In this insightful episode of the Crypto Trailblazers series hosted by theCUBE, Mike Cagney of Figure Markets sits down with analysts from theCUBE Research to discuss groundbreaking advancements in blockchain technology and their implications for the finance sector. This video is part of the NYSE Wired digital event, aimed at bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Wall Street by integrating technology and finance.
Cagney, an eminent figure in fintech, shares expertise on the transformative role of blockchain in financial markets during this interview. Conducted by seasoned analysts at theCUBE, the discussion delves into Figure’s innovative contributions, including their blockchain-native loan origination and securitization process. He outlines how Figure leverages blockchain to achieve cost reductions, enhanced security and improved liquidity in financial transactions.
Key takeaways from the interview highlight insights on the evolution of the Web3 ecosystem, such as the emergence of stablecoins as pivotal to transaction processes and the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi). Oltsik states these developments signify a shift towards democratizing finance, wherein truth and transparency are foundational. The conversation concludes with a look at Figure’s pioneering efforts in creating a new financial marketplace utilizing blockchain technology.
#CryptoTrailblazers #FigureMarkets #BlockchainInnovation #Web3 #NYEWired #BlockchainFinance #DecentralizedFinance #Fintech #Stablecoins
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/.
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:05 - Emerging Innovations in Financial Technology and Market Dynamics
02:45 - Key Elements in Financial Ecosystem Dynamics
06:20 - Blockchain: Truth and Transformation
09:39 - Shaping the Future: Innovations in Financial Markets and Stablecoin Integration
13:15 - Enabling the Future: Navigating Disruptions in Banking and Lending
16:51 - Exploring Opportunities and Building Confidence in the Blockchain Ecosystem
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Mark Greenberg & Val Gui, Kraken xStocks
In this insightful episode of the Crypto Trailblazers series hosted by theCUBE, Mike Cagney of Figure Markets sits down with analysts from theCUBE Research to discuss groundbreaking advancements in blockchain technology and their implications for the finance sector. This video is part of the NYSE Wired digital event, aimed at bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Wall Street by integrating technology and finance.
Cagney, an eminent figure in fintech, shares expertise on the transformative role of blockchain in financial markets during this interview. Conducted by seasoned analysts at theCUBE, the discussion delves into Figure’s innovative contributions, including their blockchain-native loan origination and securitization process. He outlines how Figure leverages blockchain to achieve cost reductions, enhanced security and improved liquidity in financial transactions.
Key takeaways from the interview highlight insights on the evolution of the Web3 ecosystem, such as the emergence of stablecoins as pivotal to transaction processes and the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi). Oltsik states these developments signify a shift towards democratizing finance, wherein truth and transparency are foundational. The conversation concludes with a look at Figure’s pioneering efforts in creating a new financial marketplace utilizing blockchain technology.
#CryptoTrailblazers #FigureMarkets #BlockchainInnovation #Web3 #NYEWired #BlockchainFinance #DecentralizedFinance #Fintech #Stablecoins
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/.
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:05 - Emerging Innovations in Financial Technology and Market Dynamics
02:45 - Key Elements in Financial Ecosystem Dynamics
06:20 - Blockchain: Truth and Transformation
09:39 - Shaping the Future: Innovations in Financial Markets and Stablecoin Integration
13:15 - Enabling the Future: Navigating Disruptions in Banking and Lending
16:51 - Exploring Opportunities and Building Confidence in the Blockchain Ecosystem
>> Welcome back around to theCUBE's Crypto Trailblazer series. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here at our NYSC studios. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studio connecting Wall Street, Silicon Valley. Part of the NYSC Wired program. We've been featuring the leaders in crypto and blockchain, decentralized infrastructure. The new digital infrastructure is growing, it's going to have a massive mainstream impact. We've got a great two guests here from Kraken who have been really doing an amazing job. Mark Greenberg, who is the vice president of consumer product with xStocks, and Val Gui, general manager of xStocks. Guys, thanks for coming in. Kraken has been an amazing brand, the value creation has been amazing. xStocks, perfectly in line with the trends we've been covering on the Trailblazers, as the infrastructure of financial systems goes mainstream. It's not just us against them, everyone's coming together, but the future is being written by you guys, so thanks for coming. I really appreciate it.
Mark Greenberg
>> Hey, thanks so much for having us.
John Furrier
>> All right, let's zoom out. Obviously, Kraken, great success story. xStocks. Okay, explain what's going on there, because as real-world assets come on chain, as financial instruments come on chain, our digital lives are going to be measured. Take us through, what is xStocks?
Val Gui
>> I mean, at its core, xStocks is tokenized equity. It is equities with crypto on chain, and that means that you can do everything that you can do with crypto on chain with equities. Things like 24/7 trading, things like programmability, the concept of having these be permissionless, where now you can sell custodies. All these things are now enabled by tokenized equities.
Mark Greenberg
>> What I get really excited about with xStocks is the chance to bring all the great things that we've taken for granted on crypto now. The fact that 24/7 trading, the fact that there's this whole DeFi ecosystem that can just build whatever they need to build themselves and just build these different components into it. I always was frustrated that you couldn't bring that stuff into the equities world, and xStocks allows us to do that. These are just regular tokens, they're the same technology that supports things as silly as Fartcoin, but also as serious as Ethereum or Solana token, and taking those same building blocks and applying them to a whole new asset class.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and what's interesting too is where we are now in the industry, you look back at the momentum... If you go back even, say, eight years ago and then four years ago, two years ago, and now, it has been a massive sea chain, but the innovation didn't stop, and I think what's exciting for me and what we're seeing in the coverage is all the entrepreneurial effort, all the technology effort going into it, the needle kept moving. Now, the climate wasn't great, but now that we've had this climate, you're starting to see that people come out of the woodwork like, "Yeah, we haven't been cranking on this stuff." And now the equities, to me in my mind, one of the final crossover points, because average person can think about their fidelity account, or whatever bank they're using.
"Yeah, I'm buying some stock. Can you make a trade?" E-trades of the world's made their bones, and the day trader. Now you come and say, "Okay, how do I apply that to crypto?" Explain that, because I think that's... People are enthusiastic about crypto. They see Bitcoin, they see the prices, people making money, but when you get into the enthusiasm and confidence people are learning, what should people know about xStocks? How do I get involved? Take us through the progression. Where are we now and, then, what's happening?
Mark Greenberg
>> Maybe let me tell a few stories about how equities maybe didn't work for me personally. I'm a Canadian. A year ago, I wanted to go and buy a European stock. Agent, it was. And my broker just did not support it. I eventually called them up, we do it over the phone, we eventually figured it out. At some point over that process, I actually switched brokers. My new broker wasn't technically able to even sell the thing.
John Furrier
>> Really?
Mark Greenberg
>> And that's in a pretty Western market, a pretty serious market like Canada, and then you think about folks who are trying to buy equities in a place like Argentina or Uzbekistan, or in all sorts of different markets. And one thing that's always been really accessible about crypto is that you can buy Bitcoin in all these different markets, and a lot of folks have used it to help bring themselves up. Equities has mostly been out of reach for the person who's wanted to buy 50 or $100 of Tesla or Nvidia, or whatever it might be, and that's what gets... That, for me, is actually core to this piece.
John Furrier
>> That's a first principle. Making it accessible.
Val Gui
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> That's key.
Val Gui
>> It actually goes back to Kraken's mission as a company. Using crypto to improve financial inclusion worldwide, that's one of the core things that we really care about, and xStocks now tokenized equities really is a key part of forwarding that mission.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. It's a no-brainer to think about. Even stablecoins mainstream the conversation of, "Hey, you got inflation in some government area. Why not lock that in on crypto?" People can store their value, they can do commerce, they can build applications, and we saw that during the dark period here in the US when, outside the United States, was massive innovation. Okay, that was a fact. What's the innovation now with xStocks? Can you guys take us through how that's working? Because it's a no-brainer. Okay, accessibility, I buy that 100%. Democratization, "I want to buy some stocks." How does that relate to the normal exchanges? Take us through some of the under-the-covers.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Tokenization, how does it correlate? I would like to learn.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, so xStocks are regular SPL or ERC20 tokens that are available on a number of different blockchains, Ethereum and Solana being the two that we're most focused on right now in the TON blockchain, which is Telegram's blockchain. And at its core, for most people, they won't feel that different than equities, which is why it's hard to answer that question. There's a ton behind the scenes to make that much-
John Furrier
>> Yeah. What's these tapes, electronic words? Right?
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, right?
John Furrier
>> Digital.
Mark Greenberg
>> They operate halfway between the way, say, a stablecoin operates and the way an equity operates. We hold the underlying equities in a special-purpose vehicle in Jersey. They hold it on behalf of clients, and then clients have the right to the monetary value of that thing back. Either when they buy it, they get the token, or when they sell it. That's how you create and redeem these tokens, men or burn them. At the same time, the vast majority of trading in these things isn't going in and out of the traditional market. It's actually trading on DEXs or on Kraken, or on all sorts of other exchanges. It's folks buying xStocks on Telegram in a place like Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. That's the magic of this, because suddenly, once you make it the thing that can just sit in any kind of wallet, the thing that just works with all the crypto infrastructure that is just out there, suddenly, you can just use it in those ways.
John Furrier
>> You guys have simplified the access layer, basically.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> And you, under the covers, abstract away the complexity of the instruments themselves, and it's invisible. Did I get that right?
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, absolutely.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, that's totally right. And I think the important piece is that the xStock, the individual token, it's actually a very boring product, but that's by design. It's boring in the sense that it's a token that's backed one-to-one by the underlying equity, so that's an important thing to remember, because you still have that equity that's actually supporting that token. It's then the things that you can do with that token where a lot of the innovation happens.
John Furrier
>> Give me an example.
Val Gui
>> 24/7 trading. Where else in the world can you do that? And not just that, but do it on chain and not just on the centralized exchanges. That, in of itself, is very, very interesting. Or you can start to take this on chain and pledge your tokenized equity for on-chain collateral. That also is very, very interesting. There's a lot of ways that you can start using these tokens. The same way you would use any other tokens in crypto that are now enabled, because they're backed one-to-one by that underlying equity.
John Furrier
>> The innovate-
Mark Greenberg
>> settlement too. There's so many-
John Furrier
>> Go ahead, continue.
Mark Greenberg
>> Got instant settlement, yeah, the fact that you get the goods immediately delivered and, in exchange for a stablecoin, you can do that. Therefore, you have a lot less risk associated with the trade itself, which is very, very cool, And all sorts of new products. The best part about building infrastructure is we're not actually going to build most of the product that goes on top of xStocks. There's already really cool yield opportunities on xStocks. You can use your xStocks as collateral on chain to get loans and dollars. I could spend all day talking about all the things that different-
John Furrier
>> No. Please, do. Elaborate. No, elaborate. Mark, this is a good point, because... Again, I'm glad you brought that up, because like I've been saying on this crypto series, one of the things that jumped out at me, being from California and living in Silicon Valley the past 25 years, now in New York, is that, in the Bay Area, in most tech circles, entrepreneurship is product market-fit. You build the product, you build infrastructure, you enable. You're either accelerating enablement or you're disrupting enablement. You're disrupting someone else or you're accelerating some value. They're product managers, and in finance, and I grew up in New Jersey, so I had a little view on that, most finance entrepreneurs are like hustle entrepreneurs. Hide under someone's payment rails, buy a boat and get a house in the Hamptons, right? It's not structural change, it's more of, "I made some good money," in some cases, a lot of money, but not industry structural change. We actually reinvent a category. This whole product side of finance is intriguing. Because now you're enabling, Kraken's enabling entrepreneurs, or someone's, "Hey, I worked at Goldman Sachs for four years. I could do the credit department there. Me and my three of my buddies will go replicate." I'm making that up, but that's the kind of mindset I'm seeing in New York right now, and around the world, entrepreneurial thinking around productizing finance products. Not a tech product, a finance product that's on tech.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Share more commentary, please. The coolest thing you've seen.
Mark Greenberg
>> The very, very first billboard that ever existed for xStocks, we actually haven't created any, but is a company in South Africa. They put a billboard up in Johannesburg. They built xStocks just right into their wallet and crypto app, so you can trade xStocks in South Africa and you can trade any of them the same way that you would trade crypto. For me, that's really exciting on one side. On the other side, working with asset managers and ETF providers. Some of them have said to us, "Hey, it's really expensive to launch a whole new ETF." We're not really sure if the market will have demand for it yet, but putting together six or eight xStocks in the right way and selling out on chain, I can do that right away and I can build that in a few hours. That, I think, is pretty exciting.
John Furrier
>> They're curating stocks.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, exactly.
John Furrier
>> And then doing the mechanics for the underlying stocks themselves and then scaling on chain.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> That's basically what you just said.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly. And then, maybe eventually, they'll bring it back to the traditional markets or, at some point, maybe they won't need to, but I think it just-
John Furrier
>> It's going to create some creativity, some new products. That's a good opportunity. Okay, where does this go now? Where are we now? Take us through some stats. xStocks, what's the traction, momentum, tailwind, headwind? What's the vibe right now?
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, so we're getting close to 100,000 wallets and folks on exchanges like Kraken who are using the product. We have about $15 billion of transactions so far that have taken place. Pretty cool. It's about $1 billion more every single day, more or less right now.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, to put it into context, we launched this in July of 2025, so it's been about six months.
John Furrier
>> And six months, it's got some traction?
Val Gui
>> Got some traction.
John Furrier
>> Everyone says, "It's like the web, AI, it's like the early days of the internet." No one's ever heard of Yahoo before the internet started, so in every wave, there's always new brands that emerge. I think there's a huge opportunity for people out there to leverage Kraken and xStocks, and be their own bank and do stuff.
Val Gui
>> And you say Kraken and xStocks, but I want to make the point really clear that... The way that we think about xStocks is that it's actually more of a platform. We work with other centralized exchanges, which in many cases, you would see as being competitive. For xStocks, we don't see it as being competitive. We work with other players in the space to help push the availability of xStocks to many other places, because we see xStocks as more of an infrastructure layer.
John Furrier
>> It's a horizontal play layer.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, that's right. And we want to make that enablement-
John Furrier
>> You want it to be as many exchange as possible.
Val Gui
>> Exactly, right.
John Furrier
>> The more access-
Val Gui
>> More access, more liquidity. It makes the product better for everyone, so that is an important aspect for it.
John Furrier
>> Explain the Kraken-xStock relationship. I think that's important, because there is a relationship, but the strategy is to be everywhere.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, yeah. The strategy is to be everywhere. The way that would probably be one of the easier ways to describe it is like xStocks is to Kraken the way that AWS is to Amazon. Is it a product that we're building? Yes, it is. Is it a product that we have available and we're using internally? Yes, absolutely. But there's also many other companies that can build billion-dollar businesses on that infrastructure layer, so that's how we're approaching it.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.,And you're a platform.
Val Gui
>> Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> You might have some people that know the platform really well and take advantage of it, like AWS.
Val Gui
>> Exactly right.
John Furrier
>> Amazon has some of the big... Look at Snowflake, Databricks. Amazon has a database, they have data lakes, but they're not as big as... Well, us as big, but okay, so if that's the strategy, what's the next step for you guys? What's the optimization? What's the focus? More partners, more stocks, more entrepreneurs? What are you guys looking to optimize for?
Mark Greenberg
>> I'm really excited about the partnership we just launched recently with Telegram, which leans even more deeply into the successibility plan.
John Furrier
>> 100 million people? What was the number.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, right. All you have to do is you can use your non-custodial wallet in, what is it? 150 countries? Right inside Telegram, buy xStocks. I think, more and more ,we'd like to find as many different folks who want to help us build this platform and use it in all sorts of different ways. A lot more plays like the Telegram one, trying to make sure we bring xStocks to everyone around the world, and then continuing to grow the xStocks families. We're about 65 or 70-
John Furrier
>> You guys have an ecosystem strategy.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Distribution, Discord is probably a nice little market for you, Telegram has massive numbers. These are the kind of the networks you guys are targeting for distribution. How about like on the retail side or product side? What does that partnership persona look like? Just smart people, financial people?
Val Gui
>> I think smart financial people. I think that the unique thing about xStocks is that, because it's a permissionless token, once it's been minted or redeemed and it goes on chain, then, all of a sudden, you have... The equivalent of UGC, user-generated content. Users that are now looking at, "It's tokens, it's programmable by its nature, how can I actually use this and what are the use cases that I want for this?" And that is part of the exciting-
John Furrier
>> Someone to build a video game, social game with trading.
Val Gui
>> Exactly right.
John Furrier
>> You probably saw that already. It's happening right now?
Val Gui
>> We may or may not be building .
Mark Greenberg
>> More to announce next year.
John Furrier
>> Jumping ahead here. Connecting to dots in real time. No, but this is what's fun about technology scale. When you have a platform that's enabling, whether it's disruptive or accelerating, you don't know what's going to happen until people get enabled. I'm trying to figure out what you guys see as the fertile ground for people to play in and grow.
Mark Greenberg
>> I'd like to see 100,000 developers all playing in their own spaces. In some respect, we've seen a lot of success so far in folks starting on chain banks.
John Furrier
>> I love that.
Mark Greenberg
>> Many of those folks are also bringing xStocks right in on day one. We've seen lots of success from folks in those bundles or ETF-style of products on chain, where they curate multiple different pieces. We're looking at xStocks perps. Equity perps, which is a really interesting connection of the things that are just commonplace in the crypto world, but actually not so much in traditional equity. I could go on and on and on.
John Furrier
>> The radical nature of crypto in the early days, you guys are OG, so we'll put you in the trailblazer category, actually, it's interesting to apply the mainstream, because they're in the box. They're not thinking outside the box. I'd love to get you guys' thoughts on other forms of equity. I've said on theCUBE and we've heard from other folks who said, "Why aren't stock options on chain?" I'd love to have xStocks. I've done some trades where privates are in SPV vehicles and all the mechanisms and machinations you can possibly imagine to get those private late-stage stocks that are looking good. That's a perfect use case. Immutable, store of value, market.
Mark Greenberg
>> Absolutely. I would say liquidity matters a lot and part of the reason... Tokenization's been something real-world desk, something people have been talking about for a long time.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.
Mark Greenberg
>> Tried all sorts of different things, had a lot of challenges with regulatory regimes. I think, with xStocks, now we've solved that problem. The next big problem is bringing enough liquidity on chain to really set the right price and to make sure that these things are truly useful for users in all of those different use cases.
John Furrier
>> And the markets can be supported.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly. Very few things more liquid than equities. We want to make sure that we bring equities truly into this ecosystem and do it really, really well at a very high bar, and then work down the chain to what's next. Private stock for sure is something we're thinking about in how we make it work, but I also want to make sure we don't-
John Furrier
>> Get in front of yourselves.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, exactly.
John Furrier
>> Because there's no liquidity, then it goes sideways, anything's possible.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. And we have to do it thoughtfully, because there's always a question around, "Okay, is the issuer or the sponsor involved? And if they're not, what are the implications of that in private scenarios?" You want to make sure that, as you build these products, you think about the whole ecosystem. We want to, ultimately, build for that end client. We're savagely thinking about what that end client wants and how we can build for them, but that doesn't mean that we want to do it outside of bringing on a lot of the other players that are really important along the way. For things, like these private equities, that's important. And think about some of the harder questions around, for private equity, "Is there price discovery, and what does that price discovery actually end up looking like?" Maybe there is for an OpenAI or a Stripe that gets reported on every other day, it seems, with different valuation numbers, but maybe for private equity number 10, there isn't. How do we make sure that everyone is aware of what that looks like?
John Furrier
>> Predictive markets are doing a good job.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. Yes, right.
John Furrier
>> Plug in. No, but this brings up the good point. There's some backstop requirement and you got to have the liquidity. You got that, that makes a lot of sense. But also, you want to keep the ball moving forward, right? You want to make sure you have the market. The question I'd have is, what do you guys need to see on the regulatory side, that you said you guys solved that? Honestly, this is equity. Remember, the big debate is utility on the token and equity piece of it. Explain that piece, because I think that's something that people might not understand. What was the regulatory hurdle? Was it utility versus equity? Was that something else? Can you explain the success on the regulatory side?
Mark Greenberg
>> Absolutely. When we started thinking about, "Hey, how do we enter tokenized equities? How do we make sure we do it true to our values?" Being permissionless was absolutely key to that. And most of the things that we saw out there in real-world asset tokens was really not that. You were selling back to the issuer or you had to follow very specific rules, you had to be permission, you had to be KYC'd. It wasn't going to work in the crypto ecosystem, it wasn't going to work in all the things that we wanted to make it work in. When we met the back team who were our partners in building this, actually, we acquired them as of last week, they had something special. They had worked with the European regulators to build something that both was properly-regulated in Europe, but simultaneously was permissionless, and that was just amazing and unlock... And they were a little tiny company and they had a couple of tokens out there that hadn't really made work, but they had the infrastructure to-
John Furrier
>> They did the back end. They did a lot of backend work.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, and a lot of regulatory work.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, they did the compliance and the design-
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> ... baked in.
Mark Greenberg
>> What can Kraken bring to that? Well, we could bring some of the capital needed and the scale and distribution needed to actually make this bigger and real. And after we've launched in Europe, we're talking to regulators around the world, including here in the United States, on how do we bring this amazing idea and topic to even more markets around-
John Furrier
>> All right, so how do I get my hands on some xStocks here in the US?
Mark Greenberg
>> Not yet.
John Furrier
>> Okay, so I'm on hold. There's a waiting list now. So Europe.
Mark Greenberg
>> Europe. Basically, every market we operate around the world, except in Canada, the US, and the UK and Australia.
John Furrier
>> Timing?
Mark Greenberg
>> Each of those markets is different, and we are in conversations with regulators around the world-
John Furrier
>> Do you feel good about that?
Mark Greenberg
>> But I feel good for all of those markets that we'll have... Inside 2026, we'll have most of those markets open.
John Furrier
>> All right, so I have to ask this. When that domino falls in the US, Canada, and UK, mainly US and Canada, what is unleashed? What will happen? In your mind's eye... I'm not going to hold to you, it's just more of an opinion, but go ahead. What would be unleashed? More trades, more access, creativity, chaos, money making? What would be your...
Mark Greenberg
>> I'm looking forward to creativity and chaos. Chaos maybe isn't quite the right word, but-
John Furrier
>> Good chaos.
Mark Greenberg
>> I do like this idea of bringing more tech entrepreneurship into the world of traditional equities, and it's hard to do today. We run a broker dealer, it's really complicated to make that work, and so I look forward to a whole bunch of more on-chain ideas.
John Furrier
>> I think, as Andy Grove once said, famous Intel CEO, "Let chaos reign, then reign in the chaos," and I think I like your view on the entrepreneurship side. I definitely see that the signals are there. You're seeing the young and the old getting in involved, because the older folks, like me, have systems experience, can put it together. The young just see it. You're starting to see that cultural fusion, it's not just the young guns. I know folks in their 50s and 60s coming out of retirement saying, "I get the system," because platforms are well-known for some of the more... Seeing your folks like me.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. When we look at the innovation that's happening today, ex US, to think about what will happen once US persons, as we call them, get access to xStocks to me is extremely exciting.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.
Val Gui
>> Because the momentum it's going to build from an innovation standpoint, from a use case standpoint, is I believe going to be incredible. Very excited for the day when we can offer xStocks.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and I think when it pops, and this is another thing I get asked a lot, "What's the business strategy? How should I think?" My personal view, I'd love to get your reaction to this, is that, in this market, and the AI side has a similar pattern, there's no fast-follower option, because this is a new brand opportunity, new use cases, and being first mover is about getting the first mover and not looking back, versus the old stuff, "Hey, let those guys get out there. We'll come in fast-follower strategy." I just don't see that. I think the scale is so high that, if you are a first mover and you hit it, I think... And you see the capital markets are going that way too.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Your reaction, do you think that this fast-follower old-school strategy is somewhat not relevant in some of these use cases where, when it busts open...
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, I'm fully in agreement with you. I think, if you're building infrastructure, once that infrastructure works, it is really hard for someone else to catch up, right? You build liquidity, you build users, you build use cases, you build all these proof points and that whole ecosystem around what you're building, coming in after all of that is a lot harder. And to be honest, I think xStocks has the potential to be that, and that's why I'm so pumped about what's going on.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, it's pretty exciting. And the enthusiasm's high, people know it, certainly as it comes in the US, and then just get the confidence, get the liquidity.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Thanks so much. As OGs too, it's fun to document. You've been there, done that. I guess my final question is, now that you see where we are today, if you look back even a decade and now you're looking forward, and look how far we have... How do you guys feel about the market? Is it one of those moments like, "Well, it's happening"? What's the current thinking, given what's been happening? You go back 10 years, "What? Crypto?"
Mark Greenberg
>> I've been thinking about trying to make banking better now for my whole career, which is 20-plus years, and I, for a while, spent a lot of that pretty frustrated, because we're making some progress, but not enough. I think, in the last few years, we've seen a real tipping point in how fast we can make the change that, I think, all of us want to see. I don't think anyone loves their banking experience today, some people are okay with it, so if I look another 10 years in the future, I think we're going to see something that looks much, much better for most of us.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. I don't think the financial community has been asleep at the wheel either.
Mark Greenberg
>> No.
John Furrier
>> They might have been hiding the ball, given the past regime, but the pioneers, the frontier thinkers, they're there.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Certainly the younger talent is like, "Why are we doing it this way?"
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> "My grandfather did it this way." Whatever.
Val Gui
>> I think, for me, I say this to him and he'll listen, today we talk about tokenized equities and traditional equities, and there's this overlap and this marriage of them. I think that's great. Tomorrow's just going to be equities, and it's going to be tokenized, it's going to be on chain, because it makes sense, and the infrastructure is going to be there to support it. It's going to take some time to get there, but we're all just going to be players in equities, and it's just going to happen to be on chain.
John Furrier
>> I think it's inevitable, and I think one thing that I'm hardcore on and it's totally confident why I see this happening is the money's on the table.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> You go back 10 years, "They're saying people are making money mining," now it's undeniable, because when money's on the table, dogma goes out the window.
Val Gui
>> Right, right, exactly.
John Furrier
>> No matter where you come from, what school you go to, what view of the elephant in the middle of the room is, if there's money to be made and progress, whether it's mission, society, it's there. That's out there.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> The question is, when is it going to get through?
Val Gui
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> That, to me, is the real marker. And I think the signs are there, and you guys are doing great work. Thanks for coming in, I really appreciate you being part of that Crypto Trailblazer series.
Val Gui
>> Thanks for having us.
Mark Greenberg
>> It's wonderful.
John Furrier
>> Great conversation. Again, the future of finance is an infrastructure challenge, it's a data challenge, it's a people challenge, but at the end of the day, the digital physical worlds will be unified, they will converge, and what will be the result is equities, real estate, property. Things that we know will be digitized and physical, or both, one or the other. It's theCUBE bringing in the action to you. I'm John Furrier, the host. Thanks for watching.
>> Welcome back around to theCUBE's Crypto Trailblazer series. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here at our NYSC studios. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studio connecting Wall Street, Silicon Valley. Part of the NYSC Wired program. We've been featuring the leaders in crypto and blockchain, decentralized infrastructure. The new digital infrastructure is growing, it's going to have a massive mainstream impact. We've got a great two guests here from Kraken who have been really doing an amazing job. Mark Greenberg, who is the vice president of consumer product with xStocks, and Val Gui, general manager of xStocks. Guys, thanks for coming in. Kraken has been an amazing brand, the value creation has been amazing. xStocks, perfectly in line with the trends we've been covering on the Trailblazers, as the infrastructure of financial systems goes mainstream. It's not just us against them, everyone's coming together, but the future is being written by you guys, so thanks for coming. I really appreciate it.
Mark Greenberg
>> Hey, thanks so much for having us.
John Furrier
>> All right, let's zoom out. Obviously, Kraken, great success story. xStocks. Okay, explain what's going on there, because as real-world assets come on chain, as financial instruments come on chain, our digital lives are going to be measured. Take us through, what is xStocks?
Val Gui
>> I mean, at its core, xStocks is tokenized equity. It is equities with crypto on chain, and that means that you can do everything that you can do with crypto on chain with equities. Things like 24/7 trading, things like programmability, the concept of having these be permissionless, where now you can sell custodies. All these things are now enabled by tokenized equities.
Mark Greenberg
>> What I get really excited about with xStocks is the chance to bring all the great things that we've taken for granted on crypto now. The fact that 24/7 trading, the fact that there's this whole DeFi ecosystem that can just build whatever they need to build themselves and just build these different components into it. I always was frustrated that you couldn't bring that stuff into the equities world, and xStocks allows us to do that. These are just regular tokens, they're the same technology that supports things as silly as Fartcoin, but also as serious as Ethereum or Solana token, and taking those same building blocks and applying them to a whole new asset class.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and what's interesting too is where we are now in the industry, you look back at the momentum... If you go back even, say, eight years ago and then four years ago, two years ago, and now, it has been a massive sea chain, but the innovation didn't stop, and I think what's exciting for me and what we're seeing in the coverage is all the entrepreneurial effort, all the technology effort going into it, the needle kept moving. Now, the climate wasn't great, but now that we've had this climate, you're starting to see that people come out of the woodwork like, "Yeah, we haven't been cranking on this stuff." And now the equities, to me in my mind, one of the final crossover points, because average person can think about their fidelity account, or whatever bank they're using.
"Yeah, I'm buying some stock. Can you make a trade?" E-trades of the world's made their bones, and the day trader. Now you come and say, "Okay, how do I apply that to crypto?" Explain that, because I think that's... People are enthusiastic about crypto. They see Bitcoin, they see the prices, people making money, but when you get into the enthusiasm and confidence people are learning, what should people know about xStocks? How do I get involved? Take us through the progression. Where are we now and, then, what's happening?
Mark Greenberg
>> Maybe let me tell a few stories about how equities maybe didn't work for me personally. I'm a Canadian. A year ago, I wanted to go and buy a European stock. Agent, it was. And my broker just did not support it. I eventually called them up, we do it over the phone, we eventually figured it out. At some point over that process, I actually switched brokers. My new broker wasn't technically able to even sell the thing.
John Furrier
>> Really?
Mark Greenberg
>> And that's in a pretty Western market, a pretty serious market like Canada, and then you think about folks who are trying to buy equities in a place like Argentina or Uzbekistan, or in all sorts of different markets. And one thing that's always been really accessible about crypto is that you can buy Bitcoin in all these different markets, and a lot of folks have used it to help bring themselves up. Equities has mostly been out of reach for the person who's wanted to buy 50 or $100 of Tesla or Nvidia, or whatever it might be, and that's what gets... That, for me, is actually core to this piece.
John Furrier
>> That's a first principle. Making it accessible.
Val Gui
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> That's key.
Val Gui
>> It actually goes back to Kraken's mission as a company. Using crypto to improve financial inclusion worldwide, that's one of the core things that we really care about, and xStocks now tokenized equities really is a key part of forwarding that mission.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. It's a no-brainer to think about. Even stablecoins mainstream the conversation of, "Hey, you got inflation in some government area. Why not lock that in on crypto?" People can store their value, they can do commerce, they can build applications, and we saw that during the dark period here in the US when, outside the United States, was massive innovation. Okay, that was a fact. What's the innovation now with xStocks? Can you guys take us through how that's working? Because it's a no-brainer. Okay, accessibility, I buy that 100%. Democratization, "I want to buy some stocks." How does that relate to the normal exchanges? Take us through some of the under-the-covers.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Tokenization, how does it correlate? I would like to learn.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, so xStocks are regular SPL or ERC20 tokens that are available on a number of different blockchains, Ethereum and Solana being the two that we're most focused on right now in the TON blockchain, which is Telegram's blockchain. And at its core, for most people, they won't feel that different than equities, which is why it's hard to answer that question. There's a ton behind the scenes to make that much-
John Furrier
>> Yeah. What's these tapes, electronic words? Right?
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, right?
John Furrier
>> Digital.
Mark Greenberg
>> They operate halfway between the way, say, a stablecoin operates and the way an equity operates. We hold the underlying equities in a special-purpose vehicle in Jersey. They hold it on behalf of clients, and then clients have the right to the monetary value of that thing back. Either when they buy it, they get the token, or when they sell it. That's how you create and redeem these tokens, men or burn them. At the same time, the vast majority of trading in these things isn't going in and out of the traditional market. It's actually trading on DEXs or on Kraken, or on all sorts of other exchanges. It's folks buying xStocks on Telegram in a place like Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. That's the magic of this, because suddenly, once you make it the thing that can just sit in any kind of wallet, the thing that just works with all the crypto infrastructure that is just out there, suddenly, you can just use it in those ways.
John Furrier
>> You guys have simplified the access layer, basically.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> And you, under the covers, abstract away the complexity of the instruments themselves, and it's invisible. Did I get that right?
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, absolutely.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, that's totally right. And I think the important piece is that the xStock, the individual token, it's actually a very boring product, but that's by design. It's boring in the sense that it's a token that's backed one-to-one by the underlying equity, so that's an important thing to remember, because you still have that equity that's actually supporting that token. It's then the things that you can do with that token where a lot of the innovation happens.
John Furrier
>> Give me an example.
Val Gui
>> 24/7 trading. Where else in the world can you do that? And not just that, but do it on chain and not just on the centralized exchanges. That, in of itself, is very, very interesting. Or you can start to take this on chain and pledge your tokenized equity for on-chain collateral. That also is very, very interesting. There's a lot of ways that you can start using these tokens. The same way you would use any other tokens in crypto that are now enabled, because they're backed one-to-one by that underlying equity.
John Furrier
>> The innovate-
Mark Greenberg
>> settlement too. There's so many-
John Furrier
>> Go ahead, continue.
Mark Greenberg
>> Got instant settlement, yeah, the fact that you get the goods immediately delivered and, in exchange for a stablecoin, you can do that. Therefore, you have a lot less risk associated with the trade itself, which is very, very cool, And all sorts of new products. The best part about building infrastructure is we're not actually going to build most of the product that goes on top of xStocks. There's already really cool yield opportunities on xStocks. You can use your xStocks as collateral on chain to get loans and dollars. I could spend all day talking about all the things that different-
John Furrier
>> No. Please, do. Elaborate. No, elaborate. Mark, this is a good point, because... Again, I'm glad you brought that up, because like I've been saying on this crypto series, one of the things that jumped out at me, being from California and living in Silicon Valley the past 25 years, now in New York, is that, in the Bay Area, in most tech circles, entrepreneurship is product market-fit. You build the product, you build infrastructure, you enable. You're either accelerating enablement or you're disrupting enablement. You're disrupting someone else or you're accelerating some value. They're product managers, and in finance, and I grew up in New Jersey, so I had a little view on that, most finance entrepreneurs are like hustle entrepreneurs. Hide under someone's payment rails, buy a boat and get a house in the Hamptons, right? It's not structural change, it's more of, "I made some good money," in some cases, a lot of money, but not industry structural change. We actually reinvent a category. This whole product side of finance is intriguing. Because now you're enabling, Kraken's enabling entrepreneurs, or someone's, "Hey, I worked at Goldman Sachs for four years. I could do the credit department there. Me and my three of my buddies will go replicate." I'm making that up, but that's the kind of mindset I'm seeing in New York right now, and around the world, entrepreneurial thinking around productizing finance products. Not a tech product, a finance product that's on tech.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Share more commentary, please. The coolest thing you've seen.
Mark Greenberg
>> The very, very first billboard that ever existed for xStocks, we actually haven't created any, but is a company in South Africa. They put a billboard up in Johannesburg. They built xStocks just right into their wallet and crypto app, so you can trade xStocks in South Africa and you can trade any of them the same way that you would trade crypto. For me, that's really exciting on one side. On the other side, working with asset managers and ETF providers. Some of them have said to us, "Hey, it's really expensive to launch a whole new ETF." We're not really sure if the market will have demand for it yet, but putting together six or eight xStocks in the right way and selling out on chain, I can do that right away and I can build that in a few hours. That, I think, is pretty exciting.
John Furrier
>> They're curating stocks.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, exactly.
John Furrier
>> And then doing the mechanics for the underlying stocks themselves and then scaling on chain.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> That's basically what you just said.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly. And then, maybe eventually, they'll bring it back to the traditional markets or, at some point, maybe they won't need to, but I think it just-
John Furrier
>> It's going to create some creativity, some new products. That's a good opportunity. Okay, where does this go now? Where are we now? Take us through some stats. xStocks, what's the traction, momentum, tailwind, headwind? What's the vibe right now?
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, so we're getting close to 100,000 wallets and folks on exchanges like Kraken who are using the product. We have about $15 billion of transactions so far that have taken place. Pretty cool. It's about $1 billion more every single day, more or less right now.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, to put it into context, we launched this in July of 2025, so it's been about six months.
John Furrier
>> And six months, it's got some traction?
Val Gui
>> Got some traction.
John Furrier
>> Everyone says, "It's like the web, AI, it's like the early days of the internet." No one's ever heard of Yahoo before the internet started, so in every wave, there's always new brands that emerge. I think there's a huge opportunity for people out there to leverage Kraken and xStocks, and be their own bank and do stuff.
Val Gui
>> And you say Kraken and xStocks, but I want to make the point really clear that... The way that we think about xStocks is that it's actually more of a platform. We work with other centralized exchanges, which in many cases, you would see as being competitive. For xStocks, we don't see it as being competitive. We work with other players in the space to help push the availability of xStocks to many other places, because we see xStocks as more of an infrastructure layer.
John Furrier
>> It's a horizontal play layer.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, that's right. And we want to make that enablement-
John Furrier
>> You want it to be as many exchange as possible.
Val Gui
>> Exactly, right.
John Furrier
>> The more access-
Val Gui
>> More access, more liquidity. It makes the product better for everyone, so that is an important aspect for it.
John Furrier
>> Explain the Kraken-xStock relationship. I think that's important, because there is a relationship, but the strategy is to be everywhere.
Val Gui
>> Yeah, yeah. The strategy is to be everywhere. The way that would probably be one of the easier ways to describe it is like xStocks is to Kraken the way that AWS is to Amazon. Is it a product that we're building? Yes, it is. Is it a product that we have available and we're using internally? Yes, absolutely. But there's also many other companies that can build billion-dollar businesses on that infrastructure layer, so that's how we're approaching it.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.,And you're a platform.
Val Gui
>> Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> You might have some people that know the platform really well and take advantage of it, like AWS.
Val Gui
>> Exactly right.
John Furrier
>> Amazon has some of the big... Look at Snowflake, Databricks. Amazon has a database, they have data lakes, but they're not as big as... Well, us as big, but okay, so if that's the strategy, what's the next step for you guys? What's the optimization? What's the focus? More partners, more stocks, more entrepreneurs? What are you guys looking to optimize for?
Mark Greenberg
>> I'm really excited about the partnership we just launched recently with Telegram, which leans even more deeply into the successibility plan.
John Furrier
>> 100 million people? What was the number.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, right. All you have to do is you can use your non-custodial wallet in, what is it? 150 countries? Right inside Telegram, buy xStocks. I think, more and more ,we'd like to find as many different folks who want to help us build this platform and use it in all sorts of different ways. A lot more plays like the Telegram one, trying to make sure we bring xStocks to everyone around the world, and then continuing to grow the xStocks families. We're about 65 or 70-
John Furrier
>> You guys have an ecosystem strategy.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Distribution, Discord is probably a nice little market for you, Telegram has massive numbers. These are the kind of the networks you guys are targeting for distribution. How about like on the retail side or product side? What does that partnership persona look like? Just smart people, financial people?
Val Gui
>> I think smart financial people. I think that the unique thing about xStocks is that, because it's a permissionless token, once it's been minted or redeemed and it goes on chain, then, all of a sudden, you have... The equivalent of UGC, user-generated content. Users that are now looking at, "It's tokens, it's programmable by its nature, how can I actually use this and what are the use cases that I want for this?" And that is part of the exciting-
John Furrier
>> Someone to build a video game, social game with trading.
Val Gui
>> Exactly right.
John Furrier
>> You probably saw that already. It's happening right now?
Val Gui
>> We may or may not be building .
Mark Greenberg
>> More to announce next year.
John Furrier
>> Jumping ahead here. Connecting to dots in real time. No, but this is what's fun about technology scale. When you have a platform that's enabling, whether it's disruptive or accelerating, you don't know what's going to happen until people get enabled. I'm trying to figure out what you guys see as the fertile ground for people to play in and grow.
Mark Greenberg
>> I'd like to see 100,000 developers all playing in their own spaces. In some respect, we've seen a lot of success so far in folks starting on chain banks.
John Furrier
>> I love that.
Mark Greenberg
>> Many of those folks are also bringing xStocks right in on day one. We've seen lots of success from folks in those bundles or ETF-style of products on chain, where they curate multiple different pieces. We're looking at xStocks perps. Equity perps, which is a really interesting connection of the things that are just commonplace in the crypto world, but actually not so much in traditional equity. I could go on and on and on.
John Furrier
>> The radical nature of crypto in the early days, you guys are OG, so we'll put you in the trailblazer category, actually, it's interesting to apply the mainstream, because they're in the box. They're not thinking outside the box. I'd love to get you guys' thoughts on other forms of equity. I've said on theCUBE and we've heard from other folks who said, "Why aren't stock options on chain?" I'd love to have xStocks. I've done some trades where privates are in SPV vehicles and all the mechanisms and machinations you can possibly imagine to get those private late-stage stocks that are looking good. That's a perfect use case. Immutable, store of value, market.
Mark Greenberg
>> Absolutely. I would say liquidity matters a lot and part of the reason... Tokenization's been something real-world desk, something people have been talking about for a long time.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.
Mark Greenberg
>> Tried all sorts of different things, had a lot of challenges with regulatory regimes. I think, with xStocks, now we've solved that problem. The next big problem is bringing enough liquidity on chain to really set the right price and to make sure that these things are truly useful for users in all of those different use cases.
John Furrier
>> And the markets can be supported.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly. Very few things more liquid than equities. We want to make sure that we bring equities truly into this ecosystem and do it really, really well at a very high bar, and then work down the chain to what's next. Private stock for sure is something we're thinking about in how we make it work, but I also want to make sure we don't-
John Furrier
>> Get in front of yourselves.
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, exactly.
John Furrier
>> Because there's no liquidity, then it goes sideways, anything's possible.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. And we have to do it thoughtfully, because there's always a question around, "Okay, is the issuer or the sponsor involved? And if they're not, what are the implications of that in private scenarios?" You want to make sure that, as you build these products, you think about the whole ecosystem. We want to, ultimately, build for that end client. We're savagely thinking about what that end client wants and how we can build for them, but that doesn't mean that we want to do it outside of bringing on a lot of the other players that are really important along the way. For things, like these private equities, that's important. And think about some of the harder questions around, for private equity, "Is there price discovery, and what does that price discovery actually end up looking like?" Maybe there is for an OpenAI or a Stripe that gets reported on every other day, it seems, with different valuation numbers, but maybe for private equity number 10, there isn't. How do we make sure that everyone is aware of what that looks like?
John Furrier
>> Predictive markets are doing a good job.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. Yes, right.
John Furrier
>> Plug in. No, but this brings up the good point. There's some backstop requirement and you got to have the liquidity. You got that, that makes a lot of sense. But also, you want to keep the ball moving forward, right? You want to make sure you have the market. The question I'd have is, what do you guys need to see on the regulatory side, that you said you guys solved that? Honestly, this is equity. Remember, the big debate is utility on the token and equity piece of it. Explain that piece, because I think that's something that people might not understand. What was the regulatory hurdle? Was it utility versus equity? Was that something else? Can you explain the success on the regulatory side?
Mark Greenberg
>> Absolutely. When we started thinking about, "Hey, how do we enter tokenized equities? How do we make sure we do it true to our values?" Being permissionless was absolutely key to that. And most of the things that we saw out there in real-world asset tokens was really not that. You were selling back to the issuer or you had to follow very specific rules, you had to be permission, you had to be KYC'd. It wasn't going to work in the crypto ecosystem, it wasn't going to work in all the things that we wanted to make it work in. When we met the back team who were our partners in building this, actually, we acquired them as of last week, they had something special. They had worked with the European regulators to build something that both was properly-regulated in Europe, but simultaneously was permissionless, and that was just amazing and unlock... And they were a little tiny company and they had a couple of tokens out there that hadn't really made work, but they had the infrastructure to-
John Furrier
>> They did the back end. They did a lot of backend work.
Mark Greenberg
>> Exactly, and a lot of regulatory work.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, they did the compliance and the design-
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> ... baked in.
Mark Greenberg
>> What can Kraken bring to that? Well, we could bring some of the capital needed and the scale and distribution needed to actually make this bigger and real. And after we've launched in Europe, we're talking to regulators around the world, including here in the United States, on how do we bring this amazing idea and topic to even more markets around-
John Furrier
>> All right, so how do I get my hands on some xStocks here in the US?
Mark Greenberg
>> Not yet.
John Furrier
>> Okay, so I'm on hold. There's a waiting list now. So Europe.
Mark Greenberg
>> Europe. Basically, every market we operate around the world, except in Canada, the US, and the UK and Australia.
John Furrier
>> Timing?
Mark Greenberg
>> Each of those markets is different, and we are in conversations with regulators around the world-
John Furrier
>> Do you feel good about that?
Mark Greenberg
>> But I feel good for all of those markets that we'll have... Inside 2026, we'll have most of those markets open.
John Furrier
>> All right, so I have to ask this. When that domino falls in the US, Canada, and UK, mainly US and Canada, what is unleashed? What will happen? In your mind's eye... I'm not going to hold to you, it's just more of an opinion, but go ahead. What would be unleashed? More trades, more access, creativity, chaos, money making? What would be your...
Mark Greenberg
>> I'm looking forward to creativity and chaos. Chaos maybe isn't quite the right word, but-
John Furrier
>> Good chaos.
Mark Greenberg
>> I do like this idea of bringing more tech entrepreneurship into the world of traditional equities, and it's hard to do today. We run a broker dealer, it's really complicated to make that work, and so I look forward to a whole bunch of more on-chain ideas.
John Furrier
>> I think, as Andy Grove once said, famous Intel CEO, "Let chaos reign, then reign in the chaos," and I think I like your view on the entrepreneurship side. I definitely see that the signals are there. You're seeing the young and the old getting in involved, because the older folks, like me, have systems experience, can put it together. The young just see it. You're starting to see that cultural fusion, it's not just the young guns. I know folks in their 50s and 60s coming out of retirement saying, "I get the system," because platforms are well-known for some of the more... Seeing your folks like me.
Val Gui
>> Yeah. When we look at the innovation that's happening today, ex US, to think about what will happen once US persons, as we call them, get access to xStocks to me is extremely exciting.
John Furrier
>> Yeah.
Val Gui
>> Because the momentum it's going to build from an innovation standpoint, from a use case standpoint, is I believe going to be incredible. Very excited for the day when we can offer xStocks.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and I think when it pops, and this is another thing I get asked a lot, "What's the business strategy? How should I think?" My personal view, I'd love to get your reaction to this, is that, in this market, and the AI side has a similar pattern, there's no fast-follower option, because this is a new brand opportunity, new use cases, and being first mover is about getting the first mover and not looking back, versus the old stuff, "Hey, let those guys get out there. We'll come in fast-follower strategy." I just don't see that. I think the scale is so high that, if you are a first mover and you hit it, I think... And you see the capital markets are going that way too.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Your reaction, do you think that this fast-follower old-school strategy is somewhat not relevant in some of these use cases where, when it busts open...
Mark Greenberg
>> Yeah, I'm fully in agreement with you. I think, if you're building infrastructure, once that infrastructure works, it is really hard for someone else to catch up, right? You build liquidity, you build users, you build use cases, you build all these proof points and that whole ecosystem around what you're building, coming in after all of that is a lot harder. And to be honest, I think xStocks has the potential to be that, and that's why I'm so pumped about what's going on.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, it's pretty exciting. And the enthusiasm's high, people know it, certainly as it comes in the US, and then just get the confidence, get the liquidity.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Thanks so much. As OGs too, it's fun to document. You've been there, done that. I guess my final question is, now that you see where we are today, if you look back even a decade and now you're looking forward, and look how far we have... How do you guys feel about the market? Is it one of those moments like, "Well, it's happening"? What's the current thinking, given what's been happening? You go back 10 years, "What? Crypto?"
Mark Greenberg
>> I've been thinking about trying to make banking better now for my whole career, which is 20-plus years, and I, for a while, spent a lot of that pretty frustrated, because we're making some progress, but not enough. I think, in the last few years, we've seen a real tipping point in how fast we can make the change that, I think, all of us want to see. I don't think anyone loves their banking experience today, some people are okay with it, so if I look another 10 years in the future, I think we're going to see something that looks much, much better for most of us.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. I don't think the financial community has been asleep at the wheel either.
Mark Greenberg
>> No.
John Furrier
>> They might have been hiding the ball, given the past regime, but the pioneers, the frontier thinkers, they're there.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Certainly the younger talent is like, "Why are we doing it this way?"
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> "My grandfather did it this way." Whatever.
Val Gui
>> I think, for me, I say this to him and he'll listen, today we talk about tokenized equities and traditional equities, and there's this overlap and this marriage of them. I think that's great. Tomorrow's just going to be equities, and it's going to be tokenized, it's going to be on chain, because it makes sense, and the infrastructure is going to be there to support it. It's going to take some time to get there, but we're all just going to be players in equities, and it's just going to happen to be on chain.
John Furrier
>> I think it's inevitable, and I think one thing that I'm hardcore on and it's totally confident why I see this happening is the money's on the table.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> You go back 10 years, "They're saying people are making money mining," now it's undeniable, because when money's on the table, dogma goes out the window.
Val Gui
>> Right, right, exactly.
John Furrier
>> No matter where you come from, what school you go to, what view of the elephant in the middle of the room is, if there's money to be made and progress, whether it's mission, society, it's there. That's out there.
Val Gui
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> The question is, when is it going to get through?
Val Gui
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> That, to me, is the real marker. And I think the signs are there, and you guys are doing great work. Thanks for coming in, I really appreciate you being part of that Crypto Trailblazer series.
Val Gui
>> Thanks for having us.
Mark Greenberg
>> It's wonderful.
John Furrier
>> Great conversation. Again, the future of finance is an infrastructure challenge, it's a data challenge, it's a people challenge, but at the end of the day, the digital physical worlds will be unified, they will converge, and what will be the result is equities, real estate, property. Things that we know will be digitized and physical, or both, one or the other. It's theCUBE bringing in the action to you. I'm John Furrier, the host. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier