Remy Blaire: While Wall Street continues to debate the true value of bringing real-world assets on-chain and how to scale tokenized equities responsibly, it is being built right now.
And from expanding global access and unlocking new utility for equities to bridging traditional brokerage custody directly with DeFi, the race is on to make on-chain markets interoperable with legacy financial plumbing.
And a new integration between Alpaca and Ondo Finance is taking that connection a step further by allowing institutions to move stock inventory on-chain without a cash detour.
Well, joining us live here at the New York Stock Exchange to explain how this bridges regulated custody to the blockchain is Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Alpaca.
Yoshi, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.
Yoshi Yokokawa: Thank you for having me here.
Remy Blaire: Well, it's hard to believe, but we are counting down to the end of 2026. And a lot has happened when it comes to tokenization.
So tell us about how this expands global access.
Yoshi Yokokawa: So I think what we want to also understand is that global access to the U.S. capital markets is still very, very difficult.
So thinking about it, only 20% of the U.S. capital markets is owned by non-U.S., but non-U.S. GDP is 75%. So this really shows that it's not yet there in terms of accessibility.
So tokenization is one of the ways that's creating another path for the people outside the U.S., especially to have better accessibility to the U.S. capital markets.
Remy Blaire: Yeah. And you bring up an important point because you and I are here at the New York Stock Exchange, and right now, with a lot of global events taking place here in New York City this week, Climate Week as well as the U.N. General Assembly, we tend to take so many things, including access to the capital markets, for granted.
But when it comes to some of the infrastructure and bottlenecks that actually exist, what are you doing to solve that interoperability issue?
Yoshi Yokokawa: So current tokenization, especially this SPV-wrapped token, it always has underlying securities, one-to-one backed.
This is very, very important because as long as there is a one-to-one-backed underlying TradFi security in the capital markets, you can always do the redemption of the SPV tokenized stocks.
And then we created this product called ITN, Instant Tokenization Network, that allows the holders of these tokenized stocks to have the instant redemption into the stocks that's traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
So I think that creates more trust and the underlying infrastructure to be more robust.
Remy Blaire: And Yoshi, we have time for one more question.
So you and I have been talking at events throughout the country all year. But here we are, and Ondo Finance is leveraging your network.
So tell us about the most recent announcement and the significance.
Yoshi Yokokawa: Yes. So I think, you know, when it comes to tokenized stocks, a key component is liquidity.
If there is no liquidity, we cannot really talk about bringing everything, activity on-chain.
So how can we do that? Again, it becomes about how the market makers and the holders of assets can hedge their positions.
So, you know, connecting the TradFi traditional stock market is very, very important.
Right now, it has always been difficult to kind of interchange and swap between the tokenized stocks and the TradFi stocks.
So I think the Ondo and Alpaca announcement is really to solve that. It allows more of the instant redemption and then swappability between the tokenized stock and underlying stocks that are traded here.
Remy Blaire: And very quickly, we have less than 60 seconds. But what is next for Alpaca's roadmap?
Yoshi Yokokawa: So we're continuing to add aggressively in terms of asset classes that can be tokenized.
So right now, it's primarily U.S. stocks, but, you know, we've launched European stocks. So we'll be soon launching a lot of Asian countries' stocks as well.
So our job is to, as quickly as possible, connect all the asset classes so the players can tokenize those asset classes on-chain.
Remy Blaire: Well, Yoshi, always great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us on the heels of the latest announcement. Thank you so much.
Yoshi Yokokawa: Thank you.
