All eyes are on the tokenization of real world assets driving what is now a multi-billion dollar market. And Wall Street firms are racing to put existing stocks like Apple and Tesla and traditional treasury bills on chain. So how will help us rewire capital markets and change the traditional IPO process, as well as position emerging markets. Well, joining us this morning to weigh in is Jesse Knutson, head of operations at Bitfinex Securities. Jesse, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. We all know that Wall Street is busy putting existing stocks as well as treasuries on chain. So Jesse, tell us, rather than just digitizing what already works, how does tokenization, based on your opinion, actually fix the broken IPO process for new companies that are trying to raise capital?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that the IPO process is completely broken, but I think the benefits of tokenization probably broadly are, you know, your audience is probably familiar with ideas like, you know, 24-7, 365 trading, real-time settlement. And I think from our perspective, also really importantly is to give people more control over their assets, right? Let people within a whitelisted ecosystem, so it's regulatory compliant and sustainable. have the ability to take your assets off platform, to self-custody them, to move them to other platforms for arbitrage, and to even trade them peer-to-peer within this whitelisted ecosystem. So I think those are the benefits. And at a high level, this is basically about taking the technology behind Bitcoin and behind digital assets and upgrading the infrastructure behind capital markets.
And Jesse, while I have you here, I do want to shift our focus on over to El Salvador. I understand that Bitfinex executed a $50 million tokenized capital raise in the country. So without traditional investment banks underwriting the deal, walk us through how you actually guarantee liquidity as well as buyer demand.
Yeah, so we've been active in El Salvador for a number of years. We were the first platform to be licensed there. We have license 0001. Bitfinex is one of the longest running digital asset platforms globally. And within Bitfinex and Bitfinex Securities, we have a large group of investors that I kind of classify as crypto high net worth. And it's those investors that I think issuers are particularly interested in to get access to those investors who have, you know, sometimes a different time horizon, kind of a different view of markets and kind of offer an alternative source of capital and investment for issuers.
Yeah and Jesse earlier you mentioned 24-7 markets and there are many opinions out there whether this is a good thing or this is a bad thing but we all know in 2026 we've seen plenty of geopolitical as well as uncertainty over the weekends when traditional markets are closed so if a geopolitical political crisis does hit on, say, a Friday or Saturday night, does continuous trading, based on your opinion, does it create unnecessary volatility and off-hour liquidity shocks?
No, I don't. I don't think so at all. I think this is just kind of a bit of the momentum from the legacy system. So this is what's happening right now. If you look at Bitcoin price, we often get quite a bit of movement on Saturdays and Sundays because people trade what they can, not necessarily what they want to. And Bitcoin is one of the only assets globally that trades 24-7 and probably the only asset globally that's really accessible from anywhere in the world. So it's basically taking that principle and applying it to capital markets. And I think if you ask investors, you know, would you like to be able to trade your underlying asset that you're trading directly on the weekends? You know, if something happens, I think certainly people would say yes. You know, another part of that is real time settlement, too, right? Most of many major markets are T plus one. My career has been here in Asia and Taiwan. We're T plus two. Korea is also T plus two. So if you sell your TSMC, for example, on Friday, you don't get your cash until the following week. So this is basically, you know, just just making markets a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, a little bit more efficient. And like I said, upgrading the infrastructure behind capital markets.
Yeah. And since you're joining us this morning here in the U.S. from across the world, as you mentioned, retail traders do dominate equity volumes when it comes to the Asian markets. But can you tell us why emerging markets are moving so fast when it comes to tokenization? And do you think this trend will also disrupt Wall Street anytime soon? What do you expect to see?
Yeah, well, I think if you look at Asia, that's part of the reason why Asia has been so front foot in adapting and adopting Bitcoin and assets like stable coins like USDT. I think it's because people are used to managing their own money. They're used to taking on some risk and they're used to doing analysis. So, yeah, like you said, most in West and North America. Markets are dominated by big institutional players and in markets like Taiwan and Korea, it's dominated by smaller retail investors, people who manage their own money. In places like Latin America and other parts of emerging Asia, it's about access as well. So I think that's another big value proposition we have with tokenization. is to give people in these various countries and jurisdictions access to high quality investment opportunities that they just don't have access to within their countries.
Well, Jesse, we will have to leave it there for today, but thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing your perspective as well as all of your insights.
My pleasure.
