the un# podcast

Wall Street is racing to move 5.5 trillion dollars of assets on-chain, yet the man who wrote Citi's forecast says most of what people want to tokenize will never work. Ronit Ghose sits down with Sri Misra to separate the asset tokenization hype from the few markets that actually belong on a blockchain. Ronit Ghose spent twenty three years as a public markets analyst before taking over Future o...

Most experts said training a frontier AI model on consumer laptops was impossible, until the numbers started proving them wrong. What that shift means for decentralized AI, on-chain finance, and who ultimately controls intelligence is what Jake Brukhman of CoinFund lays out in this conversation. Jake Brukhman bought his first Bitcoin in 2011, then forgot about it for seven years before founding Co...

A network built on the idea of immutable, unstoppable code chose to freeze $71 million in stolen funds, and the man who helped design that power says he wants it gone. Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain and the architect behind Arbitrum, breaks down the tokenization of Wall Street, the future of Ethereum scaling, and why bringing institutions on chain forces hard questions decentralization w...

Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, deconstructs the US capital markets stack  from the DTCC vault at the core to the broker-dealers, exchanges, and IPO syndicates layered on top, each one extracting fees the issuer never sees. 

Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, explains the two real bottlenecks stopping AI agents from running serious capital on-chain - thin asset history and the security arms race  and host Sri Misra counters with a sharp reframe on OPSEC. Full episode at: unhashed.co/jim

Most asset managers still can't accept stablecoin payments, yet over $300 billion in regulated capital is already sitting on-chain. Jim Hiltner, Co-Founder of Superstate, explains how the tokenization of capital markets is reshaping the rails now powering Invesco, Bitwise, and Coinbase Asset Management, with the first fully on-chain IPO targeted for H2 2026. Building tokenization rails for Wal...

Spark Protocol Co-founder Sam MacPherson breaks down the two-layer stablecoin stack: a money layer led by USDT, USDC, and incoming bank and fintech issuers  and a credit layer where USDS and Spark live. Instead of fighting for payments share, Spark wraps yield around every major stablecoin and handles DeFi deployment for Web2 partners who don't want to manage it themselves. His 2030 projection...

Spark Protocol Co-founder Sam MacPherson explains why his team offboarded rsETH as collateral in January  months before the $292M KelpDAO exploit drained Aave's lending markets. The takeaway: a minimalist collateral set, ruthless risk-return reviews, and a philosophy of shrinking the attack surface kept Spark depositors whole while the rest of DeFi absorbed the blow. A masterclass in why disci...

Sam MacPherson spent two years inside MakerDAO's core engineering team before co-founding Phoenix Labs to build Spark, the on-chain capital allocator that now manages billions in stablecoin liquidity across DeFi, CeFi, and tokenized real-world assets within the Sky ecosystem. Spark sits at the credit layer beneath USDS, Sky's $9B+ stablecoin, intermediating yield for institutions, fintechs...

Anton Katz, Founder of Talos, built the institutional crypto trading infrastructure that BlackRock, Nasdaq, and Robinhood rely on, and in this conversation with host Sri Misra on alpha un#, he explains exactly what happens to finance next. Anton Katz is a MIT computer science graduate, IDF veteran, and former Head of Trading Technology at AQR Capital Management, who left in 2018 to build the insti...

"We don't make fees when we liquidate you." Most DeFi protocols profit from your liquidation. Sidney Powell explains why Maple designed the opposite incentive. Full episode at: unhashed.co/sid

The same way Amazon got ahead of Walmart - same business model, different technology stack. Sid Powell on why crypto-native lenders will overtake Apollo and Blackstone. Full episode at: unhashed.co/sid

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy." Sid Powell built Maple through 3 brutal pivots - tokenized bonds → uncollateralized lending → where they are now. Full episode at: unhashed.co/sid

"DeFi is dead" - and the CEO who built $20 billion in institutional DeFi lending is the one saying it. In this conversation, Sid Powell of Maple Finance explains why that declaration is the most bullish signal in crypto, how onchain credit is now undercutting Apollo and KKR on price, and why the $3 trillion private credit market has no idea what is coming for it. Sid Powell spent years a...

In this episode, host Sri Misra sits down with Eric Saraniecki to unpack why the future of crypto may not be driven by hype cycles, but by durable, repeatable financial activity. From token burns and network activity to the long-term convergence of TradFi and DeFi, this conversation explores what real utility on-chain could actually look like. Full episode at: unhashed.co/eric

In this episode, host Sri Misra speaks with Eric Saraniecki about what may actually be blockchain’s most important breakthrough: composability. Eric explains why the real shift is not just decentralization or immutability, but the ability to coordinate updates across applications without losing privacy. From DeFi’s multi-leg transaction logic to Canton’s vision for globally composable financial ap...

In this episode, host Sri Misra sits down with Eric Saraniecki to unpack a more practical view of decentralization. Instead of treating it like a universal answer, Eric explains why different layers need different configurations, why institutions need flexibility, and why all of it still has to coexist in a neutral, composable network. Full episode at: unhashed.co/eric

Finance is the last industry on earth where pressing a button does not make something happen instantly, and Eric Saraniecki, Co-founder of Canton Network, has spent 12 years building the blockchain infrastructure designed to finally change that. Canton Network is the public permissionless blockchain with privacy that Goldman Sachs, DTCC, Nasdaq, BNY and 600+ institutions have quietly chosen as the...

In this episode, host Srikumar Misra sits down with Sandy Kaul of Franklin Templeton to unpack a simple idea most people miss: if something is truly “cash,” it shouldn’t pay yield. They break down why stablecoins and tokenized money market funds can coexist, when “rewards” start looking like an investment contract, and how onchain finance may evolve into a universal liquidity layer, where you can...

In this episode, host Srikumar Misra and Sandy Kaul of Franklin Templeton map the next step in asset management: moving from traditional fund “wrappers” to separately managed accounts (SMAs), and then onchain vaults. Sandy explains the shift in plain terms: instead of one big pooled fund, you’ll have your own vault, holding your wallet and your assets, and smart contracts will help you optimize an...

In this episode, host Srikumar Misra asks Sandy Kaul of Franklin Templeton to stargaze 10 years out and she delivers a blunt take: global markets are still running on 1970s-era infrastructure. Sandy breaks down why the real shift starts with one primitive: wallets. Once wallets enter market plumbing, everything else follows, tokenized “digital twin” assets, 24/7 trading, and eventually atomic sett...

Sandy Kaul reveals how Franklin Templeton built the world's first SEC-approved digital-native money market fund, moved $900M across 10 blockchains, and why she believes the totality of your assets will live in wallets within the decade. In 2018, Sandy Kaul published a paper at Citibank claiming tokenization would replace equities and bonds. Wall Street laughed. Fast forward to 2026, she's...

In this episode, host Sri Misra speaks with Yat Siu of Animoca Brands about why tokenization is becoming a survival strategy not a crypto gimmick. He compares it to earlier waves of disruption: the internet, being searchable, social platforms where opting out wasn’t “principled,” it was fatal. Yat’s sharper claim: the best hedge against AI is to tokenize because AI tools will become broadly access...

In this episode, host Sri Misra speaks with Yat Siu of Animoca Brands about John Locke’s idea of property (“the work of our hands”) and why the modern economy is really built on “the work of our minds” IP, creators, and digital labor. The core question: what should “digital property rights” actually mean for consumers (not just institutions)?👉John Locke’s lens: labor → ownership → trade👉Why IP b...

In this episode, host Sri Misra speaks with Yat Siu of Animoca Brands about why over-collateralized lending is fundamentally misaligned with mass adoption  and how on-chain reputation, identity, and trust scores could unlock unsecured credit in crypto. Yat draws parallels with the real world: jobs, education, credit cards  all systems that work because we take calculated risks on people. He explai...