Engineering a smarter financial world with blockchain

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On this episode of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Tokenovate CEO Richard Baker joined Kurt Wuckert Jr. to talk about how blockchain technology can create a smarter, more efficient financial world. Baker should know—he’s at the heart of the action with his company, Tokenovate.

Wuckert’s weekly CoinGeek article

Wuckert begins the stream by talking about his latest article on CoinGeek. It covers how one of Wuckert’s social media haters, Arthur Van Pelt, seems to have had his money frozen on Bitstamp. 

Wuckert says that, despite Van Pelt’s nasty rhetoric over the years, he hopes the situation is resolved and he gets his money back. These are the dangers of using centralized exchanges and the shadowy ‘crypto’ ecosystem.

What has Tokenovate been working on?

Baker should be a familiar face to most in the BSV ecosystem. He’s now in charge of Tokenovate, a firm shaking up traditional financial markets by using the blockchain to make processes more efficient.

The Tokenovate team is based in the U.K. (London and Cambridge) and is focused on derivatives. They’re building a “modern-day rights management and workflow automation platform” for derivatives on the BSV blockchain.

As a firm focused on financial infrastructure, Baker explains that its customers would be banks, exchanges, vendors, clearing houses, prime brokers, etc. Essentially, Baker says they have automated the “factory floor” of derivatives trading, explaining the process in more detail.

What does this look like at scale?

Before answering that, Baker invites us to take a step back and consider the current money system and its roles and responsibilities. Clearing banks, custody services, prime brokers, and others all have specific roles to play in derivatives and other trades. 

The innovation and transformation that firms like Tokeovate are pioneering are having effects throughout the entire ecosystem. Everything from the creation to the movement of assets is changing due to blockchain, DLT, and associated technology.

Tokenovate is specifically involved in legal rights and their movement throughout this system. They move the rights rather than the assets themselves, but it all plays a part in removing friction and making everything more efficient.

There’s an enormous appetite for digital twins of bonds, Baker says. They’re still issued traditionally, too, but digital twins are a step in the right direction. Change is slow, he says, but that’s where the opportunity lies for disruptors and challengers. 

While the big players have been innovating and experimenting with the technology for a couple of years now, they’re beginning to realize they have built silos and have an interoperability problem—something CoinGeek predicted years ago.

The incoming US government and its attitude to blockchain

Wuckert points out that a new U.S. government is right around the corner and could be suitable for the industry. For example, incoming Vice President JD Vance worked in fintech. He wonders what Bakers’ opinion on all of this is.

The Tokenovate CEO says he’ll park his politics at the door and predicts a large bull run. The industry will surely benefit, and a lot of innovation will likely come in the next few years.

On a related point, Baker says the idea of BTC is here to stay for the foreseeable future, whether we like it or not. We’ll also see a lot of innovation related to lending, DeFi, etc. The lifespan of all of this could be 10 years or less, but it will happen in the immediate term.

What would Baker say to regulators if he had the chance?

Baker recalls how he got to go to Capitol Hill earlier this year, and regulators are now focused on scalability, cost, consensus, how the tech works, etc. It’s being viewed as foundational tech, and that’s a great thing.

Amidst all this, there’s an opportunity for the Bitcoin protocol to inscribe privately on the public, permissionless blockchain. The key is to do as Tokenovate has: build systems that allow for privacy while also complying with reporting and other regulatory requirements.

To hear more about Tokenovate, the value of on-chain data, different token standards, and more, check out the livestream here.

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