Now the narrative around crypto has long been about disruption, turn down the old financial system, but if the real transformation isn't about replacing trap, is it about building directly on top of it.
Well joining us here at Consensus Miami is Yoshi Yokokawa, the co-founder and CEO of Alpaca.
Well, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Well, it has been a busy 3 days here on the ground.
So what is your key takeaway from?
Census 2026, I see like so many words about like, you know, tokenization, and the second big thing is that like I get to meet so many like traditional trafi partners, clients, like, you know, roaming around in this crypto-focused event that itself is pretty, uh, uh, you know, interesting.
And what would you say is different in terms of the climate for crypto, in particular digital assets?
I know you mentioned some of the institutions from.
Trap 5 that are here, I think like, you know, the all the trap 5 companies have realized that like crypto is not only about crypto that came from like out of like thin air.
It's like continuation of the hub of financial services like, you know, changing into the new era of the like an own chain system.
So I think they realize it's like longer paradigm shift and they realize that they need to be a part of it.
So now I feel like crypto is not something somewhere standalone, but it's all now integrated into the financial system as a whole.
Yeah, and as someone who is at Alpaca, you have been aware of this for a while now.
So what is different now as we head into the second half of 2026, and what does it mean for your company?
Sure, uh, we continue to focus on, like, you know, the convergence of the tratfi and crypto, which I think about it, like, you know, the financial services system eventually will fully unchanged, and then I think we're using the word of tokenization.
And that is the reason why a lot of places in this conversation here, uh, people are talking about it, and I think like we'll see more of that tokenized assets tokenization and the players are that's coming into the tokenization from both Stratify and from the crypto native company as well, like by the end of this year.
So I think we want to see even more, uh, like volume seeing assets under custody.
That's when we'll probably see in the next 6 months.
And Yoshi, finally, before I let you go for viewers out there who are watching, what does it mean for them as retail investors?
Sure, uh, I think like we always have to think about like the two ways when you zoom back, what's happening as a whole as a financial services system.
It was a paper operation 50 years ago.
Now we're using a computer.
Now we're using computer, probably 50 years later it's going to be unchained.
So we have to always think about what's happening in the Like, big, uh, grand scheme of the things, and we have to think about what is the real product market fit.
What is the problem that we're solving?
Definitely like, you know, that what we're trying to solve is like, you know, faster payment, like a smoother money movements, assets movements across the border.
I think like, you know, those are the two things we have to always think about like what we are actually a problem that we're solving right now.
Well, I think that is a very helpful analogy, Yoshi.
So thank you so much for joining us here at Consensus.
Thank you Miami.
Thank you.
