Introducing: Inflection Point | The Crypto-TradFi Convergence

**Matt Hougan** (0:00)
The most important financial regulator in the world says all assets will move on chain in the next five years. And there are people who are like, ah, whatever, DeFi's dead. Any rational person looking at that string of facts would say, boy, are we accelerating up the curve. As soon as I used Aave, I knew it was fait accompli, that the institutions would eventually come into the space.

**David LaJuan** (0:22)
We have all these frictions, there's definitely a lot of problems to solve, but we are pretty much on our way to at least have a roadmap for most of them. TradFi people, they work very hard, but they don't know what's coming at them when their assets all start to trade 24-7.

**Michael Marcantonio** (0:38)
BlackRock has tokenized treasuries. JP Morgan is setting intraday repos on blockchains. Apollo announces a giant partnership with Morpho. Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Kraken, Coinbase, every major name in finance is building on these rails right now. I believe we are at the most consequential moment, dare I say the inflection point, for institutional crypto since the asset class was born.

**Marc Arjun** (1:04)
This is the path to integration and the evolution of financial infrastructure. This is Inflection Point. Everyone, welcome to Inflection Point, a weekly podcast for professionals navigating crypto's institutional era. Each week, we break down the drivers reshaping digital asset markets. In a space that's typically dominated by retail narratives, we're going beyond the price action to analyze the mechanics driving this adoption. Our goal is to deliver the analytical depth of premium research in an accessible format for busy professionals. This is the path to integration and the evolution of financial infrastructure. This is Inflection Point. I'm Marc Arjun, Senior Research Analyst at Blockworks. I come from an equities background across buy side, sell side, investment banking. But today, our focus is on digital assets and their institutional adoption. I'm joined by operators and investors at the forefront of institutional crypto. I'll let each of them introduce themselves and then we'll share their perspectives.

**David LaJuan** (2:16)
Awesome. Wow. Happy to start. Excited for this first episode. Marc, Matt, Michael, really looking forward to the conversations. So I'm David LaJuan. I'm Head of Research at Anchorage Digital. Anchorage is one of the leading players in crypto institutional infrastructure, providing services that go all the way from custody to spot trading, derivatives trading, lending. Also, we're home to the first crypto bank federally chartered, and we have a lot of presence there on the stable coin side of things. Before Anchorage, I used to be Head of Research at FalconX, which is one of the larger crypto prime brokers, slash trading desks. Before FalconX, I had the pleasure of working with and being mentored by Matt Hogan at Bitwise. I was Head of Research there for quite a few years. And before that, I used to work in traditional finance. I used to be a cell site equities analyst covering just traditional equities.

**Matt Hougan** (3:14)
Amazing. I can jump in here. David, it's great to be back together again. We are welcoming you here, despite the fact that your name doesn't begin with M. So you're the special one in the group. I'm Matt Hogan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management. I've been at Bitwise for eight years. Bitwise manages about $15 billion across ETFs in US and Europe, staking vaults, SMAs and other strategies. I think the two unique things that I can bring to the podcast. One, I just have a lot of touch points with institutional investors. Bitwise does about 15,000 meetings a year with institutions around the world, so I can provide some first-hand knowledge of what they're saying and thinking about the crypto markets. And two, my own background before Bitwise is in the ETF market. I was the CEO of etf.com, created the first ETF data and analytics and rating system in the world. And so the intersection of crypto and ETFs is a space that I know well. I'm really excited to join the pod.

**Michael Marcantonio** (4:17)
My name is Michael Marcantonio. Thanks, Matt, for that. Thanks, David. Thanks, Marc. I'm the head of DeFi at Galaxy Digital. Galaxy is a crypto, AI, publicly traded financial services company. That's a mouthful. We are very focused on the intersection between crypto and AI, and our entire business for most of its history has been predicated on how do we bridge crypto to institutional investors and institutions all throughout the United States and globally. And my focus at Galaxy is on building out our decentralized finance division. And what we focus on primarily is the bleeding edge of technology and the bleeding edge of these on-chain primitives that are going to power the entire financial system. And so I believe we are at the most consequential moment, dare I say, the inflection point for institutional crypto since the asset class was born. For years, the conversation about institution and crypto was always theoretical, right? Will they or won't they? How much should they invest? How much should they allocate? Is it real? Or is it a fad? That conversation is over, right? BlackRock has tokenized treasuries.