Citadel and SIFMA lobbied to slow tokenized equity rules. Arjun Sethi calls it 'corporate plumbing.' Chris Perkins calls it a bond future moment.
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Kraken has spent $2.75 billion on acquisitions in the past year, and co-CEO Arjun Sethi says the point is not a bigger exchange. The goal is a 24/7 global operating system for capital markets: spot, derivatives, payments, tokenized equities, and custody under one regulatory stack.
Sethi makes the case for each move, from REAP's tripling revenue in emerging markets to Bitnomial's CFTC trifecta, and says what will actually drive Kraken's next three years is not trading volume.
The conversation then turns to the SEC's paused innovation exemption for tokenized equities, why Citadel and SIFMA showed up to lobby against it, and whether direct listings on crypto rails could eventually replace Wall Street's IPO machine.
The episode closes on a question nobody saw coming: what Pope Leo's first encyclical on AI and finance has to do with the Bitcoin white paper.
Hosts:
Austin Campbell (@austincampbell) — Founder, Zero Knowledge Consulting; Adjunct Professor, NYU Stern
Ram Ahluwalia, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida
Chris Perkins, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management
Guest:
Arjun Sethi - Co-CEO of Kraken / Payward and Chairman of Tribe Capital
Timestamps
💰 01:08 Kraken has spent $2.75B on M&A in 12 months. Which deal would Arjun defend most?
🌍 07:33 Institutions aren’t buying tokenized equities. So who is the target customer?
📈 10:54 Derivatives are 95% of crypto volume. Where does Bitnomial fit?
🔑 14:12 Arjun on what actually drives Kraken's next three years
☠️ 20:44 What keeps Arjun up at night and what problems he potentially sees in crypto
🏛️ 22:48 Why the SEC paused tokenized equity rules, and who's really to blame
🚀 31:15 Could 24/7 crypto rails make Wall Street's IPO machine obsolete?
📣 42:05 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at https://coinbase.com/unchained
⛪ 43:56 Why it matters that Pope Leo mentioned crypto in his AI encyclical
👀 49:38 How the pope's decentralization argument tracks with the Bitcoin white paper
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