Bridging DeFi and Traditional Finance with Arbitrum

In this episode, we’re joined by Luke Voiles, the CEO of Pipe — an embedded finance platform offering credit, cards, and other financial products to a range of B2B2B partners. Founded as a revenue-based financing business, Pipe pivoted into a platform business under Luke’s directly when he took the reigns in 2023. Prior to joining Pipe, Luke was the GM of Banking at Square and previously head of QuickBooks Capital, Intuit’s SMB lending offering. Luke has nearly 10 years of embedded finance experience, especially in lending, and has shaped Pipe’s offering based on his extensive learnings. In this conversation, Luke and I discuss what makes a good embedded finance offering, the opportunities and challenges in credit, including the economics, cyclicality and risk management considerations, Pipe’s distribution strategy, scaling a fintech platform business internationally and much more.

Mark Garabedian is the Director of Digital Assets and Tokenization at Wellington, a leading US-based, global asset manager with approximately $1.3 trillion in AUM. Mark has wide ranging experience in trading and financial markets and brings a highly informed perspective to the topic of financial market innovation through digital assets and blockchain. I find Mark’s views to be particularly valuable, because they skew heavily toward the practical, as opposed to the theoretical, informed by decades of hands-on markets experience. In this conversation, Mark and Will Beeson discuss the transformational benefits of digital assets and tokenization in investments and markets, step function improvements DeFi has delivered and the implications for traditional finance, the specific projects Mark and Wellington are working on today, the path that Wellington, a nearly 100-year-old asset manager, has taken so far on its digital asset journey, and much more.

Alex Gluchowski is the co-inventor of ZKsync and co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. ZKsync is an advanced Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain network offering privacy and scalability using zk proofs. In this conversation, Alex and Will Beeson discuss the benefits of zk technology for financial use cases, architectural considerations in building blockchain networks for complex industries like finance, optimal infrastructure for tokenized financial assets and workflows, ZKsync’s trustless network + shared liquidity vision and more.

Kevin Miao is one of the most insightful practitioners at the intersection of traditional and on-chain finance. Until recently, Kevin was General Partner of BlockTower Credit, a $1.9 billion AUM private credit fund that leveraged public blockchains, stablecoins, and tokenization to maximize capital efficiency. Prior to BlockTower, Kevin managed a Structured Credit trading desk at Citigroup, focusing on consumer credit, esoterics, and distressed crisis-era securitizations. Currently, Kevin leads growth at Steakhouse Financial, a DeFi-native advisory and technology business that helps manage the biggest DAOs in web3. In this conversation, Kevin and I explore the theory and practice of running an on-chain credit fund, the benefits and challenges versus the traditional model, current limitations in on-chain investment management, and potential paths to upgrading finance with blockchain rails.

Steven Goldfeder is the Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, one of the leading blockchains.  Arbitrum’s flagship blockchain, Arbitrum One, is a leading Ethereum L2 in terms of TVL and liquidity and supports applications across DeFi, DePIN, AI, gaming, RWAs and other verticals.  In this conversation, Steven and I discuss Arbitrum’s origins, the use cases that have driven its success so far, and expectations for Arbitrum’s role in the transition of regulated financial activity onto blockchain rails.

Laszlo Szabo is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kiln, a staking infrastructure provider backed by 1kx, Crypto.com, Wintermute, GSR, Kraken Ventures, Consensys and others. Diana Biggs is a partner at 1kx, a crypto VC that has led rounds in companies including Arweave, Pudgy Penguins, Rarible, Wallet Connect and many more. In this conversation, Laszlo, Diana and Will Beeson break down the staking opportunity and Kiln’s view of the space and also use it as a jumping off point to explore 1kx’s investment strategy. Specifically, we discuss staking as a crypto primitive, its potential to supercharge consumer and institutional crypto use cases, the investment thesis behind staking infrastructure, technical considerations and more.

Luca Prosperi is the founder and CEO of M^0, a stablecoin issuance protocol reimagining how money is created. We first connected with Luca in May 2023, shortly after M^0’s seed round. Fast forward a year, and the company has now raised $60 million, launched on mainnet and facilitated the issuance of over $40 million in stablecoins with its initial network participant. In this conversation, Luca and Will Beeson discuss his vision for a new money creation paradigm, institutional product/market fit in stablecoins, why crypto finance is different from blockchain for banks, overcoming the cold start problem in stablecoin distribution and network creation, the direct parallels between traditional finance and the use cases M^0 is building and more.

Nick van Eck is the co-founder and CEO of Agora, a US-based stablecoin issuer backed by Dragonfly, General Catalyst, Galaxy, Consensys, Wintermute, Flowdesk, Kraken Ventures and more. Agora’s strategy is to build distribution through B2B partners via a revenue sharing model, in which all parties that contribute to Agora’s stablecoins’ success share in the upside.  Prior to founding Agora, Nick worked at General Catalyst, a leading Venture Capital firm.  Nick’s grandfather started VanEck Global, a US ETF and mutual fund manager, in 1955, which informed much of Nick’s thinking about markets and the economy. Today, VanEck Global manages $100 billion across a range of products, including recently launched Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. In this conversation, Nick and I discuss crypto as an asset class and parallels to gold and other investments, the current state of the stablecoin industry and its future trajectory, Agora’s thesis vis-à-vis incumbent stablecoin issuers like Circle and Tether, Agora’s business model and the details of its go-to-market, and much more.

Lex Sokolin is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Generative Ventures, a crypto and AI focused venture firm.  Lex also publishes research and analysis at Fintech Blueprint, one of the best fintech, crypto and emerging tech newsletters out there.  In this conversation, Lex and I discuss his thesis at Generative Ventures, which invests in the financial infrastructure powering the machine economy.  Lex is a deep thinker focused on the leading edges of what’s currently possible. We're lucky to welcome him back on the podcast. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Lex Sokolin.

Bhanu Kohli is the co-founder and CEO of Layer2 Financial, a B2B payments company leveraging stablecoins for faster, cheaper payment processing. Mike Giampapa is General Partner of Galaxy Ventures, focusing on the intersection of crypto and financial services, security & DeFi applications, and developer tooling.  In this conversation, Bhanu, Mike and Will Beeson discuss real economy applications of stablecoins, including payments. We compare Layer2’s performance, economics and business model with traditional payments companies and look at potential applications for stablecoins in financial markets more broadly. This conversation was a fantastic look at a rapidly scaling, real-world use case for crypto and the disruptive potential of blockchain as financial infrastructure.