What TradFi’s Crypto Integration Actually Looks Like | Sid Powell & Theo Golden

**Theo Golden** (0:00)
The biggest thing that most people are talking about in TradFi when it comes to tokenization, tokenization is just unitization on steroids. It's what we've all been trying to do in TradFi for a good long while. And this is just a way of doing it with operational simplicity and without kind of just adding layers and layers of counterparty and operational risk.

**Mike Ippolito** (0:19)
This episode is sponsored by Canton, the only public permissionless blockchain built for institutional finance. We'll hear more from Canton later in the episode. Blockworks Digital Asset Summit is back in New York March 24th through 26th. We'll have top speakers from leading asset managers, financial institutions, DeFi protocols, crypto companies and policymakers all under one roof. Think BlackRock, Coinbase, Robinhood and more. Follow the link in today's show notes to buy tickets and make sure to use code Bell200 for $200 off at checkout. See you there. Hey everyone, quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. Today I'm joined by Theo Golden of Bailey Gifford and Sid Powell, Maple Finance. Guys, welcome.

**Sid Powell** (1:19)
Thanks for having us.

**Mike Ippolito** (1:21)
Yeah, guys, this will be a lot of fun. I think we're chatting about three weeks ahead of DAS. So I'll see you guys both there in New York, and maybe we can follow up this virtual conversation with one in person and live. But excited to see you guys in person soon.

**Sid Powell** (1:35)
Yeah, likewise. Should be good. I think this will be my fourth or fifth DAS in a row.

**Mike Ippolito** (1:41)
We'll have to print a special badge for you, Sid. Yeah. Well, guys, I thought it would be really interesting to chat to the two of you three weeks ahead of this event because you both represent really interesting sides of this burgeoning world of traditional finance and DeFi. Sid, you've been building one of the largest lending protocols or on-chain asset managers in space for a long time now. Theo, you work at Bailey Gifford, which is very well known over in the UK, but maybe for our American audience who might not be as familiar with Bailey Gifford, can you just give us a quick intro for the firm that you work at?

**Theo Golden** (2:16)
Yeah, sure. Great to be with you guys. Bailey Gifford, we're one of the bigger independent asset management firms based out of the UK. We're about 120 years old, privately owned, partner owned business. Everyone who owns the business works in the business, and we run about just around $300 billion of assets under management. We've been in tokenization for a while, a bit more behind the scenes, but coming out of the curtain a bit more.
But you're probably most familiar for our kind of growth equity investing, being long term investors in things like SpaceX, Alibaba, but across asset classes, fixed income, multi asset, the work. So we're probably the old British version of what Sid is growing on chain, and hopefully we kind of together, we merge and become the future of what good money management looks like on chain in the next couple of decades.

**Mike Ippolito** (3:12)
Yeah, I think maybe we can just start off very high level here and I've been hosting conversations like this for about eight years now. And I very much remember when Mike Novogratz said, the herd is coming and the institutions are coming. They'll be here in six months back in 2018 And it seems so took a little bit longer than we first thought. But it does seem as though they're here, although obviously in crypto, I think we're guilty of treating all institutions as this very homogenous group when they're very different. And I would like to understand if we're scaling this kind of on a rate on a scale of one to ten, one being we're completely separate in ten, there's very little difference in between global crypto markets and traditional finance. I'm curious how the two of you would rate the integration and what are the seams where we're starting to really blur the lines and see some real business synergies and where are we still a little bit further out?

**Sid Powell** (4:12)
I'm happy to go first on that one. Slightly pessimistic, but I would give us maybe three or four out of ten. The reason is I think there's a lot of room for growth on the institutional integrations. If we looked and we said, okay, where are we most integrated and where are we least at the moment, I would say you've seen stable coins are now very well integrated, I would say just in terms of the custody set. Circle has very robust custody solutions. They have partnerships with BlackRock in terms of the asset backing.