The Future of Bitcoin, RWAs & DeFi Lending 

New York morning trade, we're looking at the crypto majors slightly above the flat line this morning and across G5 RWAs are coming off their biggest month ever with volume crossing $100 billion for the first time ever in June and tokenize equities also coming off a record setting June.

SpaceX's mega IPO helping volume hit the $3.86 billion dollar mark.

Meanwhile, the crypto loan industry.

Has also grown dramatically.

Last year, the total outstanding active crypto collateralized loans reaching a record $73.6 billion.

Now defy lending or decentralized credit does make up most of the market commanding about 2/3.

Maple has seen growth in the space processing over $21 billion worth of Bitcoin loans.

Well joining us this morning to weigh in is the policy.

And co-founder of Maple Finance said good morning.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So I do want to jump in and start out with your crypto market outlook as well as overview.

Now the summer months have historically been weak for crypto major Bitcoin, and speculation of the four-year cycle has been here.

So where do we actually stand right now as we head into the second half of 2026?

It's a great question, Remy.

I think uh.

You know, Bitcoin's been trading in this range of kind of 600,000 to 64,000 over the past week.

We, you know, we've bounced off lows of 58, um, but I think we're, we're beginning to see a bit of a recovery driven by, uh, you know, dovish, dovish signals from the Fed, weaker jobs data, and, uh, As you pointed out, a lot of people still anchor to this, uh, this concept of the 4 year cycle, so, my sense is that, uh, we're poised for a better second half, and, you know, that within 12 months, we should, we could see, Bitcoin reapproaching those kind of, uh, you know, those kind of all-time highs between 100 and 1200 that we, we saw last year.

So I think we've, we've kind of bottomed out this cycle and I'm much more optimistic about the second half of the year and what this holds for Bitcoin.

Yes, and as you mentioned, the first half of 2026 has been volatile across all asset classes, in particular when it comes to crypto.

So I do want to ask you about crypto lending.

I understand that Maple now holds $4.6 billion in AUM and has helped facilitate $21 billion in Bitcoin loans.

So what is happening when it comes to the crypto lending space in terms of growth?

I think, uh, you know, as, as you alluded to at the start, Remy, the, uh, the space had around 73 billion in, in lending between the, uh, centralized players and the decentralized players.

Uh, what we've seen is that in this kind of environment where, uh, Bitcoin is sort of trading within a narrow range, we start to see people think a lot more about Yield, and so we get a lot more inflows into platforms like Maple, uh.

Over the second quarter our loans went to an all-time high of 1.9 billion outstanding, and really where, where a lot of that new demand is coming from has been, uh, some of these uh digital asset treasury companies or DATs, who are now looking at, you know, with uh with Bitcoin at subdued prices, how do they borrow against their holdings to either buy back shares, or buy more Bitcoin to, uh, you know, to increase the Bitcoin per share.

And the other, uh, the other surprising, uh, Point of interest has been some of the miners, so Maple's now received numerous inquiries from, uh, Bitcoin miners around borrowing against their holdings, which was a little bit unexpected because earlier in the year we'd seen a few of these players signal a strong pivot to AI and, and they were less focused on, uh, on, on.

Accumulation of uh of Bitcoin, so that's been a pleasant surprise, and then always the uh, the primes, and exchanges or prime brokers I should say, generally post pretty strong demand.

So that's what that's what drove Maple's rise to uh to 1.9 billion over the last quarter in new loans.

And I think perspective is key here right now.

So I do want to get your perspective when it comes to some of the biggest Trad 5Di integration headlines we've seen.

So for example, we had payments companies planning the Open USD stablecoin and also Robinhood launching a layer to blockchain with Maple bringing its on-chain engine to Robinhood chain.

So walk us through this.

We're, we, I mean, we're tremendously uh proud of the Robinhood partnership and, and integration there.

So Robinhood, of course, has launched Robinhood chain.

This is built on, on the arbitram L2, and Robinhood brings 350 billion of, of user assets and over 30 million in new clients with them, so.

This is a tremendous integration, uh, so Maple has partnered with them and with Morpho to make, uh, on-chain Yield accessible to Robinhood's 30 million users, and, uh, we've already seen tremendous growth, so I mean, Robin, uh, Maple's, um, Uh, Maple's, uh, vehicle there for that integration has already seen over 200 million in AUM, uh, with just a week since launch.

Uh, so we're seeing very strong numbers there, but I think broadly what it shows is that Fintechs and neobanks are embracing stablecoins.

They are thinking about how they offer their users yield in order to, uh, In order to, to keep their asset balances on their platforms, they wanna, so they want to expand their product offerings and really stablecoin yield is, is front of mind for these FinTechs and neobanks, and I think Robinhood is a, is a fantastic, thoughtful entrant to uh to, to partner with.

And less than 60 seconds left, Sid, so I do want to get your take on the regulatory landscape as we head into the rest of 2026.

So a lot of us have been banking that that clarity would get passed uh before the midterms.

It seems, you know, based on the uh the prediction markets that that uh maybe less likely, uh, but I think irrespective of whether clarity gets passed, what we've seen is real adoption, and uh, uh, fintechs and, and traditional players.

Embracing tokenization, you know, integrations like Robinhood prove that they, you know, that stablecoins are here to stay and they've found a product-market fit, so I think, irrespective of whether clarity gets passed this year, uh, you know, the cat is already out of the bag, and, and so a lot of adoption is happening, and really the, the pace is accelerating from what we've seen.

Well, a lot to keep our eyes on as we head into the second half of 2026.

Always great talking to you, Sid.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure.