Welcome to FinTech TV.
Digital Asset Summit 2026 is underway here in New York City, and joining me ahead of his panel on neofinance and the evolution of markets is Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at the Solana Foundation.
Nick, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks so much for having me.
Well, you and I are talking about everything that's happened so far in 2026, and it does seem as though tokenization is a theme that all of us are paying attention to.
So tell us why.
Well, I think you, when you hear folks like Larry Fink at Black Rock say that the whole world will be tokenized, when you hear people like Mark Rowan from Apollo say everything's going to get tokenized, when you hear Paul Atkins, the chair of the SEC say that everything will be tokenized, and NISE and NASDAQ and DDCC and all the major um exchanges, asset managers, um, Everyone is coming together to, I think, move this industry forward in a way that I've not yet really seen before, and I think that's why you can feel the excitement here at the Javits Center during the digital asset summit.
Yeah, and Nick, you brought up a very important point because all of us are looking at institutional adoption as well as tokenization.
And of course at a summit like this you hear about a lot of announcements.
So give us a sneak peek into what you're working on at Solana and what's important right now.
Sure, well, I'll just talk about a few announcements that have happened over the last couple of days that I think are really exciting and also relevant to Solana.
The first is Solana announced.
Solana developer platform, which makes it really, really easy uh to create permission tokens on the permissionless public network using token extensions via an API.
So you don't need any Rust software development at all.
You can code in whatever language you're comfortable with against the APIs and deploy your permission token right to Solana Mayne.
And I think this will make it so much easier uh for asset managers and issuers to create tokens on Solana.
So that's, that's one piece of news that's really exciting.
Um, outside of Solana, but adjacent, uh, yesterday, uh, Ny and Securitize announced a partnership.
Uh, Securit Ties and Solana have a, have a very, uh, long and important relationship.
Uh, Black Rock Biddle, Apollo Arad, Vanek Vibell all have been issued, uh, on Solana via securitize.
We hosted a breakfast, uh, nearby this morning with Securitized.
It was incredibly well attended, um, by folks from JPMorgan and NASDAQ and, and, and many other institutions, and I think you could really feel the excitement around, uh.
Ties in Niy's announcement, but more broadly around tokenization.
And I'd say the third, uh, piece of news that has been announced in the last couple of days, uh, was that Superstate, uh, and Invesco are partnering on Superstate's money fund, and that's very exciting because that fund is already on Solana.
And so, uh, out of the gate now, Invesco has a Solana Money Fund product, which is really exciting.
Um, I think, uh, Kathleen, uh, Wren and the team at Invesco are doing such great work, and so are Robert Leschner and the Superstate team, and it's really exciting to see that come together.
Yeah, and you bring up a lot of these partnerships as well as announcements that have been coming through.
But Nick, I know that when it comes to banking, the brokerage, that is very important to you.
So tell us how moving Kleinance on chain actually lowers that barrier to entry when we're talking about the target market.
Yeah, so I think when you look at what has happened over the past 20.
With financial technology, fintech, um, the big story over the last 10 years kind of prior to crypto was banking the unbanked, and this is where you saw, um, kind of the, the rise in companies like Revolut and Soi and Chime and Robinhood that, you know, kind of really took and brought a new set of financial tools to consumers via.
Mobile devices.
I think with the blockchain, there's a, there's an even bigger opportunity to provide access to assets to the what I call the global unbrokerage.
So this is anyone in the world with access to the internet and a and a mobile device, but that doesn't have a brokerage account.
It can't access, um, you know, the world's great assets.
So for example, in Pakistan, only 300,000 people have a brokerage account, but 30 million.
And have a crypto wallet.
And today here in the United States for people under 30, more people have a crypto wallet than a brokerage account.
So I think this is a trend that you're going to see continue where um younger demographics and, and folks that have been potentially like excluded from financial services, they want something fast, they want something cheap, they want something easy, and I think that's on the blockchain.
I, of course, am biased, but I think that's on Solana.
Yeah, and Nick, you're about to take the stage here at Digital Asset Summit to talk about the evolution of markets.
So give us an idea of what you're going to be talking about on stage.
Yeah, so I think what we'll be talking about is this idea of internet capital markets.
How has the advent of the blockchain brought not only democratization of access to assets to individuals, but also the ability to do capital formation on chain.
So, uh, obviously back in 2017, 1 of the first kind of big aha moments for Ethereum was ICOs, and now you've got kind of a new framework around ICOs that are happening on Solana that are much more rigorous, um, that have much more, uh, sophistication, um, much more compliance, um, but also much more access, and I think that's the real exciting thing, and that's why you see hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, uh, raised by companies on Solana.
And finally, before I let you go, I know that you also focus a lot on innovation.
So everything that we're talking about involves regulation, and of course we're paying attention to the legislative landscape.
So when it comes to innovation, what is important?
Well, I think first of all, you have to have a set of people that are optimistic and believe, because the hardest thing about innovation is Busting through all the brick walls that are gonna come up in front of you to ultimately achieve whatever success, um, it is that you're looking for.
And, you know, there's gonna be a million roadblocks that come up when anyone's ever trying to build anything, whether that's a small startup or a large enterprise like Invesco that's innovating within their digital asset unit.
It requires um a lot of fortitude to be able to say, I'm going to overcome this objection and this objection and this challenge, and so the thing that we are really passionate about at Salana is supporting builders who, who will walk through those walls together until we achieve that success.
And I think that's more important than anything else is just that belief and, and, and persistence to achieve success at all costs.
Well, Nick, it was great having you join us here at Digital Summit Asset Summit 2026 in New York City.
Appreciate your perspective as well as your insight.
Great to see you as always.
Thank you.
Thanks.
