Why Onchain Vaults Are Following Stablecoins Everywhere | Hunter Horsley
In this episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn Melinek speaks with Hunter Horsley, co-founder and CEO of Bitwise Asset Management, about the firm’s launch of onchain vault strategies wiith Morpho and latest Q4 2025 corporate adoption report of bitcoin and ethereum as well as his outlook on digital asset treasuries. Hunter explains what vaults are, why they're following the adoption curve of stablecoins, and how they enable 4-6% yields, while investors maintain custody. He walks through Bitwise's expansion beyond ETFs into staking, options strategies, and DeFi vault curation, why institutions are going from "0 to 500 miles per hour" on crypto, and what the corporate bitcoin adoption numbers reveal. The conversation covers the “honeymoon phase” wearing off for treasury companies, the investor relations role DATs play in the ecosystem, why two-thirds of financial institutions will be in crypto within 6 months, and the shift from the "tell me era" to the "show me era" in institutional adoption.
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Intro (01:05) What are onchain vaults and why is everyone talking about them (02:04) Bitwise x Morpho vault announcement (02:32) Why people care about vaults: stablecoins parking and earning yield (03:00) Vaults following stablecoin adoption and doubled in assets last year (03:20) How institutional investors should think about vault risk vs traditional fixed income (05:10) Real world assets hitting $20 billion and stablecoins reaching $300 billion (05:35) Onchain lending rates differ from traditional bank rates (05:50) Why Bitwise is expanding beyond ETFs into onchain yield strategies (06:48) Major banks approving Bitwise ETFs in last 6 months (07:52) Bitwise staking several billion dollars for clients and running bitcoin options strategies (08:49) Building a team that managed $2 billion of DeFi strategies (09:42) Where vault opportunities are going as traditional firms enter the space (11:10) Massive fintechs integrating stablecoins and vaults by end of year (11:50) Q4 2025 corporate bitcoin adoption report key findings (13:00) 19 new public companies bought Bitcoin in Q4 (14:05) Figma put 4% of balance sheet into bitcoin through Bitwise ETF (15:30) His 9-minute call with an AI company that put bitcoin on the balance sheet (16:20) Ethereum holdings: Bitmain, SharpLink, and EtherMachine (16:50) Treasury companies post-honeymoon phase will look very different by year-end (18:05) Why the world doesn't need a million treasury companies (18:32) DATs and investor relations roles that crypto protocols lack (20:43) How many treasury companies can exist per major asset (22:07) Institutions buying more crypto AND becoming more crypto native (23:00) Moving from "tell me era" to "show me era" for crypto (24:50) Banks going from 0 to 500 miles per hour on crypto (26:23) Two-thirds of financial institutions will be in crypto within 6 months (26:49) January 2026 is the most bullish moment in Bitwise's 8 years
ESSENTIALS You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0LOgWxIQ0NnNUD5eXsSuoZ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-tokens/id1743669141 Follow us on X Jacquelyn: https://twitter.com/jacqmelinek Talking Tokens: https://twitter.com/_TalkingTokens Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_talkingtokens/ Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.
Why Onchain Vaults Are Following Stablecoins Everywhere | Hunter Horsley
Subscribe & Listen
How ReserveOne Plans to Shake Up the Crowded DAT Market | Jaime Leverton
How Vaults Become the Next Stablecoin Narrative | Sun Raghupathi
More from Talking Tokens
The 4 Things That Need to Happen Before AI Agents Can Actually Spend Money | An Agentic Payments Explainer
On our first episode of Strata Research presented by Talking Tokens & Token Relations, Jacquelyn sits down with Institutional Research Analyst Alex Beaudry to breakdown agentic payments. Alex walks through why it isn't one market but three distinct payment flows, each with completely different infrastructure requirements, and why the machine-to-machine category is where stablecoins have a real structural edge over traditional rails. They also get into the four things that actually need to happen before this market scales, and why the narrative is still running well ahead of the transaction volumes to back it up. Check out the associated newsletter for more details: https://www.token-relations.com/p/agentic-payments-where-we-are-and-where-we-re-going TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction Strata Research 01:24 Understanding Agentic Payments 04:54 The Flows of Agentic Payments 07:24 Challenges and Frameworks for Scaling 11:39 Recent Developments and Future Outlook You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0LOgWxIQ0NnNUD5eXsSuoZ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-tokens/id1743669141 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TalkingTokens Follow us on X Jacquelyn: / jacqmelinek Talking Tokens: / _talkingtokens Follow us on Instagram / _talkingtokens Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.
USDT0's Co-Founder on Moving $90B Cross-Chain, the Agent Economy, and Tether's Untouchable Moat
On today's Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn sits down with Lorenzo Romagnoli, co-founder of USDT0, a stablecoin protocol that has moved over $90 billion in USDT across 25+ blockchains since launching in January 2025. Lorenzo makes the case that stablecoins were not just built for Americans or Europeans but for people in emerging markets across Africa, Latin America, and Asia who needed a way out of crushing inflation, and explains why that's the core reason Tether's dominance is so hard to compete with. They also get into what it will actually take for AI agents to transact onchain at scale, and why Lorenzo believes the teams still building with true decentralization in mind are the ones worth watching. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction to USDT Zero and Its Founders 02:31 The Evolution of USDT and Decentralized Finance 05:36 Understanding the Mechanics of USDT Zero 08:33 User Behavior and Volume Trends 11:34 Tether's Role in the Global Financial Ecosystem 15:38 Targeting Emerging Markets with Stablecoins 18:45 The Competitive Landscape of Stablecoins 21:12 The Future of Stablecoins 24:05 Global Adoption and Use Cases 27:32 The Rise of USDT and Market Dynamics 30:11 Innovation and Staying Ahead 34:23 The Role of Decentralization in Finance 39:45 Advice for Future Innovators You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0LOgWxIQ0NnNUD5eXsSuoZ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-tokens/id1743669141 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TalkingTokens Follow us on X Jacquelyn: / jacqmelinek Talking Tokens: / _talkingtokens Follow us on Instagram / _talkingtokens Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.
What You Need To Know About x402 And How It Impacts Payments | Erik Reppel
In this episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn Melinek speaks with Erik Reppel, head of engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform and creator of x402., They discuss why the internet struggled without a native payment protocol and why AI agents finally made the problem urgent enough to solve. Erik explains how x402 lets computers send money as easily as they send data, and why Visa, Mastercard, and others are all founding members of its x402 Foundation. He walks through why the 402 HTTP status code was reserved for "payment required" but left empty for decades, how publishers can now charge AI agents with micropayments instead of losing traffic to scraping, and why agents with wallets are fundamentally more useful than agents without them. The conversation covers why stablecoins are uniquely suited for low-dollar transactions, how Coinbase uses AI internally to make every engineer 3x more productive, and why the best infrastructure eventually becomes invisible. TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Intro (01:25) Why AI becoming an economic actor made the internet's missing payment layer urgent (03:21) What x402 actually is (05:14) How x402 works like HTTP but for money and with any client, server, or payment (06:26) What Erik wants people to build with x402: new business models beyond ads and subscriptions (08:31) Who is already using x402: CoinGecko, Messari, a16z, and agent native publishers (09:56) Why the 402 status code sat empty for decades (11:15) Where x402 stands today: 15+ chains, stablecoins first, credit cards next (12:50) Why Visa and Mastercard joined the x402 Foundation (15:41) Biggest use cases right now (17:16) Are AI agents good traders? Why wallets for payments matter more than wallets for trading (19:17) What needs to happen for AI agents to participate more meaningfully onchain (21:44) Do AI agents understand value? Economic reasoning and budget awareness (23:22) Long-term vision for x402 (26:40) Final advice: play positive sum games with positive people ESSENTIALS You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review — it really helps. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0LOgWxIQ0NnNUD5eXsSuoZ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-tokens/id1743669141 Follow us on X Jacquelyn: https://twitter.com/jacqmelinek Talking Tokens: https://twitter.com/_TalkingTokens Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_talkingtokens/ Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Views shared are opinions, not financial advice. The host or guests may have financial interests in discussed content.