Val Gui joins us now.
He is the GM of Kraken at X Stocks.
Oh, really nice to see you here, Val.
So let's dig in to the very important, much hyped issue of tokenized equities.
For someone hearing about this for the first time, how are they different from buying, let's say, a traditional stock at a more traditional brokerage?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Thanks for asking.
Uh, when you think about tokenized equities, they're a digital representation of the underlying equity.
And so what you're really buying is something that is already represented in the digital space and um is backed 1 to 1 by that underlying equity and you get the economic exposure.
The important aspect is that this allows this to be.
What's called uh permissionless, which allows you to either self-custody that uh that token, uh, that equity token, or take it on chain, and you can trade it 24/7, and it's highly programmable, so it really expands the the rails that you can actually engage with these equities.
24/7 trading sounds exciting to many.
What does that actual change really mean in earnest for investors and especially people trying to figure out how things like price discovery works if the market essentially never really closes?
Yeah, and, and I think, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head.
The market never really closing.
What really we're trying to do with 24/7 trading and the way you see the world moving towards this is because it's a better representation of what actually happens in the real world, right?
You still have news that happens on Saturday and Sunday.
You don't see um Alphabet shutting down over the weekend.
So things are actually moving um during that time period and there has to be some way to reflect that in the markets as well, and that's really what 24/7 actually um is is moving towards and is going to represent in practice, um, but like you said, you know, uh, there's things like price discovery that still needs to happen and so there's an aspect of building the liquidity within these 24/7 markets so that you can have that price discovery by having the right players on, on each side.
Um, that are interested in, uh, trying to, uh, uh, interact.
How about pre-IPO access?
Are there honest ways where the tokenization conversation could really make that a reality, or do you think the regulatory, the structural hurdles will still be too much to overcome?
No, not at all.
In fact, we've already done um two IPOs uh via Xtoc, uh, SpaceX and bending spoons more recently.
This is actually really uh really critical, and the actual structure itself doesn't necessarily change relative to a traditional XStock.
These X stocks are highly regulated products, um, and we have to go through the regulators and, and each regulator might look at it differently.
Uh, an IPO allocation is really quite similar.
What's really changing with IPOs via something like tokenized equities or Xtos specifically is that you're now removing a lot of the barriers that have come traditionally with an IPO, right?
If you think about an IPO.
Historically, it's been a very small set of institutions and individuals that have had access to those IPOs, and now it's making that access much more global.
And so, you know, someone in Europe that wants to take part of the SpaceX IPO can can now do so via these tokenized equities, for example.
I got less than a minute left.
How about uh real world development that you're actually seeing so far?
Yeah, it's a, it's a really great question.
Um, Because of the, the nature of tokenized equities, when you're thinking about what this is going to look like over, you know, the next year or so, it's going to be expanding to access to more markets.
Right now we're due to US markets.
So it's going to be, uh, international markets, Europe, Asian markets as well.
Um, and, and then actually bringing a lot of the traditional infrastructure players on chain as well.
Uh, players like Franklin Templeton, Deutsche Borsa, NASDAQ, some partnerships with, um, others that are sort of in the works are all happening today.
Mhm.
Val guy, GM of Crackerneck Stocks, thanks for stopping by.
