Host Stephen Sargeant interviews Jesse Knutson, Head of Operations at Bitfinex Securities, about his path from investment banking (Barclays, Macquarie) to early Blockstream work and the Blockstream Mining Note, which he describes as an early flagship tokenized security. They discuss Liquid and the Lightning Network, why stablecoins and taxation affected Bitcoin payments, and how Bitfinex Securities (launched 2021) has grown to about $250M in assets with tokenized bonds, microfinancing bonds, ETFs, US treasuries, litigation finance, and Bitcoin hashrate contracts on a 24/7/365 platform. Jesse explains STO vs ICO differences, the 60–90 day issuance/listing process, regulatory and disclosure requirements (including El Salvador’s shorter “relevant information document”), why tokenized markets are complementary to TradFi, and future goals like collateralized tokenized securities, dual listings, and broader access to capital in Latin America.

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Join host Stephen Sargeant as he interviews Kevin Lehtiniitty, CEO and founder of Borderless.xyz, about stablecoin infrastructure and global payment flows, including the Genius Act and why stablecoins are more practical for payments than Bitcoin. Kevin explains Borderless’s branding, his early work launching TrueUSD, and how trust features like qualified custodians and attestations mattered before clear regulation. He outlines three issuance models—building on existing tokens, consortium-issued coins, and white-label issuance—and why large enterprises may prefer white-label or consortium approaches. Kevin describes Borderless as an open stablecoin payments network plus an orchestration “payments hub” that connects fintechs to multiple providers for redundancy, price discovery, and operational automation. They discuss Borderless’s stablecoin-to-fiat FX benchmark, stablecoins’ biggest value in unlocking prefunded trapped capital, expansion priorities (GCC and APAC), compliance needs (KYC/KYB, sanctions, travel rule, risk), skepticism of closed networks, and his interest in AI’s impact on labor constraints.

We are also available via:

• Around The Coin — Official Website
• Buzzsprout
• Apple Podcast
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Stephen Sargeant interviews Natalya Thakur, CEO and founder of Knova, about how traditional financial institutions are transitioning into digital assets. Thakur recounts her early exposure to blockchain at BlackRock, where she supported initial Bitcoin ETF work and later promoted digital-asset education for women. She explains Knova’s B2B infrastructure software, which runs on-prem or cloud-agnostic inside client environments to unify traditional and tokenized assets via patented “digital twins,” standardized asset representations, and transaction templates that turn complex multi-system workflows into single API calls and a unified dashboard. The discussion covers scaling, privacy, interoperability at the asset level, integrations such as Canton, common institutional hesitations like vendor lock-in and short-term pilots, and longer-term themes including assets converging into one ecosystem, rebundling fragmented services, and AI shifting from reactive reporting to proactive risk and opportunity guidance.

We are also available via:

• Around The Coin — Official Website
• Buzzsprout
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Player FM
• Quora
• Medium
• X
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Tiktok
• Soundcloud