. But how they're coming in, there's several different ways that I've seen them kind of poking around in our industry.
One is on the truly crypto-native side, which is things like DATs, where they're getting exposure to Bitcoin,
exposure to Ethereum, more beta plays, where they're basically playing the market, same as us,
and then trying to figure out a way, like Centora was saying, they're trying to figure out how to
beat the market and who can help them beat the market. So those plays are a bit more in the traditional trading side of things,
and that is one set of the TradFi folks who are showing up.
On another set, you have people who are here after the tokenization,
and they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we take our traditional assets,
bring them on-chain, and use on-chain systems to improve their performance.
What we're offering, we're angling to offer them that.
They've also been pursuing it a lot, and the ones that you've seen is things like Morpho
and Apollo's work together, which I'm honestly not sure how much of that has happened at
the moment, but I know that the intent is basically to take tokenized ACRED and run loops on it.
And so far as I know, that is, in fact, public knowledge.
But the angle there is they're using DeFi mechanisms to improve the returns of conventional assets.
So that's kind of a middle ground where they're not really just trading the assets.
They're actually involved in DeFi using DeFi mechanics on these traditional asset classes.
And then really third and final, you've got the deepest market penetration that they haven't really gotten that far along with, which is direct use of DeFi.
DeFi. And I personally think that that one is probably going to be the one that takes the
And I personally think that that one is probably going to be the one that takes the longest.
longest. Though there is an interesting shortcut where companies
entering the market with DATs may seek to utilize
DeFi mechanisms, trusted and fairly well-known
ones, that is, to improve the returns
on their asset stacks by running cash and carry
trades.
And I was on a roll-up there talking about this.
I absolutely see myself being able to make a play for that.
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there involving almost short-circuiting the time that it would take to get into DeFi from a traditional perspective, just because they're already holding digital assets on their books.
Yeah, that's a crazy thought, right?
Because we are talking about tens of billions of dollars across these DATs at this point.
I think MicroStrategy alone has a couple billion, if not way, way more at this point.
at this point. What do you feel like that means for the industry? Where will the impacts of these
What do you feel like that means for the industry?
projects, or sorry, not projects really, these businesses getting involved in DeFi with billions
and billions of dollars of these underlying assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana,
Larner seem to be the main free players right now.
seem to be the main three players right now?
Is that just up for grabs?
Oh, that's for you. That's back at you.
Sorry.
Yeah, I know. Where do I see that?
It's going to force this industry to become a lot more focused and a lot more genuine.
There's a lot of things out there right now
that are just shell games
where the yield on many of the assets in DeFi
doesn't scale because the yield
is so wholly speculative around a much smaller asset.
And I think a lot of that gets washed out.
You end up seeing the underpinnings of yield and DeFi
almost collapse onto a stable platform
where you actually can achieve scale.
So things like PTUSDE, PTSUSDE,
they'll continue to have good yields because Athena is huge.
But I think many of the smaller cap stuff gets eaten up much quicker
and you see less explosive yield around it.
And just because there's high demand at scale, well, those smaller things that can't soak up as much are not going to be able to soak it up.
They're going to reach their cap. Their yields are going to compress.
And we're going to see normalization of yields except for genuine sources of it.
So things like lending, things like the basis trade
that Athena has on. Those are not going to compress as easily because they can soak up a lot more
size. Things like RWAs, I think, will become a lot more prevalent in this world just because
billions of dollars of capital getting injected into this industry, it has to flow somewhere.
And it's looking to capitalize on the ability of this industry to soak up capital but at the same
time we're going to have to find new places to put all of that capital just because unless you're
talking pure beta it's pretty hard to shove that much money into DeFi without compressing yields
yeah that's that's going to be really interesting especially like how how those projects like those defi protocols that
are going to try and go for that institutional funding how they operate like will there be
a little bit like the you know the traditional space will there be sort of funds that only
institutional investors can get access to and returns based on you know big big deposits
and will retail you know have their own pots or will
certain projects just go full institution and you you know you just can't get access to those yields
if you're just retail it's gonna be really really interesting honestly a couple years like i think
this is gonna you know it's happening now but i think it's really to understand like what products
are gonna work and where institutions go you're just you're gonna have to see see that play out so yeah great great takes
there i'm assuming that's rob behind the account but correct me if i'm wrong um centura i'll throw
the mic back over to you all right cheers rob uh let's get the mic back over to centura and then
i'd love to hear from eric and rank on this one yeah just um some some really good points from rob specifically i think
protocols more than any anyone else have to keep in mind that um a lot of the dynamics in defy have
been less than organic right so umFi application, things like that.
But it's good to keep in mind that many of the larger institutional players, they are
not fooled by this, right?
There might be some that are looking at short term, in the short term taking advantage of
these incentives but long term they are looking
at real yield and and the underlying mechanics that can that can drive you know consistent
returns rather than just a singular momentary boost that is artificial right so that is going
to be that's going to be a big one for protocols,
like especially many of the smaller protocols
that maybe don't have that many active users,
they need to figure out
how to enable that real yield for the users.
Look, really loving the insights shared on stage
at the moment, really being able to sort of future predict
here from the takes and appreciate you guys. And just taking an hour out of your day to give us these insights as well.
And would love to hear from Eric and rank on this. I can see Eric's actually just popped his hand up.
So Eric, Mike, over to you. We'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, where this all is going to
go, institutions coming to DeFi. Yeah, thanks. I think that knowing where the yield comes from is important, especially for institutions.
Yeah, institutions are looking for more stable returns, longer term returns.
And so, I mean, we've been looking not at inflationary token yield, but more at like funding rate yield, right? From like
setting up basis trades or leverage looping from stable coins like into treasury bills.
So because those yields on their own might not be as attractive, they're also a little difficult
to set up. I think a lot of new protocols could benefit from looking at vaults and from
lot of new protocols could benefit from looking at vaults and from automating this process and
then having those vaults be compliant with like whatever the institutions would like and then
doing it more like uh i would say like uh oriented towards right with the like the kind of the
interfaces that the institutions are like used to and then you have to like talk to them like
they're not just gonna browse the internet or browse crypto twitter looking for what solution to use right
like you have to go where they are you have to like go where they where they uh network and when
where they meet with new projects and then because a lot of it is like reputation and and um trust
so i think that yeah i mean we're going to see more projects targeting institutions i don't think
that um we should like abandon retail or like pivot away from it i think that, yeah, I mean, we're going to see more projects targeting institutions. I don't think that we should like abandon retail or like pivot away from it.
I think that there's always going to be retail products, especially ones that like don't enforce, like don't don't need to like KYC and are targeted for like the average user. with everyone moving towards institutions now, let's not forget the reason why we're here
is to create a bank account in your pocket
that you can just access on your own
and not have to sign up for something
or not have to start giving out your data
in order to access your finances.
Yeah, look, I absolutely agree.
And I definitely share that sentiment and that hope that you know
we we don't move too far away from still retail retail native products and yeah without the sort
of loopholes that you might have to go through elsewhere but really really interesting takes
here i i guess so consensus being institutions aren't just coming to defy they're sort of here
and they're looking right now. And
I guess then it becomes, you know, how they're getting that exposure and where they're getting
that exposure. And Eric, you know, I've heard this from you. I've heard this from other speakers on
other panels, but yeah, definitely, you know, they're not finding you from X. You know, and
also the due diligence that is required on that side is much much deeper
is what i hear as well you know you can't there's no white paper that is going to bring an
institution in like there is there's no roadmap that is going to bring an institution in it's
very much going to be like sit downs it's going to be hey look here's our product here's where
the yield comes from and basically giving a little bit of a deep dive
into your project and allowing them to do that due diligence.
I think a lot more work coming up for some projects right now.
And yeah, really, really interesting start to this conversation.
Really appreciate all our speakers.
Rank, we haven't heard from you guys yet.
I think X might be bugging though.
So I might have missed a hand. would love to throw the mic over to you and just see if you've got any
further insight in terms of how institutions are going to come to defy and what we should be paying
attention to in the industry like what's going to be like a first mover etc yeah i think they're
you know kind of all coming to a similar consensus here, which is that like truly scalable
yield kind of boils down to a few of the same sort of yield generation engines that still
exist in the traditional financial system, but we're replicating them now with DeFi protocols.
So we have, you know, essentially liquidity provision, we have basis trading and lending.
But I think we have another really interesting thing that is crypto native,
which is staking. And I think that it's pretty relevant to point out that, for example,
Vanak just filed for an ETF for Jitosol, which is a liquid staking token. So I think that we'll
see more stuff perhaps on the liquid staking token front.
So that's sort of something that I would view as quite unique to crypto outside of basis trading or providing liquidity.
So we might see some more moves in that front. It'd be interesting to see what happens there.
happens there obviously the sec put out a statement uh saying that they that they are
approved or likely not going to classify that as a as a security so i think we'll see more with
with lsts to come soon um and yeah other than that it's hard to say something else than has
already been put out there in this panel it's a highly knowledgeable group of people
no appreciate you,
Nick.
And yeah,
look,
a great,
great start to this conversation.
And I honestly,
I think we needed that deep dive to sort of push this forward and hope the
listeners have enjoyed this.
Assume they have,
this is a ton more of you who've hopped in.
So really do appreciate the support,
get the likes and retweets out.
If you have just hopped in and do make sure you follow in the speakers up on
stage.
If you like this sort of conversation, that's,'s you know essentially just shows us like this is the
content you want we'll produce more of it that's simple and also follow zebu we do these on the
weekly so that's just a great way to get the announcements for the spaces as they happen same
time each week tree we've just heard from all of our speakers a lot, a lot to go through here in terms of where people are coming into DeFi and what that means for the industry.
How is Eboo looking at this?
Is there anything that you feel we need to still talk about or where do you feel the challenges are to this?
Because a lot of it is predominantly positive.
but yeah like institutions coming in with that capital we've already heard a couple of
But yeah, like institutions coming in with that capital.
issues in terms of hey you know the scale like how how much can actually be absorbed to still
offer the right yield amounts those institutional layers honestly costing a lot more in terms of
time from these individual projects that sometimes are pretty thin on the ground with employees like
how is ebu looking at this and looking to prepare for like institutions really hopping into the defy space yeah i think um basically kind of what was
said uh i think it was said earlier and we talked about it in a former space uh it comes to like
real yield um versus just like token emissions and i think um like I said, Zeebo and many other protocols kind of focus on what
that means. And it's actual getting a return from loaning out your money. So as a user, if you're
putting it to, I mean, traditional banking, you put it into your account, you get 0.5% or 1% or
something like that. Well, the bank kind of, you know, loans out for mortgages and stuff like that while the bank kind of you know uh loans it out for mortgages and stuff like that at five six seven percent whatever the um the base rates are um and at zebu like if you were to
take our zebu token and put it in our house you would get a return based on the um based on what
um the the transaction volume that's coming through and helping process these billions of dollars of
on-chain rails. So I think for a couple things, having everything open transfer on the blockchain,
so seeing all the different transactions and knowing where the yield's coming from versus
kind of just speculatory uh token emissions that's going to
be something that's um a really uh probably uh needed in the space and and needed moving forward
and in d5 for institutions to kind of take that uh seriously but yeah i think we kind of touched
on a lot of good points here um i'm not really sure if I have anything to add on that specific stuff.
No, no, that's great. And honestly, really, really interesting to get so many projects at ConsenSys here with everyone on stage. So, you know, just tells a lot and paints a really
clear picture, I think, for us in the audience. Okay, let's talk a little bit more about these
challenges because we heard a take that, you know, I think it was Eric was speaking around my concern that retail might be left a little bit in the lurch here.
I'd love to hear from any other speakers on this because I feel it's worth diving into further because obviously I'm retail.
I think a lot of the listeners will be a mix of retail, institutional, et cetera.
of the listeners will be a mix of retail institutional etc um so when it comes to
retail here's my big concern is as a project i completely understand following the money right
like this is a new industry you guys have already taken a ton of risk just by building here the
regulations are now coming in and finally you're seeing real real adoption and tons of funds come in but it is
coming in through institutions and my concern is okay well that's exactly where you guys now need
to focus because you want to obviously get the biggest piece of the pie that you can get to
continue to build and develop and i guess that could mean that retail essentially aren't going to see the sort
of products that have been on offer in previous seasons or the focus on them as an end user that
they've seen in previous seasons and then a bigger question and you guys you know come at this we we
can sort of do this in two parts and but then is like will defy still be defy like with all these
institutions coming
in, they like it working a certain way. They're there for the returns. There's another concern
that a lot of retail participants like DeFi for its purity. And there's a big, big narrative around
that. We've seen central banks make a lot of mistakes and we've seen the general public
basically pay for those consequences, not the people in charge and i guess
you know if it does start stepping away from that are we essentially just going to reform ourselves
to fit where the money is uh so yeah great great conversation so far i've seen centora and rank
come in for this one so i'll get the mic over to them oh a bunch of hands look to see it was quite
a hot question so really really excited to hear some answers to this one. Centora, Mike over to you first.
Yeah, I think actually that it won't really be an issue.
Like we've seen, for example,
one of the more let's say institutional
DeFi infrastructure plays of the past several months
is like the risk curators or vaults or, yeah,
how you want to name those those structures
and they are often both targeted at institutions and at retail and there may be additional benefits
for for very large depositors like in the behind the scenes kind of deals. But generally, most of these vaults that are curated by, well,
by Centora or by other companies like that provide this kind of solutions, they are also
available to retail. So I don't think it might actually make things a lot easier for retail
as well, because all you have to do is click deposit and and you
don't need to worry about like liquidity in a market or whether you know you need to rebalance
a specific position you have or other complicated things like you don't need to do any of that
yeah that is a really good other side of that coin right is the biggest issue for the past
honestly since defi sort of existed is liquidity and like being
caught in these pools i have none and where you you know you're looking on digital paper
very very good but then you try and take any of those funds out and it's like oh no actually
no no no that money doesn't exist so yeah yeah great take uh let's throw the mic over to rank
who was up next rank
over to you yeah i mean i completely agree with that i'd also like to point out that i don't think
that historically defy is necessarily known for its user experience so i think that a lot more
of these you know vault type protocols that exist uh just essentially serve as a more automated
front end for uh not only, but also for retail to
interact with the DeFi products as well. Because, you know, for the majority of the users, they
likely don't want to have to configure their own strategies, and they're probably just going to
want to use something that's proven to work. And to that point, just like there are a bunch of
projects focusing on the institutional side, there are a lot of projects also, especially this cycle, that are focused on simplifying
the user experience for retail. So I think overall, maybe yields will be compressed a bit
because there will be a lot more liquidity overall. But I do think that it will actually
be even simpler than before for retail. And thus, i think we'll end up onboarding more users
overall because the simpler it is to use and the more trustworthy that it even looks
is enough to to convert a lot more users than than maybe we have before
so that's my opinion awesome nick and yeah hopefully a lot of concerns being alleviated here
both upstage for me but also for the audience as well. I think Rob also had a take on this Infinify. Over to you.
And then I don't think it's going to change that much.
But also, I do think it is going to change.
So if you're already in there, I don't think your experience will change that much.
But if you're a new participant, I think a lot of people are not going to be on board in the traditional way where you have a key, you know, a seed phrase where you have to go through these hoops to keep yourself safe.
a seed phrase where you have to go through these hoops to keep yourself safe.
I think what we're seeing here is a collision of two concepts.
This is actually dovetails pretty well in the dialectics and the concepts
therein.
You have a thesis,
you have a antithesis and the collision and annihilation of both them
produces a synthesis.
The thesis here is TradFi.
DeFi is the antithesis, and what comes after these two collide will be distinct and different
than both.
It'll have elements of our cypherpunk ethos, but it'll also have the retail-friendly front
end that your mother will actually use.
You know, I don't think most of retail is ever going to be onboarded to DeFi because most of
retail doesn't care about finance the way that we do. Most people don't want to spend their days
He's thinking about which points program is going to give them the best ROI on their airdrop or judging the counterparty risk of the latest offering.
thinking about which points program is going to give them the best ROI on their airdrop,
Most retail just wants to deposit their money and have, you know, when they tap at the pay to go terminal with their phone, that the transaction goes through.
So I think we see a lot more money from the institutions coming in because the institutions are a buffer for retail.
And simultaneously, I think we also grow into institutions ourselves and even start to displace some of the existing players in this new world.
If you want to see a great example of someone who's already traveled down this path, probably one of the furthest of all of us, take a look at EtherFi.
They are, I believe, now the scale of some of the world's
largest neobanks and they are marketing direct to retail and they're doing a killer job so
i think it does change for the new retail participants but if you're already here
it probably stays pretty similar great takes across the board here uh that one made me chuckle as well um feeling
very seen on just like hitting you know hitting that pay pass or uh the contactless and just
hoping the the transaction goes through and that's all i care about um maybe beating inflation right
like i think on a on a serious note um that is something that we cannot do right now.
It's ridiculous how high increases are in terms of inflation
and how little you can get in return for interest.
We're seeing a big, big cut of that across the UK right now
as they lower rates, but it also means your savings are essentially earning nothing,
and nothing, no matter how much you are, if you're in just traditional sort of savings in the UK.
no matter how much you are, if you're in just traditional savings in the UK.
And yeah, yeah, the hope is that DeFi will give people exposure in a way that they can compete a
little bit more and get those bigger returns. And yeah, I understand why, you know, a better user
experience and just being able to do that all off your phone without having to have a wallet and
understand the seed phrase and yeah understand the risks that yeah yeah that
is something that most people are going to want um okay super positive so far i think consensus
as well across speakers if anyone thinks there's any other challenges or any potential concerns to
institutions coming in please do raise their hand. Otherwise, yeah, I'm assuming
consensus here that predominantly, this is a positive thing. It might not all be positive
straight away. But overall, yeah, it's going to mean, you know, more liquidity, more security,
less risk, and, you know, better returns and user experience, or at least similar returns
and better user experience. So my next question, and we touched on this at the very start of the space,
but the degenerates amongst us,
but also the people who are looking to get a little bit more involved,
which I would assume would be people listening to this space
because they're here, tuning in right now,
and we appreciate you 100%.
So that's why I'm going to ask the question we're about to ask for our listeners
and do get the likes and retweets out if you want to support this um where do we see the you know
maybe the lesser known upside and the thing that is coming to mind here is rob mentioned rwas
because essentially what we are saying is institutions are coming and they're coming very, very well.
And because of that, there is going to be a lot more liquidity at play.
But also with that liquidity, yields will compress, which means the returns aren't going to be as good as some of the returns we can get in smaller volume.
volume rwas obviously have a ton of opportunity there to you know really help contain and maybe
even just keep those returns at the levels they are today are there any other areas that we feel
are primed to support this increase in liquidity and how might we take advantage of that you know
is it simple as finding like some rwa projects or even just defi projects that have exposure to rwas to
you know continue that yield is that a better place to put that money would love to know from
your perspectives up on stage you know what what are the future positives that are going to come
from these institutional funds and as somebody who's maybe more retail orientated who might be
in the show right now how would you look to take advantage of them for our listeners i will just remind you this isn't a financial advice show
this is builders who are just in the industry i'm getting their perspective on it so non-financial
advice please still do your own research but you're just very interested what our speakers
might have to say on this centora mike over to you thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I would argue that in DeFi,
there is currently, to a certain extent,
an unsustainable demand mechanic
where we need more demand for capital.
And that would help cushion
a little bit like the yield compression, right?
And the reason why we don't have enough demand
is because most strategies that institutions are deploying
are very like, you know, like looping,
looping for more yield and things like that.
We actually would need things that are more closer to real yield.
So where there's real economic value being pursued.
And because there is real economic value,
people are more eager to supply capital and things like that.
So for example, one idea that I can't mention too much about that we're doing
something with this DeFi insurance, right? So this is one situation where there is a real economic
problem in DeFi. That is that institutions want to deploy capital, but in traditional finance,
there's usually insurances for specific kinds of scenarios. And in De DeFi there's not really something like that so it's a
point of it's an issue and they wouldn't mind paying like a lot of these
institutions wouldn't mind paying one or two percent in order to have this kind
of insurance right the so this would create a lot of demand for capital and
that could boost yields as well so this is an example there is a lot of things like
this that could be developed that are more bordering on yeah like maybe more traditional
financial structures that they're replicated in DeFi that actually have a real use case
a real use case.
Okay, yeah, this obviously makes a ton of sense.
And I guess, look, some of what is being sold for here is just an injection of more
liquidity, right?
Like, I know that might sound simple, but, you know, fractionalizing and just crypto
in general, the hope is that, you know know you can get more exposure or people with lesser
funds to get more exposure to some of these areas that they might be interested in getting exposure
to like there's a big almost you know epidemic at the moment of millennials in these sort of
more affluent areas of the world the us the uk cetera, where they just can't get on the property
ladder at this point. And when we talk about RWAs, I do think a lot about residential and also,
you know, just basically real estate. And this idea that by fractionalizing and putting it on
the blockchain, you can now get access to real estate in a way that doesn't mean you need,
you know, maybe a 50 to a hundred thousand000 deposit. You need a steady income and having been in that job for five years
with that steady income to just get on the ladder,
now you can get exposure to a market that might be going in an upward trajectory immediately
and just have a little bit more confidence of,
look, I might not get that $50,000 for another 10 years,
but I have exposure to the market.
That means if there is going to increase in value, look, I might not get that $50,000 for another 10 years, but I have exposure to the market.
That means if there is going to increase in value, I've got a piece of my pie in there that's going to continue to gain traction as well.
And so, yeah, that's sort of where my head is at with what we're talking about with this funding.
Like, how does that injection of capital meeting fractionalization and the other benefits that blockchain can provide what does that do to an industry and what does that do to those specific parts of the industry that we're talking about like
rwas um let's get the mic over to infinify here what's your take on all this so when we're talking
about what the net sum i'm going to go off centora's comment, talking about why would people be bringing capital over here?
And then I'm also talking about what I'm also bullish on. In terms of
why people are bringing capital over here, I think
they're right. The question
right now with RDAs is the so what problem. I was talking to
someone fairly high up in wealth management yesterday just established veteran in the space what he was telling me is that
why is tradify coming here they're coming here because they're trying to find higher yields
they are beginning to see the yields start to go down in the traditional world as rate cuts are
approaching and they have so much money they don't know what to do with it.
That's why they've been buying houses like crazy, because they just don't know where to put the
money. This is ironically almost a good problem to have. But as retail has figured out that they
can invest in the stock market, not perform most wealth management, wealth management had to figure
out, okay, hey, how do we go make a better return on the market and what that looks like is that looks like them coming to defi seeking more
efficient solutions and that can take the role of you know these basis trades that are doing so
such high yield that can take the role of um fractionalized access to real estate investments
potentially that can take the role of a whole lot of things me personally i'm most bullish on what i'm doing which is uh we built a system that allows
you to take any asset in existence and concentrate your risk to get a higher return or access a
duration asset from a liquid position at a slightly lower return but still in a liquid position. And we think that that has very, very interesting proposition
for these institutions simply because the way that we're doing this
is by fundamentally increasing the efficiency in asset liability management
by cutting out humans and automating the whole process.
So I think there's a lot more unlocks in a similar vein there
where you can cut some fat from traditional financial processes
and end up actually increasing returns on an entire asset class
like what we're doing.
I think there will be more discoveries in this vein,
and I think that that's what's really going to serve
as the kickoff point for DeFi is as TradFi starts to use our systems on their existing asset sets just to get higher returns.
If you're asking for not financial advice on projects that I'm bullish about, I already showed the one that I personally think has made the biggest inroads to being a neobank.
So not going to do it again.
Fair enough, Rob.
And look, really do appreciate the takes on stage here.
And I hope the listeners understand
how deep these insights are going.
It's a really, really great show
and massive shout out again to everyone on stage right now.
Eric, we haven't heard from you for a second.
Would love to get a little long-term zoom out from you
before we do close out.
Where do you feel this is all going
from the institutionals coming into DeFi? We zoom out a couple of years what can we expect
uh well definitely the like the liquidity injections capital injections that'll make
the tvl of all these projects go up that'll make the um the revenue and the fees generated by all
these projects go up which will
then give them more resources to create better products i think that for retail the rwa play is
interesting because especially for younger generations i think that like as as people get
older you want to be able to tap into those markets and, for example, like, you know, I was never the same, the same way that like, um, an institution will never buy Bitcoin or most institutions, right? Like,
unless it's in the format of an ETF, like I was never interested in T-bills until I could just
buy it like a token. Uh, and then it was like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, I'll check it out. Like
I, I was not interested in that before. Right. Or like i i was not interested in that before right or like how people
were not interested in stocks until i'm buying like stocks until like robin hood made it like
a game or like gamification of it so i think it goes it goes both ways that like you know people
might not understand is like why tokenize rwa is like we already have these platforms and it's like
well these platforms aren't really good like you go to their sites and it looks like it was made in the 2000s and it's
like i have to like call a person like within business hours except for during their lunch
breaks or if they're out sick it's like what is that like you know compared to like i try to get
a loan and it was like the most archaic process ever i felt like i was writing a letter and then
sending it like in a horse-drawn carriage,
you know, like I,
and then I want to go back to Aave
where I can just like sit quietly alone
and just do this all myself.
So I don't know if other people feel that way,
but I definitely feel like,
yeah, these systems,
maybe now they're dominant
because the majority of people that have money
are like older generations,
but, you know, there's going to be,
every new generation is more and more tech savvy and more and more digital savvy and then they want these kinds of products they want they want it to be more um more like
using interfaces as opposed to dealing with like phone calls and dealing with these systems
that was so good and yeah yeah i think we've all been there in terms of like what what are we doing
right now look it's just a consequence i've learned like being in tech for you know basically
most of my work and life when you get these systems that cannot go down like they just can't
have any downtime and funnily enough global finance is one of those things that can't have any downtime and funnily enough global finance is one of those things that can't have any
downtime and what tends to happen is you get a bunch of developers who just start sticking
sticky tape over wounds that need stitches or like actually you know pretty lengthy surgeries to
patch up and because you can't put them in any sort of state of sleep what happens is that sticky
tape can only hold so far and then realistically you just have to continue on the same sucky
old school systems that have been there for like a couple decades at this point because the only
other option is hey can we just switch off finance for 24 48 hours
like how are you guys thinking about that and people be like wait so people can't move their
money for 48 hours like where are we getting that time from or you employ everybody who is currently
there just to keep the factory churning who are putting all those sticky tape, you know, pieces together
and keeping those developers who've retired and tried to figure out their really janky code.
Like, okay, yeah, yeah, we're just going to keep this thing going. We're going to keep this thing
churning. You keep those people all employed to continue that way. And you employ basically the
same amount of people who are keeping the sticky tape together again to put a new thing together so you can just switch it off and back on again.
And funnily enough, finance haven't wanted to do that.
And that's basically what DeFi and what these projects that are now coming in are there to do.
It's like, actually, you know what?
you know what we've we've spent the money resources and time to build a better version
of finance without all of that horse horse-drawn carriage shit that you've been dealing with for
the past couple of decades here's a new feature and a new product and all you need to do is adopt
us and maybe absorb us or etc we'll see how that all shakes out you know will traditional banks
come and buy some of these defi rails will Will DeFi take over some of these traditional rails?
That's where it's all coming out.
So Eric, yeah, love that take.
Had to add my own frustrations and experience on top of that.
I hope you guys were okay.
Infinify, Rob, your hand came up before we close out.
Throw the mic to you before we close.
I was just going to say, what's wrong?
You don't like mainframe computers and programming languages
that were
invented under eisenhower i'm good i'm good without it rob i'm not gonna lie like i haven't to manage
a bunch of developers who were just like yeah and this guy paul left five years ago and the code
that he has written is in code itself and we can't understand it and if we try and mess with it
we could literally turn all
the systems off and not know how to switch them back on like that was like a real experience i
had guys and i i was like you know what i'm going to web 3 i want to start again and they're saying
we're starting again so i'm going over there and that's literally what i did i was like i couldn't
have got out of there quick enough i was like traditional is is dying quickly i need to get off i found a lifeboat and
actually it's really cool as well and it solves a lot of the problems i've been dealing with
for the past decade in in my in my own career uh so yeah giving a little history there for our
listeners tree before i monologue any favor on some of the you know downfalls of the traditional
tech space would love to throw the mic back over to you and Zebu.
Any updates, any milestones,
anything you'd like to share with our audience
and our speakers before we do close out this show?
Yeah, no, first off, like, great conversation to get, guys.
I love also kind of the retail experience as well.
Stories from everyone.
But yeah, big milestone for Zebu today.
We officially crossed $10 billion in transaction volume um so that's that's a massive massive news um but other
than that yeah uh i'll throw it back over you jack thanks for everyone for coming up today and having
this great conversation about institutions and defy and um yeah dude honestly hearing these sort
of announcements is like oh you know like oh wow
these are the conversations we're having and and these are the teams we're having them with so
yeah massive congratulations to zebu and alongside that success still hosting these sort of shows and
you know giving us that platform to educate and bring other projects on board massive massive
shout out to you guys really do appreciate the time ofive, massive shout out to you guys. Really do appreciate the time of everyone today. Massive shout out to Centauri, Infinify, to Nibiru, to Eric, to Rank, and all the
speakers behind those main accounts as well. Thank you so, so much for all our listeners who've
tuned in. I hope you enjoyed the show. Same time next week, so do get following and do get those
likes and retweets out if you haven't already. Catch you on the next one.
Like the legend of the Phoenix All ends with beginnings
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Love
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