Tokenization and the Future of Finance: A Deep Dive with Wyatt Lonergan

Mm.

Wall Street's growing embrace of crypto could fuel up to a double digit billion dollars summit in venture investment into digital asset startups this year.

Momentum is building with Trump's pro crypto policies, industry-friendly laws, and soaring crypto prices.

While Serco's IPO has surged to dotcom era heights.

Banks are exploring stablecoins, and FinTechs are buying up crypto firms.

They say they're changing how they evaluate startups as the lines between traditional finance and crypto continue to blur.

Joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange is Wyatt Larnerden, a general partner at Van Ek Ventures.

Wyat, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Well, Vanek has been involved in crypto for a long time, but tell us what you're doing when it comes to Vanek Ventures.

Yeah, Vennek is a traditional asset management firm.

We've been around for about 70 years.

We have over $120 billion in management, management, and we were very early to crypto in 2017.

We were one of the first firms to file for the Bitcoin pot ETFs.

Since then we've built out a research team.

We have a liquid fund, and now with Vanik Ventures we have our first venture capital vehicle.

It's a $40 million fund that is focused on early stage companies, typically the First few financings and we really our thesis could be summarized as fintech on crypto rails, really all the things that stablecoins can enable cross payments, tokenize assets.

We want to tap into this new internet capital markets rail that we think can create global distribution for all types of value.

And you're here at the New York Stock Exchange on FinTech TV, and we're talking about crypto.

So recently we had the Circle IPO take place here at the New York Stock Exchange, and many American retail investors learn about staple coins, and that is one area that we're paying attention to when it comes to tokenization.

But there are other areas of tokenization as well.

So give us your take when it comes to growth outlook.

Yeah, well, I had the pleasure of working at Circle for over 5 years.

It's an amazing company.

Kudos to the team there.

They've done incredibly well.

Uh, yeah, stablecoins you can think of as just tokenized cash, and on the back end it's really short term treasuries.

We think the next evolution is targeting those 40 million active wallets that are currently holding stablecoins today on chain, as well as something like 400 million exchange users and enabling those people to now earn.

So it goes from dollar-based savings.

You can think of a user in Argentina who wants to.

You know, hedge inflation and now hold US dollars, they can start to earn on chain.

They can get into a tokenized money market fund, and just having a wallet on their phone and an internet connection, they now get access to US dollar banking.

Going forward, we think the rest of the financial markets that the US has to offer could be enabled on chain as well.

So that could be stocks, that could be a liquid.

Assets like or inaccessible assets like real estate as well as net new digital commodities that you can create using crypto rail.

So if you imagine that more and more infrastructure goes unchained, for example, coordinating compute between companies and AI that need to access latent compute, you create these new commodities we've never had before, and crypto can service those markets.

Yeah, and the second half of 2025 we're keeping a close eye on what happens to the broader equity market here at the New York Stock Exchange.

But when it comes to the crypto space, we're keeping an eye on regulation.

But when it comes to what you're doing over at VanE and assessing digital asset startups, give us an overview and tell us what you're most bullish on right now.

We're really bullish on tokenization just broadly again playing on that theme.

Follow the money, right?

There's now we're going to have something like $40 trillion of staple coins selling this year, possibly more.

A lot of that is used for earning, and those activities mean that they're going to go into DI.

They're going to want to buy things like stocks on chains.

So the menu of investable assets that are being custodied on blockchains. is expanding dramatically, so we're very excited about that.

In terms of the founders and the typical profile that we look for, we're seeing a huge influx of talent from traditional tech companies.

Think Visa, Stripe, OpenAI that now see what's happening with the Genius Act and the Clarity Act and looking at crypto, looking at the tremendous growth of stablecoins and wanting to come into this space and real companies and real protocols.

So I've never been more impressed with the talent pool that we have, and it's exciting.

I think you're going to see more M&A, you're going to see more IPOs, and it went from kind of this, you know, is this going to happen?

Like are we going to get stablecoin legislation to we have it, and now every major fintech company, every major financial institution has asked themselves what's our stablecoin strategy.

And finally, Wyatt before I let you go, since you told us about the current talent pool when it comes to these startups, what does this mean when it comes to long term?

What do you expect to see and what does this mean for retail investors?

I think this means that you're going to have a huge influx of new companies and new tokens that are going to hit the market over the next 3 to 5 years, and I think this is really exciting.

Like crypto is going mainstream.

It's no longer, I think it would be seen as this, you know, niche investment category.

It's going to be intertwined with tech, and I liken it, I think back in the early days of people being called internet investors.

It just became tech.

Crypto, I think, is going to follow a similar path where crypto, AI.

By all you know, any kind of technology that is inherently digital that can store value, crypto is really, really good at coordinating that economic activity.

So I think it's going mainstream and it's a really exciting time to be investing.

Yeah, and before I let you go, we have less than 60 seconds here, but I'm sure you do a lot of due diligence when it comes to some of these startups here.

So with risk and comes opportunity as well.

So give us an understanding of what you're excited about.

Yeah, I mean, we want to find entrepreneurs that are, you know, problem statement forward.

What problem are you solving for the world?

And I think today, again on the back of things like the Genius Act, we now have the ability to distribute new tokenized assets.

We have the ability to distribute US dollar savings.

We have the possibility now to create global payment networks and really challenge the incumbents, challenge the card networks like Visa, challenge the.

Banks challenge the exchanges and asset issuers.

So we're looking for entrepreneurs that come out and are not just like building on the back of some narrative or some hype.

They're building real technology.

They're solving real problems for users that are generating revenue, and I think in the future you're going to see a whole host of new tokens that come to market that aren't as narrative or hype-based.

They're going to be more fundamentals based, and those are the types of entrepreneurs we want.

OK, Wyatt, great to have you on.

Thank you so much for joining me today.