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The Fintech Blueprint

Lex Sokolin

Finance is being pulled apart by the forces of frontier technology. From AI, to blockchain and DeFi, mixed reality, chatbots, neobanks, and roboadvisors — the industry will never be the same. Here is the blueprint for navigating the shift.

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20 episodes
Avg 45 min
English

Episodes 20

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#206
August 10 · 40 min
Building the AI Distribution Layer for 5000+ Banks, with Fiserv Co-Head of Financial Solutions Srini Krish
In this episode, Lex chats with Srini Krish — Co-Head of Financial Solutions at Fiserv, one of the original fintechs, in business for nearly five decades and sitting at the intersection of commerce and banking. Lex and Srini discuss how Fiserv acts as the technology backbone for 5,000+ US banks and credit unions that lack the wherewithal to match JPMorgan or Wells Fargo on their own, and how the firm is packaging AI into that distribution layer through Agent OS and partnerships with OpenAI and A
#205
July 20 · 49 min
How Perplexity's Computer Is Replacing the Family Office, with Perplexity Finance’s Jeff Grimes
In this episode, Lex chats with Jeff Grimes — who is Head of Live Events Products at Perplexity, the AI company that has evolved from an "answer engine" into an "agent platform" built around Perplexity Computer, its multi-agent digital worker. They discuss how Perplexity has shifted financial research from the how to the what, letting a user describe an outcome in a single sentence while Computer orchestrates 20+ frontier models, direct tool calls to licensed live data, and finance-specific skil
#204
June 22 · 43 min
Inside the $1B-a-Day Stablecoin Market Maker for 1,500 Institutions, with B2C2's Cactus Raazi
In this episode, Lex chats with Cactus Raazi — CEO Americas at B2C2, one of the original and largest institutional market makers in digital assets, serving roughly 1,500 institutions and pricing across more than 40 exchanges globally. They discuss what a market maker actually does, how balance sheet and signal generation underpin roughly $1 billion a day of stablecoin flow at B2C2, and why the two extremes of crypto market making - riskless principal aggregation versus proprietary alpha - produc
#203
May 25 · 44 min
How Marqeta Built the $400B Modern Card Issuing Platform, with CEO Mike Milotich
In this episode, Lex chats with Mike Milotich — Chief Executive Officer of Marqeta, the modern card issuing platform that processed nearly $400 billion in payments volume in 2025, and is certified to operate in 40+ countries, growing over 30% for the third straight year. They discuss how Marqeta's separation of bank, processor, and brand armed fintech's largest winners across buy now pay later, on-demand delivery, neo-banking, and expense management with the Lego blocks to build their own card p
#202
May 15 · 36 min
The $6B Decentralized AI Network, with Yuma CRO Evan Malanga
In this episode, Lex chats with Evan Malanga — Chief Revenue Officer of Yuma, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group focused on growing the Bittensor ecosystem. They discuss how Bittensor's $6 billion protocol incentivises AI builders worldwide through token emissions across 128 competing subnets, and why the network has produced real commercial outputs — including a 72 billion parameter model trained on-chain and a coding agent rivalling Claude at a fraction of the cost. Evan explains Yuma's ro
#201
April 27 · 44 min
Inside Mercury's $650M Revenue Machine, with CEO Immad Akhund
In this episode, Lex chats with Immad Akhund, CEO and founder of Mercury, a leading neobank for businesses. Immad shares his entrepreneurial journey, explaining how frustrating banking experiences inspired Mercury's creation. They discuss Banking as a Service, open banking, embedded finance, and core banking systems. Immad details Mercury's product philosophy, team structure, and migration away from Synapse before its collapse. He also outlines Mercury's impressive growth, with 300,000 customers
#200
March 30 · 49 min
How Polygon Became the Payments Chain Moving $2.3T in Stablecoins, with CEO Marc Boiron
In this episode, Lex chats with Marc Boiron — CEO of Polygon Labs. Marc shares his journey from law to blockchain, discussing the challenges of navigating crypto’s evolving legal landscape and the complexities of structuring compliant DeFi projects. He explains Polygon’s strategic pivot to focus on stablecoin payments, leveraging its proven blockchain and global partnerships. Marc highlights Polygon’s real-world adoption, competitive edge, and vision to become the leading platform for on-chain
#199
March 13 · 40 min
Building Privacy Infrastructure for 35+ Global Financial Institutions, with Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski
In this episode, Lex chats with Alex Gluchowski — Cofounder and CEO of Matter Labs, about the transformative impact of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) on blockchain scalability and privacy. They discuss Matter Labs’ evolution, the development of zkSync, and how ZK proofs enable secure, private, and efficient blockchain transactions. The conversation explores enterprise adoption, regulatory shifts, and the potential for blockchain to revolutionize global finance by enabling privacy-preserving
#198
March 5 · 46 min
How Alpaca built the API brokerage for 300+ global fintechs across 45 Countries, with CEO Yoshi Yokokawa
In this episode, Lex chats with Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca — a brokerage infrastructure company that provides API-based trading and custody services to fintechs and developers globally. The conversation begins with their shared experience at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis, where Yoshi worked in fixed income securitization and learned that even when market participants sense a bubble, they keep dancing because timing the exit is impossible. After Lehman's collapse, Yoshi pu
#197
February 20 · 53 min
Building the $3B Ethereum Treasury Company, with SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom
In this episode, Lex chats to Joseph Chalom, CEO of SharpLink, a Nasdaq-listed leader in digital asset treasury management focused on Ethereum. Joseph shares his journey from BlackRock and the Aladdin platform to pioneering digital asset strategies, including staking and tokenization. The discussion explores the evolution of fintech, the integration of crypto into institutional finance, and the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) and AI-powered financial agents. Joseph highlights SharpLink
#196
February 2 · 44 min
The Quiet Fintech Behind $85 Billion in Transactions, with Payoneer CEO John Caplan
In this episode, Lex speaks with John Caplan — CEO of Payoneer, a public fintech company driving over $85 billion in annual cross-border payment volume. With roots as a prepaid card provider, Payoneer has evolved into a global financial operating platform serving 2 million entrepreneurs across 190 countries. Caplan shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey—from building OpenSky and scaling it to $50 million in revenue before its acquisition by Alibaba, to now leading Payoneer’s transform
#195
January 5 · 48 min
Building DeFi's $25B Liquidity Engine, with Curve Founder Michael Egorov
In this episode, Lex speaks with Michael Egorov - Founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis. Kicking things off about his journey from experimental physicist to founder of Curve Finance and YieldBasis, highlighting how theoretical physics concepts influenced his creation of financial invariants in DeFi protocols. Curve pioneered fully automated concentrated liquidity for stablecoins and introduced veTokenomics, a governance model rewarding long-term commitment with voting power and protocol fees.
#194
Dec 29, 2025 · 43 min
Building a Top 5 Global Crypto Exchange with 120M Users, with Bitget CEO Gracy Chen
In this episode, Lex speaks with Gracy Chen - Bitget’s CEO, who transitioned from a fintech entrepreneur to leading one of the top five global crypto exchanges. Bitget processes $10–20 billion in daily trading volume and serves 120 million users across centralized and decentralized platforms. Its geographic base is mostly in Asia, but it’s expanding into Europe through regulatory compliance and new products like tokenized US stocks, which have already surpassed $20 billion in trading volume. Bi
#193
Dec 1, 2025 · 42 min
From $12.5M ICO to $100B+ in On-Chain Infrastructure, with Gnosis Co-Founder Friederike Ernst
In this episode, Lex speaks Friederike Ernst, co-founder of Gnosis. Together, they explore the evolution of Gnosis from an Ethereum-based prediction market project into a major infrastructure provider powering over $100 billion in DAO treasuries and $10–15 billion in monthly DEX trading via CowSwap. Tracing the company’s journey from a 2017 ICO raising $12.5 million in ETH (now worth ~$450 million) to spinning out critical tools like Safe, CowSwap, and Zodiac, all originally built for internal u
#192
Nov 12, 2025 · 45 min
Building the $500MM+ Binance-based Digital Asset Treasury, with BNB Network CEO David Namdar
In this episode, Lex speaks with David Namdar - CEO of the BNB Network Company, kicking off with his journey from early Bitcoin adoption in 2012 to co-founding Galaxy Digital and now leading the BNB Network Company. Namdar explains the evolution of public markets’ engagement with crypto, highlighting how regulatory hurdles and speculative cycles shaped market participation. He outlines the rise of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies, crediting Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy for pioneering the
#191
Oct 28, 2025 · 41 min
How WalletConnect Became the $400B Web3 Connectivity Layer, with CEO Jess Houlgrave
In this episode, Lex speaks with Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect. In this episode Jess explains how WalletConnect bridges wallets and decentralized applications (dApps), simplifying secure blockchain interactions for millions of users. Together, Lex and Jess discuss the platform’s origins, technical innovations, and massive scale - supporting over 700 wallets and 70,000 projects. The conversation covers challenges in integrating traditional finance with Web3, regulatory compliance, and Wall
#190
Oct 6, 2025 · 44 min
How Tandems/SigFig became a $60B Wealth AI platform, with CEO Mike Sha
In this episode, Lex speaks Mike Sha - the CEO and co-founder of Tandems (formerly SigFig), a leading provider of AI-powered software for wealth management firms and financial institutions. Together, Lex and Mike discuss the evolution of wealth technology through the lens of Mike’s entrepreneurial journey from founding Wikinvest in 2006 to building Tandems. Wikinvest pivoted to portfolio tracking and then to a B2B model, powering major portals like Yahoo Finance and managing over $500 billion i
#189
Sep 9, 2025 · 41 min
Managing $2B+ in On Chain Assets, with KPK Co-Founder Marcelo Ruiz de Olano
In this episode, Lex speaks with Marcelo Ruiz de Olano, Co-Founder of KPK (Karpatkey), an on-chain asset management firm born out of Gnosis DAO. Marcelo recounts KPK’s evolution from stewarding Gnosis’s $1B treasury to advising on more than $2B for leading protocols like ENS, Balancer, and the Ethereum Foundation. The discussion dives into the mechanics of non-custodial treasury management - balancing governance, security, and risk - along with strategies across lending, liquidity provision, and
#188
Aug 21, 2025 · 50 min
Building the $130B global payments platform, with Airwallex’s Ravi Adusumilli
In this episode, Lex speaks with Ravi Adusumilli - President and GM of the Americas at Airwallex. Ravi and Lex discuss how Airwallex has evolved into a global financial platform by offering businesses an integrated suite of cross-border payments, treasury, and banking services. Founded in 2015, Airwallex now supports 150,000 customers, processes $130 billion in annualized volume (up 73% YoY), and projects a $1 billion revenue run rate by year-end. The company’s success stems from its end-to-end
#187
Aug 11, 2025 · 52 min
How to Invest in the best Crypto Funds, with Matthew Le Merle CEO of Blockchain Coinvestors
Lex chats with Matthew Le Merle - CEO of Blockchain Coinvestors, a leading blockchain and AI fund-of-funds. He reflects on the limitations of large institutions in adopting disruptive technologies and why he chose to back innovators over incumbents, using stablecoins as an example of asymmetric value creation. Le Merle explains his evolution from angel investor to institutional LP, highlighting the benefits of leveraging top-tier venture capitalists’ expertise in inefficient early-stage markets.

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