This is an age old question, Ethereum or Solana - which chain is better, who's got their product and ecosystem strategy right?

Back in 2021, the Ethereum DeFi summer was on, and Solana was hailed as one of the contenders for the Ethereum killer narrative - not sure why one chain needs to get killed for another to shine, but hey, this is crypto.

In this episode of the Tokenize podcast, I sit down with Christin Kim, VP of Research at Galaxy Digital, to discuss the topic of Ethereum vs Solana - and who's got it right. Forgive me if I come across as a Solana Maxi - I just can't help it.

Post FTX, Solana did a rise from the grave and since then has clearly been the Consensus chain of this cycle - definitely with regards to price action. However, are Solana's fundamentals robust? Will it be able to scale as a monolithic chain vs Ethereum's modular approach?

Will Solana's innovation hubs start decentralizing away from a few founding members? So many questions to be answered.

To many, Crypto and Blockchain are still solutions looking for a problem. The number of Traditional Finance (TradFi) leaders moving into DeFi, however, indicates that there are global financial services challenges that Blockchain can solve.

Welcome to season 2 of the Tokenize podcast, sponsored by Marinade. In this episode of Tokenize, I am joined by Hadley Stern, my co-host and the Chief Commercial Officer at Marinade. Together, we talk to Mark Richardson from Zodia Markets. Mark is the CEO of Ireland and Chief Commercial Officer at Zodia Markets.

Zodia Markets are an institution-ready brokerage and trading platform for digital assets. In this episode, Mark shares his views of the digital assets market, the initiatives he is laser focused on, and how he is able to see real world opportunities even when Digital Asset capabilities are delivered on regulatory rails.

Tired of overpriced whiskey? You’re not alone.

The liquor market is a murky world of information asymmetry, where prices fluctuate wildly without rhyme or reason. Enter Baxus, a revolutionary platform leveraging Solana blockchain to bring transparency and efficiency to the spirits industry.

In this episode of Tokenize, I sit down with the Tzvi (Todd) Wiesel, the CEO of Baxus to uncover how tokenizing whiskey can level the playing field, making this beloved drink more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Get ready to raise a glass to the future of liquor!

Many see DeFi as the future of finance, and the regulated financial industry we are in today is called as 'TradFi' by the crypto world.

There are very few fortunate practitioners who play a role in bridging these two industries. In this episode of Tokenize, we speak to Sophie Bowler, Chief Compliance Officer at Zodia Custody. Sophie is certainly someone, who brings her years of experience as a compliance expert to bridge TradFi and DeFi.

Zodia are backed by Standard Chartered and bring the TradFi rigour while still staying nimble and innovative like DeFi.

In this episode, we discuss the key areas that DeFi needs to focus on, engaging with regulators and working collaboratively and the role of institutional custodians in bridging the gap between the two worlds.

In this episode of Tokenize, I sit down with two Blockchain OGs. Efi Pylarinou and Anton Golub, who have been involved in the Crypto space for a good part of a decade.

We structured this discussion such that each of us would bring our favourite three trends and one risk we are keeping a close eye on for this space.

Interestingly enough, all three of us had the same first hot trend we are excited about. And Efi stole the show with explaining why the first hot trend - BUIDL - tokenizing money markets is so significant.

Anton and I ended up playing catch up with Efi's brilliance throughout the episode! Hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoy recording this.

Yes, the approvals of the Bitcoin ETF was a major milestone for the crypto industry. But when we say Bitcoin ETF in this context, we mean the US based ETFs being approved by the SEC.

But, the crypto ETF industry has had regional leaders for years now. 3iQ are pioneers within the crypto ETF industry and have been based out of Canada.

In this episode of Tokenize, we have Greg Benhaim - Head of Funds at 3iQ talking to me about ETFs. Greg has the right mix of experience across traditional finance and cryptos and is quite close to the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystem.

We talk about Ethereum ETFs and all the innovation that is happening within traditional finance to get closer to the crypto ecosystem.

I recently joined Marinade Finance, leading their institutional growth capability. When I mentioned about it to my mom, I had to explain what Marinade did - and what crypto staking was.

I had to go back to retail banking. A retail bank is healthier with more depositors and deposits, and the bank offers an interest on these deposits. It is a cringeworthy comparison if you are a native crypto person though.

To celebrate my new job, and to explain to my own friends and family, what I was doing there, I had to do this episode with Michael Repetny. Michael, Marinade's core contributor calls crypto staking as exercising your right in a democratic set up - on a blockchain.

Did you know that if you bought a longstanding crypto like Solana or Ethereum, you could stake it and earn returns in the tokens, while also making returns as the token appreciates in value (if it does)?

Michael and I get into the details of how Proof of stake works on Solana, what staking is, different variations of staking, its relevance to traditional financial services, ETFs, restaking and MEVs (towards the end).

For years the Crypto industry has suffered from reputational issues. Despite several institutions trying to get the thumbs up from the US regulators for their Bitcoin ETFs, it was only in Jan 2024 that milestone happened.

Yet, there have been several European and Canadian ETFs that have had their regulators' approvals for years now. They have managed several million dollars of cryptos through their ETPs all these years.

I am glad to bring James Butterfill, Head of Research at Coinshares for a discussion on ETFs on Tokenize this week.

This will be the first of many ETF discussions where we expand on what ETFs are, who the key stakeholders are, how the BTC ETFs have done and what lies ahead for TradFi firms that are looking to innovate around digital assets.