Glad to see everyone today. Thank you for inviting me. Okay, great. Let's begin. So, today we're going to talk a little bit about digital assets, RWA, and tokenization.
So let's begin. Listen, you're all here for one reason. And if you don't know what's going on and have no idea what's have no idea what's going on in cryptocurrency, we all know that the dominant narrative right now is about tokenization and RWA. All these different things that are happening around the institutionalization of digital assets. You know, the world has been talking about digital assets for some time now.
And the last 2 years we've really seen a big explosion of talk about tokenization and all these different things. Even just in the last few days, we've seen all these different headlines, right? Visa and Mastercard are now talking about stablecoins, right? We have BlackRock talking non-stop about tokenization for the last 2 years, RWAs have really been the leaders of all of this, right? DTCC is now talking about tokenizing everything.
And tokenizing everything. And , of course, even recently Nasdaq has been talking about tokenizing all stocks, putting everything on the blockchain. So we're seeing a huge amount of activity and hype around tokenization, RWAs, and all of this stuff that's happening, right? And that's what it's supposed to do, right? I think the point is that it's supposed to pump up our bags, it's supposed to make things grow, but for some reason every day I wake up and look at my BTC bag and it still looks like this.
And so, unfortunately, we're still not doing well, but it's all good, right? Now it's a little more serious, isn't it? Through all of this , we've seen all these things happening, people constantly posting continuous graphs and different things like that, right? First of all, our assets are now at 30 billion, right 30 billion, right ? Second, we've grown 4x since February, right?
Even we at Plume, we're not, uh, not above that, we do that too , right? We say, "Oh, 55 billion is coming in the next few years, what's going on?" So you see all these different posts popping up now, and everyone is talking about tokenization. And because you have it on the right graph, while all the other graphs are falling, it gets a lot of attention, and people focus on it, people get excited, and it leads people down a certain path, right? Even people who used to talk about things like, you know, fartcoin, like, you know, stronger than the S&P, are now moving on to discussing tokenization and RWAs, right?
And I just want to say that everyone is moving in this direction and has the big picture, right? We are all rallying around the idea that asset tokenization will be what comes along and propels cryptocurrency into the next phase, at least one of them. Is n't that right? So let's get back to that, shall we? If we look at it again, it's no joke.
The last few years have been incredible. This graph has moved up to the right again. We have seen a massive rise in risk-protected assets and tokenized assets, right? Even in a shorter time frame, in the last quarter, even in the last quarter, we grew by 30%, right? So we went from about 20 billion to 30 billion, right?
And that's a credible amount of growth for individual assets, right? Take Treasury bonds, commodities, asset-backed loans, all of these things are up 50%, right up 50%, right ? So we're seeing significant growth in all of them. But the problem is, if you look around and talk to crypto talk to crypto people or talk to anyone, the question really is that 30 billion seems like a big number. We see all this growth, we see all these things happening, but it still seems limited to the headlines, doesn't it?
If you ask people in the audience, who actually uses these things, who holds these assets, who makes things in our D-base? Usually it's not that many people. Right? And it's people. Right?
And it's , um, more of a story that we're talking about, and we're asking, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what people actually do with these things do with these things . Right? And if we peel the onion a little and look at what's behind all these all these growing numbers, right? I'll keep them anonymous, but look at one asset, okay? $2.
8 billion, that's one of the main drivers of growth in the last quarter, right? $2.8 billion , looks great, right? 43 owners. Yes?
Nobody's holding this thing, right? Another one, $1.5 billion in assets, right? Again, it looks great, right? 29 owners, right?
Another one, 250, great, one owner, right? And so if you look at it again today, right? It becomes very clear that this actually reflects what we think about it , right? The numbers are big, we're sure of that , but so far, few people are actually using these things. Right?
And if you're talking about money, you're talking about assets, you're talking about an asset that you want people to hold, use, develop, and have a network effect around these things, right? Owners are an important part. One user who has a billion dollars is probably less useful than 100 people useful than 100 people who hold $10 each. Right? And then everyone will be able to make transactions.
So, again, the same thing. If you look at another way of measuring, right? Monthly transfers, right? One of the biggest assets there, six in the last month, right? And it actually went down, right?
26, right? 43, and it has grown, right? Compared to the previous one. So, just to say it again, right? Tokenization is a big deal.
It is happening. There's a lot of good stuff going on here, right? But if we look again , if you look one level deeper and look beyond just the headline numbers and look at the other things that add up to all of this, right? This starts to paint a different story, doesn't it? And I'm not here to say that's a bad thing.
I'm just here to say that we're still at the beginning, and we need to understand the different dimensions of this to better understand what it all looks like, right? Another thing, people talk about tokenization in terms of usage, right? We can borrow, we can lend, we can do all these wonderful things. $30 billion in assets today is a report that came out of DeFi Llama that came out of DeFi Llama , which says that very, very little of it is actually in DeFi, using DeFi today, right? And you can just check any market, any pool, right?
Any lending market. Nothing always happens with these things . Isn't that right ? This is a great idea. Is n't that right?
Nobody is doing this yet. Isn't that right ? And why is that? If you go back to that again, big numbers, which are great, are n't they? But what's missing here, right?
Again, going back to what people actually hold and use today? And going back to that number, 43 people. So what do we actually do to get this to the right place? Right? You need to focus on the user and what people actually do to achieve this.
Right? And so when you look at today across the different networks, right? There is one that certainly stands out. Of course, it's us, right ? If you look at Thor bites, if you sort by networks, who has the most RWA owners, right?
You can see Plumes here from above. And the reason is that I think compared to other people, what we understood early on and tried to take advantage of was to look at this. Right? We went the stablecoin route. The original RWA and the only RWA that matters today, and the only token that matters today, is the stablecoin.
Isn't that right? With the stablecoin, they took something that in this case was an American asset, a high-quality asset, and packaged it differently, distributed it and spread it around the world to give access to different people, right? And so they changed both the way the product is distributed, how it is used, and who ultimately consumes that product, right? So if you look at it, you can see that one is a crazy huge success, the other is still growing, right? Obviously we're optimistic, otherwise we wouldn't be doing this, but it's still just a thing, right?
And again, my friend Brian also says that access also says that access is the solution, right? Taking these things outside the world things outside the world is just as important. And look at stablecoins, the user base in the US isn't huge, but outside of, sorry, the US, it's a huge thing, right? So starting from there, right? Moving on to an example that we all know today, especially if you have been working in cryptocurrency for the last 2 years, another review is that we can look at McDonald's as an example, right?
And if we look at the McDonald's example, why did that happen and how should we think about those assets, right ? McDonald's, right, was founded in the 40s? And he was extremely successful extremely successful , wasn't he? And then, in the 60s, they wanted to enter the international market. They wanted to take the same thing and bring it to other countries.
Isn't that right? And they wanted to stick to what they knew best, which was to take the American burger American burger , right? Ground beef with cheese and all these different things and bring it to other countries to increase sales, right? So they started with places they knew. Is n't that right?
Places that were nearby. Canada— were nearby. Canada— one of the first McDonald's in Canada, right? It looks like the regular McDonald's we all know today, does n't it? It's focused on a certain suburb, right?
This is designed to create a consumer family feel. There are tables, there are cars, it's like you go there with your family and buy burgers, right? That was the whole point. When it worked in the places they started, right? All this seems to be adjacent to America.
In Canada, in Latin America, in these different places. When did they start taking it to other places, to Asia, right? In China, in India, it didn't work as well , right? And a simple example, right? The consumer in these markets had a different feel and a different understanding of what they were trying to do there.
For example, when they went to Japan, right? They were trying to figure out were trying to figure out how to present it. They introduced it in Japan and it didn't really work, right? What they needed to do, and what they had to do, after long conversations with the local community, they began to understand that this is exactly what they had to do. And you'll see, this is one of the first Japanese McDonald's in Japan.
The difference between this and the other is that it is in a shopping mall. It's not in a remote suburb, is it? Where are you going with your family? It's in a shopping mall, it's a very trendy place in Ginza, right? Um, this is a very trendy shopping mall, isn't it?
And it's designed to be something of an upscale experience. In fact, it is more expensive than other things. He was just a little differently oriented. But when they did it, packaged it, and delivered it differently, it started to work. And then it took off.
Right? And what really took off after that, didn't it? There was a time when they said, “ when they said, “ Hey, you know what? Let's just change the product itself. It will still be a burger.
We'll take the ground beef and buns and sell this thing. We'll put teriyaki sauce on it." And when they called it a teriyaki burger, he started tearing up after that. And it's been changing constantly since then, hasn't it? If you look today, Japan now accounts for 70% of now accounts for 70% of national international sales of the teriyaki burger.
Or for McDonald's. Right? Same with India, right? And we're about to reach the limit of my cultural and, um, culinary knowledge, but with India, right? The only thing I know about it is that they don't eat beef there, right?
So selling cheeseburgers there isn't the best idea, is it? So you'll have to change the way you deliver the product, right? Not just the product itself Not just the product itself , right? It turns out that most Indian households at that time ate the vast majority of their meals indoors with the family, cooking food at home, right? So three out of ten dishes were home-made.
So you had to struggle with how to get that audience out there? And so, thanks to a lot of marketing campaigns, a lot of design, these different elements, you managed to get the consumer to eat nine out of ten meals outdoors, right? So, simply put, if you're going to try to take this product to the international market and expand its sales to other locations, you need to think about how to ship it. You may have to change the product, but you have to understand the consumer and the user. And by doing this for McDonald's doing this for McDonald's , they took, essentially, an American asset, right?
Cheeseburger, right? They spread it all over the world, didn't they ? And now global and international sales account for 60% of McDonald's domestic sales, right? So, what about growing one thing, packaging it packaging it differently, distributing it in other places, and developing it significantly? That's the idea.
So today, if you look at this thing, it's everywhere, Morocco, Japan, the UK, right? Spain, Germany, Turkey, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, all of these things look and feel a little different. After all, it's all ground beef in a patty, you know, and bread. But they package it and wrap it wrap it differently, and then you can sell it to different people in different ways. And this community can use it and embrace it however they want.
Right? And again, coming back to that, if you want to get this, the main thing to understand is to understand your user base, right? Both your user base outside the US and the people you want to reach. Right? And in doing that, again , two things, you need to understand how to reach them how to reach them , and then what to actually give them.
Right? And so if you think about cryptocurrency as an example, right? Most of the money today is in cryptocurrency, right? It's still cryptocurrency, right? So, we're talking about tokenized assets, we're talking about leveraging different assets, right?
Often you look at the biggest one today - biggest one today - it's Biddle, right? These are U.S. Treasury bills at BlackRock, right? You have Biddle, you have things like, you know, private credit or something.
You take these things and move them to other places, right? And if that's what you're doing, then first you need to understand who you're selling to and what they want, right? So to think about this community, the question is who they are and what they want, right? And people tend to think of cryptocurrency as a monolith, right monolith, right ? It's a bunch of people, you know, in their underwear, trading tokens, trading shitcoins, right?
Which ones do I count myself among , you know? But there are actually many, many different sub-sectors of the crypto audience, right? First of all, you know, this audience is sometimes like this is a classic example, right? You know, people pay millions of dollars for JPEGs of rocks, right? Another one, you know, here's another one, right?
This is a different type of community people, right? People, you know, uh, also get 60,000% also get 60,000% annual discounts every day, right? And they decide to invest 600 million in this thing, right? I was one of them too, right? And then, you know, even this, when people view Farcoin as a blue- chip token, right?
So, this is a community that you deal with often. So you have to understand who these people are, and they're not all the same type of people, right? There are people who are shitcoin traders shitcoin traders , there are people who buy and hold, there are farmers, all these different things. How do you figure out how to take that asset and develop it for them and reach them, that's the question, right? And again , it's about how you deliver it to them and then what you ultimately deliver to get the growth you want , right?
And so , right? And so , maybe if we quickly step back, what are we supposed to do here? And why are we talking about this today, right? You know, that's what we focus on at Plume , right? While most people focus on assets, we certainly do that as well, but we are really focused on distribution.
And what do you think about that? And that's why we were able to attract the owners we have today to distribution, right? So if we look back, quickly introduce ourselves at Plume, you know, you know, you know, you know, I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of Plume. This is my co-founder, Teddy. And you know, we started the company about 2-3 years ago, right?
So we got out quickly, we raised $10 million in the first round from Han and Galaxy. We raised our Series A then from Apollo and Brevan Howard, more of a TradFi element, right? Then after that we launched our main network. Launched with 150 million in assets, uh million in assets, uh , looping, borrowing, all that stuff, right? And then they quickly became the number one RV owners, right?
In the world. After that, we started getting licenses, right? US licenses, money transfer agent, Bermuda, all these different things. And as a result, you know, we recently announced our partnership with EtherFi, we're connecting to EtherFi connecting to EtherFi , one of the fastest growing neo- growing neo- banks in the world, and connecting our, uh, tokenization products to it, so that people can now directly allocate funds into these assets, right? I think that's the case with BlackRock, Fidelity, a few others, right?
Where you can directly allocate funds to them, receive income them, receive income , and now return them back. So, that's the idea, right? You have to go where the consumer is the consumer is and deliver what they want, right? And so, again, we've been doing this for a long time, and we've made billions of dollars in volume through our products, the largest owner base, we've delivered millions of dollars, over $30 million in revenue, right? Now we have licenses all over the world, in the Emirates, all over the US, in ADGM, right?
Throughout the EU. And we work with some of the biggest companies, right? Apollo, WisdomTree, um, DGFT, all these people integrated into places that matter, right? Or 5, Bybit, Solana, right? Morpher, Perenna Bybit, Solana, right?
Morpher, Perenna , all these different places. Yes? And here's what we were able to do. Um, and how we do that is we take both elements and both sides of the equation and we combine them. On the one hand, you have the tokenization part.
So, we're working a lot with large issuers to help them understand how to move this asset to the blockchain? What is the legal structure? How to do it correctly, what types of products are there, right? Let's go through all of this. And on the other hand, it is a divorce from all distribution points.
The first is, of course, our community, but the second is connecting to places like exchanges, places like exchanges, neobanks, blockchain elements, etc., and making them composable and easy to use so you can actually get the things you need. And wrapping all of this underneath with a regulatory and compliance prism to make sure that these things are actually being done correctly. Right? And that's exactly what we're doing today.
Simply put, it's a different way. There are three things that matter. There are assets, there is compliance and distribution, right? And we're the only ones who seem to be weaving it all together, even today, aren't we? When we started the company, it took, you know, two to three years to tokenize the asset and move it to the blockchain, right?
It's only gotten a little better now. It still takes about a year, and it's about bringing together 30 or 40 different partners to make all of this happen between compliance, between AML, between tokenization, between custody, all these different things, right? So, we're bringing all of this together to make it much easier for people to tokenize all of their assets on the blockchain, right? As a result, we saw that we could target all types of users because we understand the end user in distribution. First of all distribution.
First of all , right? Blockchain Institution Blockchain Institution . Grove and Apollo are partnering with us to deploy $50 million in A-Credit Fund, one of the largest A-Credit deployments on the blockchain today. Right? Secondly, connecting to exchanges, right?
So, we are partnering with OKX to deploy our products on OKX, right? Um, I think we got $40 million coming into assets through the OKX integration, right? Also, again, EtherFi, right? One of the fastest growing neo-banks in the world, $100 million in deposits, right? Coming from the EtherFi community, right?
Oh, and then of course, for the more degraded side of things, right? The ability to change the products themselves for a more on-chain more on-chain audience, right? So you guys are saying, you know, 33,000% are saying, you know, 33,000% APR on some of these RVAs, right? Thanks to the use of PTYT, right? And so, the ability to serve a product to different audiences is how you develop those different assets and understand where they are.
Yes? So if you look back at today, where is the money? What do people do? These are truly stable coins. This is the target market here.
If you look at it, there are three places that generally hold money. Number one is the stock market, right? They keep all the money. Number two, neo-banks, the fastest growing place where stablecoins are hoarded. Number three, blockchain users, right?
And each of them has a different profile. Some are very safe and stable. Number two are a little more, uh, looking for yield, but still want to be safe. And number three, you know, they want to do a lot of degenerative things degenerative things . They want to play.
They want high annual interest rates. It's really about the main number, right? So, understanding each of them and developing products that work for each of them is the answer here and is the main goal, right? And again, Plume has a unique positioning. Again, we were talking about OKX, which made over $40 million.
Etherfi $100 million . And Pendle, we've seen huge success there as well. So that's the idea, and what we're doing here, right? And the basis of all this is compliance. Isn't that right?
We have built a great team of regulators in cryptocurrency. Salman was here yesterday, talking to, uh, Taylor, also about how they thought about things. Salman, our GC, was a former, uh, was at the SEC before, and before that at the CFTC, right? Um, we, uh, testified, you know, with, uh, invited to testify and talk about, uh, tokenization and compliance with the cryptocurrency working group. Uh, and then of course, you know, a bunch of licenses you know, a bunch of licenses , right?
From our Bermuda license , SEC transfer agent, right? Our ADGM license and all these different things. So the idea is that regulation for us is a key part and just a component, but to do it in a way that to do it in a way that actually works for the end user, and to keep that in mind, because regulation by itself is just going to repeat what's already been done, right ? But without understanding how people will actually use this thing on blockchain today, right? So for us, it's about being on the blockchain and being compliant, right?
It's about LP maintenance, right? And about asset issuers eventually feeling comfortable moving these things to the blockchain, right? And that leads to today, namely the Plume product suite. On the one hand, we have the institutional Plume stack, right? It allows you to work with large asset issuers.
And secondly, this is the Plume element in the blockchain, and underneath that again is the compliance stack that we use for all of this, right? So the idea is that by understanding the end user, you can work backwards to build all the infrastructure that allows us to work, right? And then lets get to this, right? Until then. So, that's it .
Thanks for your time, Skye. I appreciate it. See you later.
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.
