DeFi vs Onchain Finance: Where Will TradFi Land? | Benedetto Biondi | Folks Finance [EP. 329]

This week nearly half the companies on the OKX-ICE tokenized stock list opted out, and in the same week DTCC went live on Canton with JPMorgan signed up.

That had me questioning my long-held view that TradFi would eventually fold into DeFi, so I asked Benedetto Biondi, co-founder and CEO of crosschain lending protocol Folks Finance and one of our Techstars Web3 mentors.

He thinks DeFi’s early cyberpunk vision was naive, and that TradFi is adapting to onchain finance rather than to pure DeFi. It wants DeFi’s liquidity and reach but will only interact with it as a layer.

We also get into why Folks won’t list securities directly, RWAs as collateral, Wield, their new regulated app, and why a $10 portfolio and a $10 million one should look the same to a protocol.

Connect with Ben:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedettobio/
X: https://x.com/benedettobio
Folks Finance: https://folks.finance

Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd

Chapters

0:00 Cold open

0:31 Intro

1:06 Does the DeFi crowd care about TradFi coming onchain

3:14 DeFi vs onchain finance

5:36 OKX-ICE opt-outs and DTCC on Canton

8:09 Three lanes: where does Folks sit?

10:49 Wield and the regulated app

12:17 Practical openness and the $10 portfolio

13:34 Where to find Ben

Sharp riffs, big ideas and real insights from smart people, all in under 15 minutes. Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend with the people rebuilding money, markets, and the internet from the ground up.

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