A few thoughts from this week's @rwasummit: - Lack of newsworthy progress. There were no major announcements at this summit. Conversations revolve around the same topics from early 2020s: random fund tokenization, vaults, "How does DeFi meet TradFi?"... boring. We just launched ATPs with @Bitwise last week, so it was too close to have a session about this new innovation. The one area of development is tokenized equities, which leads me into: - Hate for the wrapper model of tokenized equities. Continued propaganda from @DinariGlobal, @Securitize, @NYSE and others. They come up with ridiculous reasons why permissionless stocks are not the future: "own the real thing", "what about dividends and voting rights" (both of which are already solved by @Ondo and others), "they are doing illicit things." All bullshit. It was great to see @RobinhoodCrypto's @NicolaWhite444 push back. Good luck outcompeting @coinbase @RobinhoodCrypto @Ondo @binance @xStocksFi and more. My bet is with them (and they're already winning). - Demand is a problem. @DigitalAssets's Cynthia Lo Bessette raised a good point that "No one has ever called Fidelity asking for the tokenized version of a product." That's fair, but tokenization is not the end goal: it's margin, collateral, 24/7 liquidity, leverage, and overall better capital efficiency. Tokenizing a fund alone is lame. Allowing people to borrow against or use it as collateral on a perps exchange is not. btw ATPs plug into all of this DeFi composability. - A handful of new, random, sketchy faces. While there were plenty of reputable names and companies backed by real VCs (like @glider__), there were random folks mixed in to panels. These folks detract from the credibility of onchain finance and all that we've built. We must fight to keep them away. Many of them will not be here a year from now. Pay-for-play bites the sanctity of a good conference. - Didn't see @CantonNetwork. Thank god. - Vaults are about to get regulated hard. This is a good thing for consumer protections. However, institutions still do not want to touch vaults because of smart contract risk, speed to get to market, and oracles. Lots of questions about discretion, fund managers, etc. This is the reason ATPs are a better solution for institutions--it solves all of the above. - Institutions who take risks and use new technology will reap the benefits. I was surprised to hear so much negativity around institutional adoption from the institutions themselves. Are their compliance counterparts beating down innovation? If anyone is going to drive it, it has to be the folks rooting for it from the inside. On the other hand, there are institutions doing great here: @Bitwise @vaneck_us @FTDA_US etc. More exciting institutional launches coming from @glider__ soon. More tokenized assets and composability means more opportunities. We are still so early.