Stabledash Live · · 28 min

Why Crypto Traders Fall Asleep on Tokenized Stocks, and What Wakes Them Up

With Michael Bar Zeev

Key takeaways

  • Michael Bar Zeev says a wallet company he ran as CEO was later part of a group sold to Fireblocks for $100 million.

  • SHIFT is at roughly $41 million in TVL with about a thousand users, Bar-Zeev says, and aims to at least double partners, volume and assets.

  • SHIFT added 2x and 3x leveraged ETFs and a short side, while Bar-Zeev calls 20x leverage gambling rather than trading.

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0:00Serial founder moves from wallets and mortgages to stablecoins1 of 9

Summary

Michael Bar-Zeev says leveraged and short ETF tokens, not plain stocks, are what bring retail crypto users to real-world assets.

Michael Bar Zeev, co-founder of SHIFT, says he was CEO of a wallet company that was later part of a group sold to Fireblocks for $100 million. He has been a founder since about 2004, creating about 12 companies and selling three. His current company is at roughly $41 million in TVL with about a thousand users.

From stablecoins to RWAs

Michael Bar Zeev says he started by asking whether stablecoins were still 99% dominated by a Circle and Tether duopoly, then found Tether USDt profiting a billion dollars a month in 2022. He says a simulated basket of six ETFs over a historical period of 18 years correlated to US CPI at a 95 to 97% rate.

“Life is not only the casino. There is... You have to go outside sometimes. So that's where you'll meet us. We're not there. We're outside.”
Michael Bar Zeev

Leverage without perps

SHIFT added 2x and 3x leveraged ETFs and a short side, since a spot asset onchain has only ever been a long. Michael Bar Zeev draws a line at perps: "if you're doing 20 x on something, I don't care what it is," he says, "You're gambling."

Where the users are

Bar-Zeev says SHIFT users buy through Jupiter, and the top countries include Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil and Greece. The company is working with an app that gives students in India aged 18 to 23 a savings account, which wants to offer RWA vaults saving between 5 to 30% depending on strategy and risk.

The tokens are meant to be used, not parked: he cites partnerships with Camino for earning, IV Markets for options on RWA tokens, and work with Morpho and Pendle on vaults and looping.

A market run on hype

Bar-Zeev argues that both TradFi stocks and top crypto assets are no longer analytically traded. If NASDAQ and others look at prediction markets such as Polymarket as partners, he says, people now consider this trading. He calls Robinhood's onboarding positive but says SHIFT is "outside" the casino.

Over the next six months, Bar-Zeev says SHIFT is pushing to at least double partners, volume and assets and to bring out RWA products "that have never been seen before." He points to Chainlink as the infrastructure player with the bigger picture of RWAs.

SHIFT, Robinhood, Chainlink, and Camino come up most.

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