Talking Tokens

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with c, founder and CEO of Zama, to explore why blockchain privacy could be the missing piece for institutional crypto adoption and the future of onchain finance. Rand explains how fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) makes it possible to process encrypted data without revealing sensitive information, allowing transactions, balances, and...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Rand Hindi, founder and CEO of Zama, to explore why blockchain privacy could be the missing piece for institutional crypto adoption and the future of onchain finance. Rand explains how fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) makes it possible to process encrypted data without revealing sensitive information, allowing transactions, balan...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Catherine Chen, Head of VIP & Institutional at Binance, to explore how hedge funds, family offices, asset managers, and sophisticated investors are approaching cryptocurrency and digital assets. Drawing on her 16 years in traditional finance, including at Morgan Stanley, Catherine explains how institutional crypto investing is...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Catherine Chen, Head of VIP & Institutional at Binance, to explore how hedge funds, family offices, asset managers, and sophisticated investors are approaching cryptocurrency and digital assets. Drawing on her 16 years in traditional finance, including at Morgan Stanley, Catherine explains how institutional crypto investing is...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Krista Lynch, Managing Director, Head of Trading and Capital Markets at Grayscale, to discuss the evolution of crypto ETFs, the growth of digital asset investing, and Grayscale's plans for tokenization. Drawing on her experience at Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and Grayscale, Krista shares the behind-the-scenes story of the US spot...

Public blockchains make transactions transparent, but that transparency can become a major obstacle for institutional adoption. Financial institutions need to protect sensitive transactions, trading positions, and investment strategies without giving up the benefits of blockchain. As more capital moves onchain, privacy is becoming a critical part of the infrastructure needed to support institution...

In today's episode, we brought on Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, founder of Binance, live to talk about the $6.3B Binance hack, how he found out about it and what he thinks the industry needs to change. We get into how Binance and the industry responded, what it means for users, how he thinks about North Korean hackers after the exploit and where crypto, AI, businesses and the wider industry g...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Amy Oldenburg, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Morgan Stanley, to explore how one of Wall Street's largest financial institutions is integrating blockchain, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence into its financial services. Amy discusses Morgan Stanley's expanding digital asset strategy, the growth of its Bitcoin ex...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with the founder and CEO of KAST to discuss how stablecoins are powering a new generation of global banking and financial services. Drawing on his experience at Circle, where he helped expand USDC adoption in Asia-Pacific, he shares why he left to build KAST, a stablecoin-powered neobank designed for global citizens, freelancers, entrep...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Alex Cutler, CEO of Dromos Labs and a core contributor to Aerodrome, now Aero, to discuss why the decentralized exchange is expanding beyond Base blockchain and positioning itself as exchange infrastructure for the broader onchain economy. Alex breaks down Aero's multichain expansion, the rise of tokenized stocks, and why he be...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Liam Karwan, Head of RWAs at Chainlink Labs, to discuss how tokenization is changing global capital markets, what financial institutions need to move assets onchain, and why the next phase of adoption will require more than just blockchain technology. Liam explains how Chainlink connects banks, asset managers, blockchains and DeFi...

In today's Solana Sessions episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Todd McDonald, co-founder of R3, to discuss how institutional blockchain has evolved over the past decade and why R3 is moving from private blockchain networks toward open markets, including building the next version of Corda as a protocol on Solana.  Todd explains why he believes all markets will eventually move on...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Josh Cheong, Head of Product and Growth at Mantle, to discuss the next phase of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and why distribution is becoming as important as the technology behind it. Drawing on his experience at Citi and Parity Technologies, Joshua explains why tokenized equities are attracting attention, what banks and ass...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, the team building the Canton blockchain, to discuss what it will actually take to bring global capital markets onchain and why institutional blockchain infrastructure requires a fundamentally different approach.     Yuval explains why privacy is non-negotiable for institutional finan...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Se Yong Park , co-founder of Fomo, a social-first trading app with about 3 million users, to discuss how social media, blockchain and changing consumer behavior are reshaping how people discover and invest in financial markets. Se breaks down why Fomo abstracts away wallets, gas, bridges and chains, how the platform is reaching use...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Kevin Lepsoe, founder of ETHGas, to discuss how Ethereum could evolve into faster, more efficient financial infrastructure and what that could mean for institutions, DeFi and AI agents. Kevin Lepsoe breaks down ETHGas's vision for real-time Ethereum, why faster blockspace could bring liquidity back to the network, and the pract...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Kevin Lepsoe, founder of ETHGas, to discuss how Ethereum could evolve into faster, more efficient financial infrastructure and what that could mean for institutions, DeFi and AI agents. Kevin Lepsoe breaks down ETHGas's vision for real-time Ethereum, why faster blockspace could bring liquidity back to the network, and the pract...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Eric Chen, co-founder and CEO of Injective Labs, the team behind the Injectivea blockchain built for financial applications, to discuss what comes next for tokenization, onchain finance and institutional adoption. Eric explains why simply tokenizing assets isn't enough, where he sees the biggest opportunities for bringing finan...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens , Jacquelyn sits down with Sergio Mello, Global Head of Digital Asset Infrastructure, and Kevin Wysocki, Head of Policy at Anchorage Digital , to discuss why stablecoins are moving deeper into the institutional financial system and what banks need to build for the next phase of adoption. They explore why institutions are shifting from asking if they should...

Talking Tokens goes beyond the headlines to explore the people, ideas, and infrastructure shaping the onchain economy. Hosted by Jacquelyn Melinek, founder and CEO of StrataMedia and former senior crypto reporter at TechCrunch, Talking Tokens brings you twice-weekly conversations with founders, investors, market makers, institutional leaders, and experts across digital assets and traditional finan...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Shane Molidor, founder and CEO of Forgd, and Ryan Celaj, head of research at DeFiLlama, to discuss how better data and transparency could change the way crypto assets are evaluated. They break down the Universal Token Ratings (UTR), why TVL and volume alone don't tell the full story, and how disclosures, liquidity, market struc...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Kevin Chan, co-founder and CTO of Grove Labs, the team behind Grove Protocol, to discuss how Grove is building infrastructure for institutional credit and modern capital markets. Kevin breaks down how Grove has scaled its credit platform, how the protocol connects stablecoin liquidity with traditional and emerging forms of credit,...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Gregg Bell, Chief Investment Officer at Hashgraph, to discuss what institutional blockchain adoption of Hedera actually looks like and why some of the most important enterprise use cases may be happening outside the crypto headlines. Gregg breaks down how Hedera is being used across industries, why tokenization extends far beyond s...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Raja Chakravorti, Chief Business Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation, to discuss why the next phase of tokenization is about more than simply bringing assets onchain and how Stellar is building infrastructure for a more connected global financial system. Raja breaks down Stellar's growth from roughly $1 billion to $4...

In today's episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Jake Chervinsky, founder and CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, to discuss how perpetual futures could move beyond crypto and what it would take to bring regulated onchain markets to the U.S Jake breaks down why 24/7 price discovery matters, how perpetual futures could complement traditional derivatives markets, and why oil could be...