Welcome to FINTECH.TV.
I'm Remy Blaire.
Gauntlet has long been seen as the quantitative backbone of defy as we kick off the new year.
The mission has involved for the company.
Gauntlet is bridging the gap between traditional capital and also decentralized markets with over $2 billion in TV all across their curated vaults on Morpho Drift and Camino.
They are helping.
Institutional allocators access sophisticated yield through a simulation-driven lens.
Well joining me here at Ondo Summit 2026 is Rahul Goyal, Head of Institutional Partnerships at Gauntlet.
Well, Rahul, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
Well, Ondo's summit is well underway, so what is different this year compared to last year?
Yeah, so I was here last year as well, and the difference is really night and day.
You know, a lot of institutions and fintechs and different crypto companies are now starting to actually execute and, you know, play and launch products and create new products.
Whereas before in previous years, it was more exploration, research, kind of getting the knowledge.
I think a big part of that has been the regulatory shift to DC.
Um, companies feel a lot more comfortable exploring and doing a lot more, and I think we're gonna see a lot more in the coming year.
As well.
So I do want to dive into what's going on at Gauntlet.
I understand that Gauntlet currently manages over $2 billion in vault assets.
So for viewers who might not be familiar with the difference between Prime versus Frontier Vaults, can you explain this to us?
Yeah, so these are different risk profiles that our vaults have, and I guess just to catch people up in the room, um, the idea is that users can take their USDC or their stablecoins, deposit them into our vaults, and generate a yield rono.
The yield is, uh, based on people who want to borrow against certain assets.
So if you have Bitcoin, we consider that a kind of a prime asset, a prime collateral asset.
So you would earn, you can borrow a Bitcoin at a lower rate than certain other assets.
Um, you can also earn at a lower rate than certain other assets.
Um, the frontier vault is a bit more, uh, flexible, lends to a broader group of assets, um, and generates a higher yield and a higher borrow cost for those households.
And of course we hear the term institutional adoption, but I understand that you recently on boarded a NASDAQ listed company, BTCS.
So what would you say is the secret sauce in terms of risk modeling that makes a publicly traded corporation comfortable using decentralized protocols?
Instead of, say, a traditional bank.
Yeah, it's a great question.
So BTCS is a, is a great partner of ours.
It's a digital asset treasury company, um, which we work with primarily focused on the east side.
We've signed a few of these already.
Um, and so like I said, you know, they're using our vaults to generate yield of their US dollar balances, um.
Along with a number of other assets.
I think it really comes down to kind of a reputation in the market.
We've been around since 2018.
We've had really no losses in any of our vaults, uh, for a very long time, um, and we have a strong reputation doing risk management, risk assessments, um, and understanding the downside much better than anyone else.
And while we're here, of course the focus has been on real world assets as well, both here in the US as well as overseas.
So when it comes to strategies for levered RWAs, tell us what this means.
Yes, for sure.
So we launched.
Um, a levered RWA product, the first of its kind, kind of really ever, um, about a year ago in partnership with Apollo, Securitize, Morpho, and Polygon.
And the fundamental idea is you can take an RWA asset that say yields 10%, you can put it up as collateral on a lending market like Morpho, borrow dollars against it, use that to buy more of the underlying assets.
Um, this is very similar to back leverage in the traditional finance world, or you can think of it like a carry trade.
Um, and the fundamental idea is that the end user gets a higher yield through DI than they would get otherwise.
And, you know, we've helped kind of manage and execute the position, monitor the risk around it, uh, lever and delever the positions, etc.
And of course here we are at the beginning of 2026, and we are looking towards the future.
So I understand you use agent-based simulation.
So walk us through this.
Yeah, for sure.
So um this is something that we've been working on for a long time, almost since the start of Gauntlet.
And so, the idea is that, you know, we're constantly simulating and trying to understand, you know, what happens in this moment if the Bitcoin price falls 60%, right?
What does that mean?
How do, how do the liquidations that are um in the defi market kind of play out and kind of constantly stimulating these different scenarios and figuring out, um, you know, what do we think is likely, what do we think is unlikely, so we can make, um, accurate decisions on allocations to deliver the bestco suggested yield for the end clients.
And Rahul, I understand you also have a previous career in traditional banking and traditional finance.
So what does the future of banking look like to you?
For sure.
So I think, yeah, so I, I used to work for almost 10 years in, uh, in traditional finance across of different firms, um, been a dominant for almost 4 years, and I think that there really will be a convergence.
I don't think one will necessarily replace the other.
It's not like DeFI is going to fully replace traditional finance, but there will be a convergence, as I think, uh.
A big value of DeFi is the fact that, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of liquidity, uh, markets are open kind of 24/7, 365, and Bringing some of those capabilities to traditional finance, I think will change a lot of how it works.
So, you know, we're obviously here at the Ando summit, um, and Ando has really pioneered the idea of tokenized equities, that trade essentially 24/7, 365, and that's more in line with how the crypto market works versus the traditional markets.
And so, you know, really we're just opening up, um, a lot more opportunities and abilities for people even in other countries outside of the US to invest in say US stocks, ETFs, etc.
And finally, before I let you go, Rahul, you are the head of institutional partnerships, but with institutional adoption comes changes in terms of how the retail investor sees the marketplace and also the products that actually come to market.
So how do you see all of this shaking out and what does it mean for investors, not just here in the US but also overseas for sure.
So I think I think actually a core part of the crypto and defi thesis is that retail investors can get the same access to products as institutional investors.
So as I mentioned, we talked about the prime and frontier vaults that we have, you know, uh, a publicly listed NASDAQ company like PTCS deposits into those assets, but you and I can also deposit into the exact same vaults.
And so we are actually more leveling the playing field rather than creating a two-tiered system which we're used to in traditional finance.
Um, so I'm really excited about that.
Um, again, with, you know, coming back to Ando cause we're, cause we're here.
Uh, the fact that you can now buy, uh, equities even if you don't live in the US kind of 24/7, 365, um, is great because a lot of European and Asian and Latin American, um, retail investors didn't have the same access that US investors do.
Uh, we kind of take that for granted that everybody has access to these products.
Um, so I think that's gonna change a lot of how it works and more of a level playing field.
Well, Rahul, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining me and sharing your perspective at Ondo Summit 2026.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
