Rebank: Fintech Analysis

Mike Belshe is the Co-Founder and CEO of BitGo, a digital asset infrastructure company serving institutions across custody, trading, staking, and stablecoin services. A veteran technologist whose early career included engineering roles at Netscape and Google, Mike has spent the last decade building the foundational infrastructure for crypto's institutional adoption. Founded in 2013, BitGo began as a secure wallet provider and has since evolved into a federally chartered digital asset trust company with global regulatory reach. Today, the firm operates across multiple jurisdictions, offering a full-stack platform that combines self-custody technology, regulated custody, and crypto-as-a-service infrastructure for banks, fintechs, and asset managers. As tokenization reshapes financial markets and stablecoins challenge traditional banking models, Mike is focused on advancing a more transparent, resilient, and globally accessible market structure: one that blends blockchain innovation with regulated financial services.

Nathan McCauley is the Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank and infrastructure platform serving institutions across custody, trading, staking and stablecoin issuance. Anchorage operates at the core of the institutional digital asset stack, combining crypto-native technology with federal regulatory oversight. Nathan founded Anchorage in 2017 with the conviction that digital assets would ultimately be adopted by traditional financial institutions — but only if the underlying infrastructure met the highest standards for security, compliance, and usability. Under his leadership, Anchorage became the first federally chartered digital asset bank in the U.S., regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In February 2026, Anchorage announced a $100 million strategic investment from Tether, a key partner and the sponsor of USAT, a regulated U.S. stablecoin, underscoring the firm's role as a foundational infrastructure partner in the evolving stablecoin ecosystem. This partnership strengthens Anchorage's position at the intersection of global distribution and institutional adoption. Today, Anchorage supports a broad range of institutional clients, including banks, asset managers, fintechs, public companies, and stablecoin issuers. The platform enables institutions to interact with digital assets while meeting regulatory requirements and plays a central role in the growing adoption of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain financial infrastructure. Please enjoy the following insights from Nathan McCauley of Anchorage Digital.

Andy Kangpan is a Partner at Metalayer, a crypto-native investment firm focused on backing companies building institutional-grade financial infrastructure on blockchain rails. Founded by former Two Sigma investors and operators, Metalayer plays at the intersection of venture capital, on-chain markets, and next-generation asset management. Andy brings over a decade of experience in venture capital, with a background spanning early-stage technology investing and seven years at Two Sigma, where he led the firm's crypto venture efforts. During his tenure, he worked across private investments and liquid strategies, developing a deep understanding of how blockchain technology can be applied to reinvent core financial plumbing. At Metalayer, Andy focuses on seed and early-stage investments in companies building for the institutional phase of crypto — particularly where on-chain infrastructure intersects with regulated financial services. His work emphasizes disciplined portfolio construction, long-term value creation, and expanding the venture playbook to include new, on-chain-native investment strategies. Please enjoy the following insights from Andy Kangpan of Metalayer.

Nick Cherney is Head of Innovation at Janus Henderson Investors, a global asset manager overseeing more than $400 billion in assets. With over two decades of experience in ETFs and investment product development, Nick has been deeply involved in some of the most important structural shifts in modern asset management. Nick began his career in the early days of ETFs at iShares, where he helped build the category inside what would later become BlackRock. He later founded VelocityShares in 2010, developing specialized exchange-traded products for institutional traders and hedge funds across volatility, commodities, and structured strategies. Today at Janus Henderson, Nick focuses on how blockchain and tokenization intersect with traditional asset management. His work centers on practical adoption — identifying where on-chain infrastructure can deliver real, incremental value, both through tokenized funds serving DeFi-native demand and blockchain-based efficiencies embedded within traditional investment products. Operating at the intersection of ETFs, institutional finance, and on-chain markets, Nick brings a pragmatic perspective on how tokenization can scale — and what it will take for on-chain finance to move beyond experimentation into meaningful adoption. Please enjoy the following insights from Nick Cherney of Janus Henderson.

Thomas Cowan is the Head of Tokenization at Galaxy, a crypto-focused merchant bank bridging traditional finance and on-chain markets. Based in New York, he leads tokenization within Galaxy's investment banking arm, where his team focuses on structuring and placing tokenized products — from money market funds to on-chain debt and securitized credit. At Galaxy, Thomas works at the intersection of institutional capital and blockchain infrastructure, helping traditional financial institutions explore how blockchain can deliver faster settlement, greater transparency, and more efficient secondary markets for complex products like CLOs and other structured debt. His perspective spans both TradFi and crypto-native markets, giving him a front-row seat to how tokenization is evolving from technology experiment to core market infrastructure. Please enjoy the following insights from Thomas Cowan of Galaxy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.