Banks are looking to get started in DeFi - Aya Kantorovich
The Scoop's host, Frank Chaparro, was joined by August Co-Founder and CEO Aya Kantorovich.
In this episode, Chaparro and Kantorovich went over the state of crypto capital markets, the resilience of DeFi during market downturns, and how banks are looking to get started in DeFi.
OUTLINE
00:00 Introduction
01:08 From banking to crypto
02:30 Why institutions avoid DeFi
05:33 How institutions impact volatility
10:50 Crypto as the weekend market
17:00 Bitcoin as a reserve asset
20:01 Cambrian explosion of memecoins
26:28 Coinbase earnings
31:42 The resiliency of deFi
37:49 AI Agents
42:00 Conclusion
GUEST LINKS
Aya Kantorovich - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayakantorovich/
Aya Kantorovich on X - https://x.com/aya_kantor
August - https://www.augustdigital.io/
August on X - https://x.com/august_digital
Red Pilling Institutions: Raising in the Bear Market and How CeFi implosions grew DeFi
Aya Kantorovich is the co-CEO and co-founder of Fractal, which is an infrastructure provider enabling institutions to clear, settle, and margin digital asset trades on-chain.
In today's podcast, Aya shares her founder journey at Fractal, the impact of the FTX collapse on institutional players, DeFi growth since many CeFi companies imploded, how Fractal is red-pilling institutions, as well as her prediction on how many institutions will be cosseting crypto and having tokens on the balance sheet in 5 to 10 years time and so much more.
But first, Aya tells us about her crypto journey thus far.
FalconX's Aya Kantorovich explains what's been behind bitcoin's latest price gyrations
Aya Kantorovich, head of institutional coverage at FalconX, has been experiencing a bit of déjà vu.
Kantorovich, a former associate at crypto hedge fund Pantera, joined The Scoop to unpack the crypto market's recent bouts of volatility and how the market is stuck in a cycle of retail-led drawdowns. FalconX — an aggregator of crypto trading flows — has a window into both the retail and institutional market.
According to Kantorovich, liquidations across off-shore market venues, cascading liquidations, and the inability for traders to access crypto exchange platforms drive prices down. When money can't move around, price drawdowns are amplified.
"We saw $2 billion worth of liquidations happening across BTC," she said. "Retail liquidations was a large portion of this ... and then a cascading effect."
"When you have this level of heightened volatility you see some exchanges begin to shut down their trading capabilities and when these centralized trading platforms shut down those capabilities then traders don't have the ability to top off on their margin so you see a continued cascade," she added.
Kantorovich doesn't think this is a cycle that will break because many new institutions have to sell when the price reaches a certain threshold. Unlike crypto native whales, which have driven the buying at the dip, large billion-dollar plus asset managers "have a completely different level of drawdowns that they're allowed to maintain."
"Let's say the market falls down by 30%, they have a fiduciary obligation to take money off the table," she said. "These aren't the momentum diamond hands that we're so used to seeing in crypto."
"I think the reason for that is we are going to continue to see institutions that do not have a momentum-long venture persona ... and that could be both good or bad for the space."
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