Franklin Bi

investing & thinking in money, markets, and machines. GP @PanteraCapital, ex: blockchain OG @JPMorgan, @ffvc, NYC street kid

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

@FortunaShield @FissionXYZ @apolloglobal @BlackRock @KKR_Co @hamilton_lane @ARKInvest 🎯

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

We're excited to lead @FissionXYZ's Series A because nobody is focused on today's post-tokenization problem.

Top asset managers like @ApolloGlobal, @BlackRock, @KKR_Co, @Hamilton_Lane & @ARKInvest are bringing private markets onchain today - $ACRED, $ARKVX, $SKHC, etc.

The risk is that they get stuck in the "newspaper-on-a-webite" phase. Better medium (digital / onchain), but the same old product.

Moving private markets onchain fundamentally changes the asset class. Take private credit as one example:

Redeeming out of a private credit fund today takes a mountain of paperwork & many weeks to settle. When redemptions spike (as they've done this past year), sellers escape via OTC / one-off deals, while the rest of the market stays oblivious.

Once tokenized, these assets become instantly traded, globally priced, and collateral-eligible. So what happens to the asset class when there's a daily market price for a private credit fund?

We'll find out soon. @FissionXYZ is building the venue for tokenized private funds, already processing live redemptions and transforming the future of private markets.

I'm thrilled to join Fission's board and work with Jon (@doctorfission), Steve and the Fission team to bring this vision to life!

[joey @jshinny12]

https://t.co/vf5MBUOeEz

[Alchemy Inference @AlchemyCompute]

⚗️ Alchemy Inference is live.

open-weight models. low latency. low costs.

Kimi, DeepSeek and GLM on an OpenAI-compatible API, with zero data retention 🔒

https://t.co/pjifIYqhLG

[Daniel Lev @SirDigitalDan]

Just wrapped my conversation with Stuti Pandey at @Money2020. I’m still thinking about a few things:

AI is pushing the cost of thinking toward zero. Stablecoins are doing the same to the cost of moving money.

When both happen at once, who captures the value?

Stuti’s answer is regulated trust, data, and distribution. I’d add that it all sits at the edges, where money enters and leaves through cards, ACH, PIX, and local wallets.

Merchants don’t ask us for crypto. They ask for faster money.

Stablecoins do the work in between, just as most people don’t know how ACH works but know when their paycheck hits their account.

Here’s the real thing, though. The next customer on those rails is software.

When the buyer is an agent, the checkout page changes drastically. Agentic payments start with agents paying for what they consume, like inference, compute, and data, per request, in fractions of a cent.

Coinflow is already powering that with Tempo.

People still fund those agents with cards and bank accounts, so the job is connecting both sides. That’s our Network of Networks, applied to agents.

Liability is the open question: who pays when an agent buys the wrong thing. It makes fraud and chargeback indemnity even more important.

We’re built on that foundation and have been doing it for years, but everyone should build the future of agentic commerce.

If you’re in Vegas and working on agentic payments, find me or DM me.

[Pantera Capital @PanteraCapital]

Tokenization does not create liquidity. Somebody has to underwrite the risk.

Jon Shaffer and @steveonchain (Fission, @FissionXYZ) join Stateful, hosted by Franklin Bi, as we announce our investment leading their Series A:

- $18 trillion in private markets, still running on paper and subscription agreements

- Fission prices duration risk, not NAV. Asset managers retain control over their own valuations.

- The market is capped at 6% to 7% yields because that is all you get with baked-in liquidity

- The goal: double-digit returns with daily liquidity

- Hot take: CLARITY failing in Congress may be the best thing that could have happened to tokenization

01:00 Origin Stories and Why Tokenization Doesn't Create Liquidity
05:50 The Series A and the $500 Billion Semi-Liquid Market
13:00 Why Private Markets Instead of Public Equities
19:15 Pricing Duration Risk Instead of Repricing NAV
24:55 Why Private Markets Need Their Own Venue
38:15 AI Pricing, Portfolio Construction, and Agentic Rebalancing
45:25 Hot Take: Why the CLARITY Act Failing Helps Tokenization

[Fission @FissionXYZ]

Fission has raised $10M in Series A funding, led by @PanteraCapital.

We’re building the liquidity infrastructure for the next generation of tokenized financial products.

Eligible investors can now access capital without waiting for a fund's scheduled redemption window.

More in Fortune: https://t.co/S8RReIlMFI

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

@kevinakwok new kwokchain drop! 👏🏼

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

we’ve come full circle on diet-based performance optimization

keto-vores, meet the butterfly diet:
sipping that sweet nectar 16 hrs a day for peak output

[Scott Stevenson @scottastevenson]

Allowing myself to drink sweet drinks while working has been the most profound performance enhancement in the past 5 years for me.

For the past 2 weeks I've been outputting at +50%. Higher focus, longer. 1 Powerade at my desk per day. I am able to do 12 hour days the way I used to be able to when I was younger.

I don't have any crash, I crashed much worse end of day when I was avoiding sugar.

I am not sure why this is the case, it seems contrary to most of what I've read.

Hypothesis 1: I burn a lot of energy working at a computer and easy fuel gets burnt off quickly, like with a runner. I was in a calorie deficit that was hurting my performance previously. Same reason chess players consume chocolate milk while playing.

Hypothesis 2: I have diabetes?

Any other ideas?

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

@trspalding @joeykrug Excited for the journey ahead 💪🏼

[CoinDesk @CoinDesk]

LATEST: Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund leads a $5 million token buy in crypto collateral protocol Anvil

https://t.co/DhsMkDXYZ3

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

@masonnystrom @multicoin @tushar_jain @shayonsengupta @SpencerApplebau @0x_Lucas Congrats @masonnystrom!

It’s been an honor and privilege to work together - I know you’ll absolutely crush it 💪🏼

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

@JackSimison @PanteraCapital @dan_pantera @veradittakit @stutireal LFG!

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

even God needs a GTM strategy 🙏🏼

[David Decosimo @DavidDecosimo]

This is deeply disturbing:
Anthropic secretly invited religious leaders to SF to advise them on AI safety, had them sign NDAs, but then primarily tried to convince them Claude has a soul & moral standing, all while wining & dining them to the max. 1/ https://t.co/4Z7Yk9rwk2

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

Our latest report on the State of Tokenization is out today!

Last time, we asked how much of today's tokenized market is stuck in the "newspaper-on-a-website" phase. This time, we asked what comes after tokenization? How do tokenized assets become tradable markets with broad investor participation?

Our Q2 research covers 671 tokenized assets ($330B+) with amazing work by @sui414 @0xallyzach. We updated our Tokenization Progress Index (TPI) across issuance & redemption, transferability, and composability.

This edition adds new dimensions: onchain trading and ownership data. These help depict the current state of liquidity, trading volumes, and overall participation in tokenized assets.

We also cover key Q3 developments, including @RobinhoodApp Chain's launch and the Clarity Act.

Takeaway #1: Open assets are winning the battle for liquidity. Among tokenized assets of $10M+ value, the open / freely transferable ones made up 41% in value, but processed 99.8% of spot trading.

Takeaway #2: Equity demand is arriving mostly through derivatives, mainly perpetuals. June equity perp volume hit $67.8B, ~16x the $4.2B of tokenized-equity spot volume.

Takeaway #3: Liquidity means something different for each product. Yield funds need dependable redemption. Tokenized stocks need deep liquidity. Collateral needs reliable valuation & liquidation.

Despite the CLARITY Act's delay, the momentum behind tokenization can't be stopped. The Great Onchain Migration marches forward, from putting assets onchain to building new markets around them.

Here's the full report link:
https://t.co/xuthedEd3Z

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

👏🏼

[meta @themetaisok]

Titling this as the State of Tokenization is an understatement. I’d wager to say it’s a necessary primer on, literally, the future of finance.

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

Our latest report on the State of Tokenization is out today!

Last time, we asked how much of today's tokenized market is stuck in the "newspaper-on-a-website" phase. This time, we asked what comes after tokenization? How do tokenized assets become tradable markets with broad investor participation?

Our Q2 research covers 671 tokenized assets ($330B+) with amazing work by @sui414 @0xallyzach. We updated our Tokenization Progress Index (TPI) across issuance & redemption, transferability, and composability.

This edition adds new dimensions: onchain trading and ownership data. These help depict the current state of liquidity, trading volumes, and overall participation in tokenized assets.

We also cover key Q3 developments, including @RobinhoodApp Chain's launch and the Clarity Act.

Takeaway #1: Open assets are winning the battle for liquidity. Among tokenized assets of $10M+ value, the open / freely transferable ones made up 41% in value, but processed 99.8% of spot trading.

Takeaway #2: Equity demand is arriving mostly through derivatives, mainly perpetuals. June equity perp volume hit $67.8B, ~16x the $4.2B of tokenized-equity spot volume.

Takeaway #3: Liquidity means something different for each product. Yield funds need dependable redemption. Tokenized stocks need deep liquidity. Collateral needs reliable valuation & liquidation.

Despite the CLARITY Act's delay, the momentum behind tokenization can't be stopped. The Great Onchain Migration marches forward, from putting assets onchain to building new markets around them.

Here's the full report link:
https://t.co/xuthedEd3Z

[Pantera Capital @PanteraCapital]

Pantera's latest State of Tokenization report is out.

We analyzed the $332bn tokenization market across 671 assets.

Institutions entered in force this quarter. J.P. Morgan, HSBC and Fidelity launched onchain products.

BlackRock's BUIDL moved $441mn onchain in June, runs a $1bn daily redemption facility, and is now accepted as collateral.

On the consumer side, Robinhood Chain hit $888mn in weekly RWA volume in August, two months after launch.

Collateral markets matured, with private credit putting 45% of its matched value to work in DeFi.

The lack of a market-structure bill didn't stop tokenized stocks. A five-year SEC exemption lets the market keep developing under current rules.

Full report: https://t.co/KXsUwci9fD

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

Never heard it stated this way before, but I’ve always called this being “Chaotic Good.”

Chaotic Good = doing what’s right, even (or especially) if it breaks rules, social norms, laws.

I love working with Chaotic Good founders. They’re usually a damn good bet too.

[Eric Weinstein @ericweinstein]

Okay. I’ll take the bait.

I went to work for Peter in 2013 with opposite politics.

He sat me down right at the beginning.

PETER: “I don’t want the (Thiel) Foundation to do good that the market can do. That is the job of the market. Likewise, I don’t want to do the good work that is seen as good. That work can be done by people richer, weaker and more needy of approval than we are. I want us to do only the work that is *deeply* good but somehow confused for being evil, because that is the work of the courageous and the strong. We strive to be both and that is where a small foundation can make the greatest positive difference. Go look for such good and let’s do that. But remember. Good has TWO different antonyms. What is “bad work”? It could be seen as shoddy work. Or it could be seen as evil work. And we can’t do shoddy work. Why? Because evil that isn’t competent never gets to be evil. It’s just pathetic. So we have to be exceptionally competent at the good work which we do to make sure it is always confused for evil.”

I thought it totally logical. So that’s the argument. And that’s classic Peter.

This is an old idea of his. And now you know.

[Franklin Bi @FranklinBi]

The newest buyers of US stocks will be outside the US and aren't even humans.

I had a blast chatting about this + more with @nikil, ceo/cofounder @Alchemy and @JohannKerbrat, head of crypto @RobinhoodApp. We covered so much, from Robinhood Chain's launch success to AI agents sending flowers to Nikil's girlfriend to buying stocks for grandma on a Saturday.

In case you missed it: Robinhood Chain now has 190 tokenized US stocks & ETFs. Within 2 weeks of launch, they were the top chain running on @Alchemy and running the equivalent of 25% of Google's search volume in API calls.

As I wrote about in my Great Onchain Migration essay, the gravitational pull of onchain assets will be swift & violent and that's playing out now through @RobinhoodCrypto.

The agents are showing up just as fast. In my piece on 80 Billion Customers, I threw out a question for businesses: can agents discover, purchase, and use your product without a human in the loop?

Well, Alchemy deleted CAPTCHAs from their signup process, so agents could pay for their product themselves. They grew 20% in two weeks. Meanwhile, Robinhood's agentic trading saw about 100K accounts in roughly a month.

Wall Street has talked about "global capital markets" for decades. In practice it's never existed.

Now we're finally seeing the first true layer of global capital markets, built for 8 billion people and 80 billion agents.

Here's my conversation with Nikil and Johann: