Digital assets & tokenization consultant Contributing Editor at @DefiantNews. Previously CEO at @Arch_Finance / @BCG.
New York, USA
Joined October 2009
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Chris Storaker retweeted
STELLAR @StellarOrg MERIDIAN DAY 2
INTERVIEWS FROM THE FLOOR:
📣 BRINGING STABLECOIN PAYMENTS TO 190 COUNTRIES WITH BVNK @BVNKFinance
Rubén Galindo @rubengsp CEO - Airtm @airtminc
📣 MARSHALL ISLANDS IS ISSUING A SOV. BOND AND UBI ON STELLAR @StellarOrg
Charles Paul, Marshall Islands Ambassador @RMI_Govt
📣 THE DATA GIANT’S $110M RAISE LED BY S&P @SPGlobal
Ambre Soubiran @ambresoub, CEO - Kaiko @KaikoData
📣 KEEPING AN EDGE IN CRYPTO VC
Ben Lakoff @benlakoff, GP - Bankless Ventures @BanklessVC
📣 STELLAR DEFI EXPANDING WITH @CurveFinance,
@MetaMask, @SentoraHQ, @upshift_fi
Ada Vaughan @AdaVaughan, Head of DeFi - Stellar
📣 ETHERFUSE LAUNCHING PRINCIPAL+YIELD TOKENS FOR LOCAL CURRENCY BONDS
David Taylor @EtherfuseDave, CEO - Etherfuse @etherfuse
📣 BETTING THAT REAL ESTATE WILL BE THE NEXT RWA CATEGORY WITH +5% APYS
Edward Nwokedi @apartmentpro, CEO - RedSwan @RedSwanCRE
Kaiko's $110M Raise, a Nation Onchain, Stablecoins in 190 Countries & More: On the Floor @ Stellar's Meridian teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1yJAPwjqq…
Chris Storaker retweeted
STELLAR @StellarOrg MERIDIAN DAY 2
INTERVIEWS FROM THE FLOOR:
📣 BRINGING STABLECOIN PAYMENTS TO 190 COUNTRIES WITH BVNK @BVNKFinance
Rubén Galindo @rubengsp CEO - Airtm @airtminc
📣 MARSHALL ISLANDS IS ISSUING A SOV. BOND AND UBI ON STELLAR @StellarOrg
Charles Paul, Marshall Islands Ambassador @RMI_Govt
📣 THE DATA GIANT’S $110M RAISE LED BY S&P @SPGlobal
Ambre Soubiran @ambresoub, CEO - Kaiko @KaikoData
📣 KEEPING AN EDGE IN CRYPTO VC
Ben Lakoff @benlakoff, GP - Bankless Ventures @BanklessVC
📣 STELLAR DEFI EXPANDING WITH @CurveFinance, @MetaMask, @SentoraHQ, @upshift_fi
Ada Vaughan (@AdaVaughan), Head of DeFi - Stellar (@StellarOrg):
📣 ETHERFUSE LAUNCHING PRINCIPAL+YIELD TOKENS FOR LOCAL CURRENCY BONDS
David Taylor @EtherfuseDave, CEO - Etherfuse @etherfuse
📣 BETTING THAT REAL ESTATE WILL BE THE NEXT RWA CATEGORY WITH +5% APYS
Edward Nwokedi @apartmentpro, CEO - RedSwan @RedSwanCRE
Kaiko's $110M Raise, a Nation Onchain, Stablecoins in 190 Countries & More: On the Floor @Stellar's Meridian teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1qKVmydoy…
Stock issuers are increasingly saying no to tokenized stocks: Rejections climb to 33 for the first venue in the SEC stock token exemption (the OKX-ICE partnership).
Didn't think companies would be so against other tokenizing their shares, that's half the tickers that were proposed are saying no.
OKXICE ISSUER OBJECTIONS REACH 33, NARROWING PLANNED STOCK-TOKEN LINEUP
The @okx-backed venue added seven objectors. Objections cover 31 of 63 original symbols, according to The Defiant’s tally.
Read more here:
thedefiant.io/converge/tradf…
ALT Comparison of OKXICE’s original roster: 63 symbols from 62 companies, of which 31 symbols from 30 companies face disclosed objections and 32 symbols from 32 companies do not.
SoFi @SoFi launched the SOFIE deposit token yesterday, which pays 4.4% APY
THAT'S HUGE
Why:
- One of the highest-yielding USDC savings products out there. pays more than the average savings account, more than the 3.75% Coinbase pays on USDC
- It is the first bank-issued deposit token offered to U.S. retail, as far as I can find. (JPMorgan has one, but JPMD is institutional only)
Is this even legal?? Yes, and it's how banks compete with stables after their extensive lobby:
- It lands the same week the OCC finalized its GENIUS Act rule. It kept the ban on stablecoins paying yield but of course a deposit token is not a stablecoin under that law. It is a deposit, where yield is perfectly legal
Here's where it gets interesting:
- SoFi’s own savings account pays 3.3% with direct deposit and 0.80% without.
- The 4.5% tier costs $10 a month and caps at $20k
- SOFIE pays 4.4% on any balance with no fee
- Both carry the same FDIC coverage
So why not just pay 4.4% on the savings account? Whats' the deposit token even for?
- It converts 1:1 into SoFi's stablecoin SoFiUSD
- While SOFIE itself cannot be transferred anywhere, SoFiUSD can leave to an external wallet
For the bank, it's a way to retain users on both sides:
- SoFi users can got to SOFIE for yield and transfer to SoFiUSD when they want to trade crypto, issue a collateralized loan etc./ any other DeFi activity.
So 110 bps is the retention spend. It also buys the right to say “we do digital assets” and it keeps crypto-curious deposits on the balance sheet.
We discussed here:
How is SoFi Paying 4.4% on Tokenized Deposits? teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1yGBePgjR…
Chris Storaker retweeted
How is SoFi Paying 4.4% on Tokenized Deposits? teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1yGBePgjR…
Everyone was cheerleading Joe Wesienthal coming around to crypto, but did he really?
He says that after laughing at the "blockchain not bitcoin crowd" he has to admit those guys were right, and provides stablecoins and perps as examples of why blockchain tech is actually interesting (but I guess BTC is still not??)
That continues to miss the point entirely. Public, open blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, work BECAUSE OF/ THANKS TO their cryptocurrencies BTC, ETH, SOL. You cannot separate the two.
It's like saying, gold is just a shiny roc, but metallurgy is fascinating, or the US economy is so strong, but the US dollar is just a piece of paper.
A public blockchain's cryptocurrency provides its security. It incentivizes miners and validators to contribute stake or energy to the network. Without BTC, you cannot have the Bitcoin blockchain... feels weird saying this in 2026, should be so obvious to anyone following the industry.
Chris Storaker retweeted
Is the Ledger wallet implant story over, or just beginning?
Mark Karpelès has been opening @Ledger wallets to find out — and there are signs someone is manufacturing spy hardware at scale.
A 1-on-1 with the former Mt. Gox CEO, the man who physically pried this case open.
@MagicalTux joins us today at 11am ET 👇
teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1DxLdZPlY…
Today JPMorgan said JPM Coin runs on Ethereum mainnet and naturaly everyone rushed to say “banks are coming onchain"
but JPM was already onchain, on @base since Nov 2025. I went to see what their deposit token was doing there and... am I reading this right and it only has $1M supply? Two holders and last transfer was 241 days ago.
if that's the case, the meeting to coordinate the press release was prob worth more 😬
I'm mostly bullish deposit tokens but this proves "we're still early" tm (pls tell me I have the wrong contract lol)
Chris Storaker retweeted
🎙️ @Backpack had nearly 90% of its capital on FTX when it collapsed. The company was dead.
Now @armaniferrante is building a single globally regulated exchange, with one order book for crypto and stocks.
The full story with @CamiRusso 👇🏻
Chris Storaker retweeted
💀 Everyone's worst nightmare is happening right now: you do everything right and still get rekt
~ $93M drained from 300 wallets is the estimated toll from the Ledger hack
Who do you trust with your keys now?
How to keep your crypto safe?
Discussing live today 1pm ET with @PabloSabbatella (@opsek_io)
Tune in 👇
teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1nxnRBpbp…
paolo taking shots at @RobinhoodApp 🫣
also, why not both?
Two stablecoin announcements today that point to the same theme: players with distribution are choosing to partner with stablecoin issuers rather than mint their own.
@arbitrum made @Paxos' USDG its ecosystem dollar and joined Global Dollar Network, which pays partners up to 100% of the returns on the reserves backing USDG held on their platforms.
@ether_fi, which reports more than $300 million in stablecoin balances already sitting on its platform, said it will launch a dollar stablecoin on @ethena's white-label stack. Ethena manages the reserves, the minting, the redemptions and the compliance.
Both are choosing to rent instead of issue a stablecoin. the upside is they get to keep at least part of the economics of the dollars its users already have sitting idle, without any of the admin and compliance headaches.
It undermines the prediction that every bank, fintech and even big-box retailers will have their own stablecoin, which was common when GENIUS was just approved. Issuance is commoditizing.
here are the two news stories from @DefiantNews
thedefiant.io/news/defi/ethe…
thedefiant.io/news/defi/arbi…
Chris Storaker retweeted
Franklin Templeton's Roger Bayston shared a wild story:
One of the world's largest pension funds sees every investment opportunity on Earth, and Google still told them they're only seeing half the assets on the globe.
Here's what that means for tokenization @FTDA_US
Wow. @Stripe is reportedly paying $7B+ for @OpenRouter, which, as it stands, is an off-chain alternative for the onchain micropayments stack the payments giant has been building.
Stripe's machine payments docs set a 1-cent minimum for stablecoins, compared to 50 cents for cards, since cards can't handle 1-cent payments. That's the case for blockchain rails.
But growth had been slow. Tempo, the chain Stripe co-built so machines could pay each other, collected $5.34 in fees over the past 24 hours, according to @DefiantNews
Meanwhile on OpenRouter, millions of sub-cent AI charges get metered against one prepaid deposit, rather than settling onchain.
Growth with this model has been explosive. OpenRouter’s homepage on Monday listed 200 trillion monthly tokens and 10 million users.
OpenRouter's revenue is the credit card fee on those token purchases: 5.5% + $0.80 on cards, 5% on crypto. (Stripe had already processed those card payments as its PSP. Now it owns the fee entirely.)
Again, all entirely off-chain.
Maybe there's a plan to integrate OpenRouter to onchain flows, but without confirmation on that, it's a bit... awkward.
Chris Storaker retweeted
ROBINHOOD CHAIN OVERTAKES BASE ON DAUS
@base spent years building distribution. @RobinhoodApp Chain needed three weeks to pass it on DAUs.
The race for retail on-chain just got a lot more interesting.
Read more here:
thedefiant.io/news/defi/robi…
Chris Storaker retweeted
Here's my Top crypto podcasts. What's yours? geobrowser.io/r/2007127a803e…
Open USD @openstandard news is huge.
Here's why + hot takes to watch
OUSD proposes free mint/redeem fees and hands nearly all of that reserve yield, betting that stablecoins, value accrues to distribution, not issuance.
BUT that thesis is NOT entirely new. Paxos USDG launched free mint/redeem and yield for distribution partners in 2024 but dethroned no one.
So what's new isn't really the model but the caliber of distribution: Visa + Mastercard + Amex + the banks. There were 140 logos in that release.
Hot take 1:
OUSD is a bigger threat to Circle than Tether. Coinbase, which takes half of USDC reserve income, is Circle's main distribution engine, and has a stake in in the compnay, is a OUSD partner!
Makes sense for Coinbase to be hedging its dependence, but definitely rough for Circle.
Hot take 2:
Open USD is not so open. Not just any business can join. There's an application process with no public guidelines on how partners are picked. Open Standard's site says joining means "adopting Open USD as a core transactional asset within your platform or service offering."
Hot take 3:
How neutral is neutral governance?
A "board made up of the partners" almost certainly doesn't mean all 140 get a vote. Who sits on the governing board versus who merely integrates the token is undisclosed.
Hot take 5:
Open Standard's own announcement didn't actually name a blockchain but Solana and Tempo each volunteered that they're day-one hosts.
This is a loss for Ethereum, which wants to become the settlement layer for global finance (though of course more chains will be added later).
Here's @ConvergeDefiant coverage
thedefiant.io/converge/tradf…
