Bridging Permissionless DeFi and Regulated On-Chain Finance with Predicate

Nikhil Raghuveera is the Co-Founder and CEO of Predicate, a company building on-chain policy infrastructure that enables organizations to set programmable, enforceable rules for transactions within blockchain-based financial systems. Predicate's technology underpins compliance and policy enforcement for next-generation stablecoins, privacy protocols, and real-world asset tokenization platforms. Before founding Predicate, Nikhil was Head of Strategy and Innovation at Celo, where he led many of the blockchain's early Web3 deployments and helped shape its evolution from a Layer 1 to Layer 2 network. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, focused on digital asset policy and the future of global financial systems. Earlier in his career, Nikhil worked in economic and management consulting, including at BCG, advising on securities, antitrust, and financial innovation. Bridging deep technical expertise with a sophisticated understanding of regulation and markets, Nikhil is helping define how institutions and fintechs operate on-chain as blockchain becomes a global financial settlement layer. Please enjoy the following insights from Nikhil Raghuveera.

Matt Homer is the Founder and General Partner of The Venture Dept., a venture capital firm investing at the intersection of fintech, digital assets, and regulation, with a particular focus on stablecoins and stablecoin infrastructure. Before founding The Venture Dept., Matt was a regulator at the FDIC and then the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), where he helped design and oversee some of the earliest digital asset frameworks in the U.S. He later joined Nyca Partners, a leading fintech venture firm, where he developed its digital asset investment strategy. Matt also serves on the boards of Gemini and Standard Custody (acquired by Ripple), bringing a unique blend of regulatory insight, fintech experience, and early-stage investing to one of the most rapidly evolving sectors in finance. Please enjoy the following insights from Matt Homer.

Will Peck is the Head of Digital Assets at WisdomTree, a $130 billion asset manager and ETF sponsor and a pioneer in tokenized assets. Over his 11-year tenure at WisdomTree, Will has helped the firm navigate the evolution from ETFs to tokenized assets, stablecoins, and on-chain investment infrastructure. WisdomTree is at the forefront of innovation, applying lessons from ETFs—transparency, liquidity, tax efficiency, and standardization—to build scalable, accessible tokenized products for both institutional and retail investors. With ongoing regulatory developments and growing adoption of digital assets, WisdomTree is well positioned to expand its tokenized ecosystem.

Raghu Yarlagadda is the Co-founder and CEO of FalconX, the leading institutional digital asset prime brokerage. In the last year, FalconX has done $1 trillion in trading volume across spot and derivatives. FalconX is an incredible success story, starting early and growing alongside broader institutional adoption of crypto and digital assets. With current regulatory tailwinds, the company is extremely well positioned to accelerate growth even further. FalconX has raised nearly $500m, most recently at an $8 billion valuation, from investors including Accel, GIC, B Capital, Altimeter, Thoma Bravo, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Wellington and many more. Please enjoy today's conversation with Raghu Yarlagadda.

Today we're joined by Bhaji Illuminati and Jürgen Blumberg. Bhaji is CEO of Centrifuge, one of the original players in the RWA space. Jürgen is a former Goldman ETF exec and, as of recently, COO of Centrifuge and CIO of Anemoy, it's asset management arm. In this conversation, Bhaji, Jürgen and Will Beeson dive into the evolution of investment management toward an on-chain markets future. We discuss the early growth of the tokenized financial asset market, similarities with the early days of ETFs, current on-chain investment capital pools and investor demands, the interplay between stablecoin growth and tokenized assets, use cases and distribution strategies for assets across the risk curve, the relationship between DeFi and TradFi, future market expectations, and much more.

Chris Yin is the co-founder and CEO of Plume, a crypto-native RWA blockchain. Real-world assets, RWAs for short, are financial assets implemented in token form. Alongside stablecoins, these assets are at the heart of the transition of financial markets onto upgraded settlement rails in the form of blockchains. Chris brings an interesting perspective to the RWA conversation. Whereas some firms, including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, are focused on building institutional-grade offerings that mirror traditional financial products, Plume takes a different approach. Pointing to the success of crypto-native markets, Plume's ecosystem bridges speculative retail users and experiences with yield from traditional financial assets, on the premise that crypto energy is the source of the demand that will pull finance on-chain. In this conversation, Chris and Will Beeson discuss the state of the RWA market, what's real and what's hype, the importance of crypto-native users, why there are multiple successful approaches to bringing finance on-chain, and what it takes to build and scale a thriving RWA ecosystem.

Sandy Kaul is the Executive Vice President and Head of Innovation at Franklin Templeton, the OG global asset manager when it comes to tokenization and digital assets. In this conversation, we dive into the newly passed GENIUS Act and what it means for stablecoins, banks, and the future of cash. We explore Franklin Templeton's journey launching BENJI, their tokenized money market fund, way back in 2019, long before most firms were paying attention to digital assets. We also dig into Sandy's views on consumer accounts, payments, and investments in an on-chain world.

Kirill Gertman is the founder and CEO of Conduit, a leading B2B cross-border payments platform powered by stablecoins. Conduit leverages stablecoins to allow businesses to move money faster, cheaper and more transparently than legacy platforms such as SWIFT. In 2024, Conduit grew transaction volumes 16x year-on-year, surpassing $10 billion in total volume. In May 2025, Conduit raised a $36 million Series A, co-led by Dragonfly and Altos. In this conversation, Kirill and Will Beeson discuss the true economics of stablecoin versus traditional payments, when stablecoin payments make sense, and when they don't, how corporates use stablecoin payments alongside traditional payments in practice, what needs to change for stablecoin payments companies to win more use cases, how the stablecoin issuance market will evolve post GENIUS, and much more.

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.