Chainlink: The Altcoin Connecting AI & Wall Street

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

When you borrow money, you put up something so that the lender feels safe. A car title, a watch at a pawn shop, that's called collateral. You pay the loan back, you get those items back. But if you don't, the lender gets to keep it. Wall Street actually runs on the same idea with stocks and bonds at a size that's hard to picture or imagine.

SPEAKER_2 (0:19)

There's roughly $80 trillion worth of assets that could be used in collateral processes, but frankly are just not easy enough to move to practically be used. This kind of system frees up $52 trillion worth of assets. This makes a massive impact on the mobility of assets, the liquidity of assets broadly across all of capital markets.

SPEAKER_1 (0:44)

Banks have to keep a cushion of safe, easy-to-sell assets, like an emergency fund. And in the DTC's own estimate, using the app chain just for 15% of what banks borrow from other institutions cut that required cushion by 17%.

Chainlink Labs CEO Sergei Nazarov put the savings into the billions for large banks. So what's the missing piece? Here's Sergei, and listen to what the DTCC is actually bringing and what still needs to be connected.

Sergei Nazarov (1:14)

Once again, why this is possible, you finally have a reliable and legally binding ledger from the DTCC that everyone can rely on, just like they rely on the DTCC now, right? That's a very powerful thing that I think the capital markets have been waiting for, where they can't get that from just any chain, because those guarantees with the DTCC are fundamentally different. Then you have the need to integrate that into all the data, backend systems of different market participants, and you have the need to connect it to the different public chains where there's liquidity or users that want to access the power of the collateral app chain from DTCC.

That's the role that the Chainlink plays, and we're able to provide that connectivity in two forms, either through CRE direct access for your developers and engineering teams, or through Fulcrum, which is a business owner interface, which is the interface you just saw.

SPEAKER_1 (2:11)

And that's the exact role that Chainlink plays. The DTCC brings the record book markets already trust, and by liquidity, he means where the buyers, sellers of money already are. Chainlink connects the two, tracking prices, running checks, and carrying the collateral between chains. Now, the AI half of the title, you have to picture a very fast assistant you hand a job and a budget to, and it gets it done, spending included. That's an AI agent. In early October, Sergey was on a panel. This is at BlackRock's Aladdin Client Forum. He was on stage with BlackRock's Will Su and Coinbase's Alec LeVette. And just for some context, Aladdin is BlackRock's software for running big portfolios. The topic in discussion, AI agents moving money on blockchains. In Chainlink summary, agents need trusted data, guardrails, and proof of what they actually did. And you have to think back to that loan demo at the beginning of this video. Prices keep updating. Background checks ran before the money actually moved, and every step left a record that you can check. Now, in that scenario, you have to imagine an AI agent managing that money. What price should it trust, and what is it actually allowed to do?

How do you check what actually happened? This all has to sound a little bit familiar. We have different users, but the same needs. And that's our read on this infrastructure as tools built to keep big financial systems in sync with each other.

So this could also keep AI agents within bounds as well. And Chainlink is already building for them. Chainlink for agents still in beta lets an agent pay as it goes for the price data and use the same checking and courier tools. And the DTCC isn't a one-offer Chainlink. Chainlink's April to June report, it directly listed Fidelity International launching its first tokenized fund with Chainlink. You also had SIX, which runs the Swiss and Spanish stock exchanges, bringing its market data into blockchains, and a tiny firm called Robinhood, picking Chainlink as the official data source for Robinhood Chain. In more than 50 banks in Project Pangea working with Chainlink on same-day currency trades, the CME is also planning to offer round-the-clock link futures and contracts on Link's future price. And investors are buying in too. You're now able to own Chainlink through a normal brokerage account, like a stock. And you do this through a fund that holds the actual Chainlink, and that's the Spot ETF. So-so value data is actually showing two US Spot link ETFs from Grayscale and Bitwise took in almost $20 million in September, their best month since the launch of this ETF, and then $9.5 million flowed into this project's ETF on Friday. Together, they hold about $225 million. That's a demand for the token itself, separate from banks using the network. You want both, and you're seeing both, you're getting exposure to that. So here's what to actually watch over the next few months for Chainlink. We have the DTCC app chain hitting its expected launch time in early 2027 We have to continue to see the reserve climbing, and AI agents actually begin to pay with Chainlink. Wall Street needs to move collateral any hour of any day, and AI agents need prices and guardrails that they can trust. The same missing piece, and Chainlink is that altcoin building the bridge between it. Which side do you think moves in first on Chainlink? The AI agents that need its data, or Wall Street with these massive ETF funds? Let me know down in the comments below what you think is going to be the actual catalyst here, and I'll see you at the top with your Chainlink bags.