AMC Slams Robinhood's Approach To Tokenized Stocks: Why Kraken and Bullish Are Betting Big Anyway

Jennifer Sanasie (0:00)

On today's Public Keys from the New York Stock Exchange, Kraken's parent company on its partnerships with SoFi and the London Stock Exchange, Bullish on the future of tokenized stocks and the launch of the first US spot staked Tron ETF. Let's get into it. Happy Wednesday. I'm Jen Sanasie and I'm joined today by a special guest co-host, 21Shares co-founder, Ophelia Snyder.

Mark Greenberg (0:26)

Hello. Hello.

Ophelia Snyder (0:26)

Thanks for joining me.

Jennifer Sanasie (0:29)

You've always been a guest and now you're a co-host.

Ophelia Snyder (0:32)

Yes. First time for everything. So I'm kind of excited.

Jennifer Sanasie (0:35)

Congratulations on moving on up in the Public Keys world.

All right. I like to start this show by kind of just like laying a foundation on what's hot and topical for people who are following crypto in the public markets and we can't get away from Clarity. It feels like overnight, the mood switched on Clarity. I'm hearing folks on both sides of the aisle say, you know what, it's not going to happen. And it feels like this kind of dark spot on the industry over what's otherwise been a really exciting and euphoric time when it comes to price action.

Ophelia Snyder (1:12)

Yeah, it's kind of sad. I mean, I don't know.

I'm actually quite pro Clarity and regulation generally and getting us to a place where crypto can normalize its relationship with the rest of the financial world. Getting hung up on ethics while it has a tremendous amount of historical presence. This has happened before. It'll happen again. Ethics provisions are always kind of a sticking point in some of these types of regulations, but it feels like we're missing out on such an amazing opportunity to have some comprehensive regulation.

Jennifer Sanasie (1:40)

Yeah, I want you to unpack that for me a little bit more. For folks who don't know you, you are a little bit of a history buff. And I think people are following Clarity. They might not have followed financial legislation in the past. Where have we seen this before and where do we net out?

Ophelia Snyder (1:54)

So post 2008, after the financial crisis, there were a series of ethics provisions that they tried to put in around trading and around post-trade and specifically around the relationships between banks and brokerages. And that took more than a decade to actually implement because the ethics provisions were incredibly difficult and contentious, both when they were originally included and in their implementation. So this type of stuff does happen. It's usually not as politically oriented as what we're seeing today.

But it's not without precedent.

Jennifer Sanasie (2:23)

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I was reading an op-ed. I've heard this perspective from a few different people I've spoken to. And they've actually said, you know, clarity isn't all the industry is chalking it up to be. It really only focuses on intermediaries and the institutions. And that's not, you know, where crypto started and what it should be all about. I'm curious to hear your perspective because I know that obviously you've been following it very closely.

Ophelia Snyder (2:48)

So I think it just depends on what you think crypto is going to be. And at the end of the day, like most people don't want to process their own wire transfers. Like pick somebody on the street. They have other things they want to be doing. They don't want to settle.

I don't want to do that myself. And so the question is, are there going to be intermediaries? Yes. Are the institutions going to stay? Are we like wholesale replacing American banking infrastructure?

We're probably not doing that. They're probably adapting. And if you want the flows, if you want the volumes, if you want people to actually participate, you want to change the world, you want to democratize access to finance, you need these people on board. And so is Clarity Perfect? No. It is not a perfect piece of legislation. I'm personally convinced there's no such thing. But at least it exists, provides some definitions, lets people participate and lets us grow the market. Without it, you're kind of stuck in limbo.

Jennifer Sanasie (3:31)

For me, your point is kind of underlined by the recent cold card hack that we experienced, right? For so long, we talked about the benefits of self-custody and really having full control over your finances. When we see something like cold card happen and we see the repercussions, and all of a sudden we're talking about the need for intermediaries, the need for guardrails, the need for people to be able to have some kind of insurance.

So I know it's a different scenario, but that really kind of underlined it for me.