Nearly two weeks after its IPO, SpaceX volume is coming back down to earth with anthropic and open AI offerings down the coming down the pipe back and financial plumbing is coming under the spotlight for several reasons, and these do include the unprecedented scale of the offerings as well as transitioning private cap tables into a clean public share registry and the automation and evolution of transfer agents.
And rapid fire index inclusion with the SpaceX IPO we saw crypto traders requested tokenized shares and get shut out by exchanges like by and as well as by that because thats couldn't secure nearly enough real shares to back the tokenized ones as tokenization accelerates this does show the current limitations of blockchain infrastructure while joining us.
To break this down is Rob Sker, co-founder and CEO of Vinyl Equity.
Well, Rob, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
Well, when it comes to the transfer agent model, tell us about the blind spots and what needs to happen here, especially ahead of some more mega IPOs.
Yeah, well, I think they're two different things.
The the mega IPOs, we've got an enormous amount.
Of data over the last couple of years you've got 1020, 25 years in the case of SpaceX, years of secondary transactions that have occurred.
You've got layered SPVs, a lot of people who think they own SpaceX shares that may not own SpaceX shares, and all of that is going to get unwound over the course of the next 3 months, 6 months, year while the the lockups play out.
The same thing is going to happen with OpenAI with anthropic, with any of the other large companies that are coming to market, and the infrastructure has to be able to reflect that in real time.
What we have today is that we've got an infrastructure and ownership layer that hasn't modernized in over 40 years and 50 years in a lot of cases, batch processes, mainframe systems, cobalt code.
Um, and while the trading infrastructure has modernized and it is now moving toward a real-time basis, the record keeping layer hasn't, uh, the infrastructure components haven't, and so.
What we aim to see over the next few years, and I think tokenization is a big part of that is, uh, is more modern systems, more real-time capability, but that's not happening today and so, um, the traders, and as you mentioned, there were, there was a failure to deliver on a number of these tokenized, uh, stock purchases over the course, uh, the last couple of weeks, um, they're gonna bear the brunt of a lot of the pain and infrastructure inefficiency.
Yes, so Rob, you're highlighting the operational risks of sticking to these legacy systems here.
So tell us what you're working on when it comes to vinyl.
Yes, so vinyl Equity is a modern transfer agent.
We are capable of tokenizing shares and we're capable of interacting via API with any of the other infrastructure solutions.
The benefit of that is that we can create a homogeneous ledger that is capable of reflecting tokenized or or DTC eligible natively issued shares.
Now if you look at the other examples of tokenization in the market, you'll see mainframe based shares.
And tokenize wrappers, we think that's a fallacy.
If you're only updating the master security file twice a day, every 24 hours, um, then it sort of invalidates the legitimacy of the blockchain.
And finally, before I let you go, I do want to get your take on what you expect to see when it comes to the future of tokenization here.
So how close do you think we actually are to a fully tokenized public market and what infrastructure do you think we need to actually get there?
It starts with the ledger.
It starts with the record keeping system.
I think we are fairly far away from a regulatory perspective.
The technological infrastructure needs to evolve from the record keeping layer all the way to the trading environment through the clearing systems.
You're seeing NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange both take different bets in different directions and the DTC taking a different bet as well.
We need, uh, we need everybody to get on the same playing field.
We need everybody to start speaking the same language, uh, inclusive of the regulators, and we need all the technological components to.
Move along with it.
So at Vinyl, our ambition is to be the foundational element of that, um, and I think that you will see over the course of the next year, 18 months a lot more clarity, uh, come into the picture.
Well, a lot to keep our eyes on, so I appreciate you breaking this down for us, Rob.
Appreciate your time as well as your insights.
Thank you.
Thank you.
