Trust Me, I’m Tokenized | DC Fintech Week 2026

One and welcome. My name is Brendan Peterson. I am a financial services reporter at Punchbowl Note News here in Washington D.C. And welcome to this panel on tokenization and trustlessness and open versus permissionless and what it all means.

We have a really stacked panel for you here today. I'm going to have everyone introduce themselves in a second, but this is going to be a conversation about, you know, the technicality of this space. We want to get into the business frictions and you know, you're talking to the folks who are really at the forefront of designing this space and we're going to talk about what it takes and what's going on. So, let's just have everyone go down the line and introduce yourselves, say what you do and how you're doing it.

Yeah, so I'm Steven Gardner with Zero Hash. I'm the co-president of Zero Hash and and chief legal officer. And what we do is provide on-chain solutions for existing financial institutions. In the tokenization space, that really means interoperability between traditional assets, tokenized assets, and tokenized assets other tokenized assets. So, for example, we support a stable coin flow for BlackRock Biddle Fund funding on-chain.

You can't tell me.

Lindsey.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Hasel. I'm the chief legal officer of Tempo Labs, which is a fairly new layer one blockchain focused on payments. We're the first layer one blockchain purpose-built for payments, specifically using stable coins. We were incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, the venture capital firm. Although we are a separate company from both of them.

We started about a year and a half ago. Unlike some of the other layer ones out there, not only are we purpose-built for payments, Uh, we accept all stablecoins. We're stablecoin agnostic. We don't have an enshrined stablecoin, and you can pay transaction fees or gas in any stablecoin. Um, and our goal really is to bring enterprises that haven't been on chain, haven't used payments on chain before, and introduce them to that world using the superconductors that we call stablecoins.

Hi, my name is Jose Fernandez Aponte. I'm the President and Chief Growth Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation. SDF is the entity that steers the growth of the Stellar ecosystem. Stellar is a layer one blockchain. It's been around for about 12 years now.

Very much very much built with payments and regulated finance on chain. We work with a lot of folks on the TradFi space from Franklin Templeton to Bank of New York to Amundi to others. Very active now both on payments and RWAs, where we have about $4 billion now that are deployed there. Open source, permissionless, and purpose-built for for finance.

So, I want to get us started with a little bit of level setting and and talking about what we're we're talking about. So, Jose, I'm going to start with you. And as I'm asking these questions and as our first respondent finishes, everybody else should feel like they can jump in. It's We'll keep the conversation going. We had a great conversation backstage, and I wanted to keep that going.

Jose, I I let's talk just basic terms and definitions for a second. Permissioned versus open for assets versus networks. Where are the crucial distinctions in your mind in terms of how we're talking about this space and what those differences mean on a product level?

Yeah. Thank you, Brennan. I think that that's an exceedingly important distinction. We tend to throw the terms around on permission and permissionless. Even inside the industry, there are people who disagree disagree vehemently about what permission or permissionless is.

Uh, as Brennan was saying, at one level you need to to look at what is the blockchain itself in terms of being permission or permissionless. In our case, permissionless means that everybody can spin up a node and start running transactions on Stellar. You download the software. There is no gatekeeping on who can set up a node. That's where the decentralization comes from and and the consensus gets built.

In a permission environment, you have some type of limitation on who's can be there and and validate transactions, whether because you need to submit an application to run a validator or a number of other entities. There are very good use cases for both permission and permissionless. On the Stellar side, we are very much advocates of the permissionless side. We want to make sure that there is an open and public version of of the chain that people can can build on. That's on the blockchain side.

On the assets, the assets as themselves might be permissionless might be similar to other instruments, but can also be permission. And those things run in parallel. You can have a permission asset on a permissionless chain, for instance. Franklin Templeton issues a money market fund on on a Stellar. That money market fund itself, it is permission.

You need to go through KYC with Franklin Templeton. There is a registry of of holders, but you can run that on a permissionless chain. So, those are two very different layers and I think that sometimes they get they get confused.

Yeah. Lindsay, I want to talk to you a little bit about Tempo and and some of the choices you guys have made over there. You you have a policy registry that gives issuers the built-in tools to restrict transfers of of tokens. Why are you building that into the infrastructure itself versus just allowing issuers implement it on their own?

Yeah, so one thing we heard when we started Tempo and talking to our design partners, many of which are big enterprises like DoorDash, Airbnb, it was very clear that they want compliance not to be an afterthought. They want it baked into the product. And they also want it to be standardized. They don't want to have to create bespoke compliance programs and and uh policies for every single type of transaction or stablecoin. And so we created what's called TIP 403.

It's a token standard that allows you to bake compliance into the token layer itself. So the issuer at its simplest can basically decide which token travels along which policies and can dictate the send receive policies for those wallets or accounts. Which wallets is a very crypto native term, but effectively it's an account. Um and TIP 403 at its basic allows the token to dict- to be travel along with these policies. Now, the cool thing about it is that because it's programmed at the token layer, the issuer can basically decide how to apply those policies across a whole range of tokens.

And it it does travel separately. What it also means is that enterprises can count on the fact that every time that token moves in or out, it's being checked against that policy. And so we think this is a really elegant way of solving compliance on a blockchain and not making it so impossible for enterprises to onboard into this new world.

Uh Steven, I want to come to you and talk a little bit about the the when stuff breaks moment. Um ZeroHash is very much on the back end. When you guys are thinking about the risks of a hack or or a bug or if even one of the companies that you're working with goes under, how are you preparing for that moment? And what's the message for consumers if they're worried about, you know, their money going away if one of those things goes wrong?

Yeah, I mean I think um kind of starting as a regulated institution, you built out risk and compliance programs. Um and and that's kind of just the the low bar, right? That you have to meet for licensure. That's not doing enough. Uh because in tokenization, you have multiple fourth and like even fifth, sixth party risk that you need to monitor.

Uh on-chain exploits um far downstream will create panic among users and want to ask, you know, if there's something wrong with the Solana chain, is something wrong with my stablecoin on the Solana chain? Um so, um making sure that you have kind of monitored all of those scenarios in real time with your risk teams and can communicate directly back to your partners and consumers and regulators about your exposures. Um but that just takes uh a really sophisticated risk engine that that has run books, BCDR programs, table top exercises. Um there there's there's there's a just a ton of practice that has to go into to the scenarios. Um but I think it's not unlike most financial institutions.

Uh what is unique is the type of risk that we're monitoring for and the type of counterparty risk that we're that we're looking at. Um and maybe maybe some technical experience that you add um around the edges to ensure that you're that you're on top of it. Um and and then when things break, um having the controls to to prevent loss um it is also extraordinarily important. It's so, you know, not just monitoring and identifying, but then stopping the bleeding. Um you know, even if it's not impacted your business, there may be uh a period of time where you need to, you know, ensure that your systems are going to work appropriately before permitting on-chain transactions.

Jose, I'm going to start with you for this next question. You're all being very polite still. You can you can jump in. Don't don't hesitate. Um but let me ask you this, Jose.

Um let's talk about the last mile problem. As you're creating these tokens and then rolling them out and trying to distribute them and get people to use them, where are you and then we can bounce around, but where are you guys seeing the pain points with that distribution and talk about any lessons you've learned from your time at PayPal and to Stellar and on to the future.

Yep. So, as Brendan was saying prior to Stellar, I was running the digital assets team at PayPal and a big part of of the value proposition there is can we put these digital assets in the hands of 400 million people around around the world. Over the last year and a half, I I would say that I have many many conversations with traditional financial institutions and especially in the asset management side. Uh the conversation a year ago was very much about can we put an asset on chain? Can can we take a money market fund?

Can we take a stock? Can we take a private credit fund and put it on chain? Does does it work? Um I think that we are largely past that stage. Most of the institutions that I talk to these days, they say yeah, the technology is mature, we can do these these assets can live on chain.

The conversation very quickly has moved to distribution as you were saying, Brendan. So, how do we put these in hand in the hands of the investors? Maybe the beginning, maybe 1 year ago, there was a little bit of a uh starry-eyed notion that the blockchains themselves were going to be distribution. I think this has established that that is not the case. That is like you're pretending uh the internet to be your distribution channel or or your window windows to be your distribution channel.

So, most of institution institutions that I that I talk to these days are trying to figure out how do we deploy this? Is this going to be through the traditional broker-dealer channels, the traditional financial advisors? Part of this is going to live in in DeFi, but DeFi has some restrictions on the type of assets that you can deploy going back to permission versus permission. I don't think that the question is settled. I think that we will still see there's a ton of work that people like Zero Hash and and others are doing to make it easier.

Uh and there's going to be a we just had Ondo on the stage on on the prior panel. So, what we saw in the payments space on the stable coins and the combination of new payment companies and traditional payment companies still has to play out on real world assets distribution and how much of that is going to be the traditional channels for as we said wealth advisor broker dealers financial advisors and how much is going to be the next generation that is coming up that is more crypto native. I think that's where where it's being played now.

Um Lindsay I want to go back to you um cuz cuz Tempo actually had some news this morning I believe um about a new uh privacy tool that you guys have rolled out called zones. Um can you talk a little bit about that and and why you know it's interesting.

It's a big day for us. Um love to share more about it. One of the other I mentioned compliance being the pain point for some of these enterprises not yet on chain. It's either second one right behind that is privacy. Those of you from finance know that there's real benefits to having certain transactions just have to be private payroll, global remittance.

You can't put those all on chain necessarily but you still want the benefits of the publicly verifiable nature of a public blockchain. was one of the other design principles around Tempo was how do we allow enterprises to do things on chain, be publicly verifiable, but protect those transactions. So we created this concept called zones. It allows independent operators to set up a zone. They can do private transactions in that zone.

And many of you are now thinking well wait a bit wait a minute that sounds anonymous. No, our design principle is confidentiality not anonymity. And the zone operator can actually decide who can see what those transactions are. If they want to have in a plugin with a regulator, if they want to have certain certain parties in that zone, they can do so. It's fully programmable.

It's fully customizable. And so we announced this morning Brendan that our first zone partnership is live which is Deal. Many of you know Deal the global operator payroll operator. They said to us we'd love to do something with Tempo. We'd love to use stable coins, especially in the hundreds of countries in which they do payroll, but wow, we can't have payroll on chain.

How do we solve this? And so they were a great design partner. We announced this morning that they now have payroll live in 86 countries as they operate at one of these zones on Tempo.

One thing I if I may add Brendan to what Lindsay I I want to re-emphasize something that Lindsay said that which I think is super important, which is privacy with at the same time being verifiable. I think that's something that is incredibly important. Sometimes you will hear claims of chains or saying, "We're doing this volume or that volume. Trust us because it's private, which means that it's not verifiable." Those things are separate.

You can be private and and verifiable. We have been doing our work on payments on confidential payments on privacy pools and stuff like that. Similar design principles saying, "Hey, there are there are auditor keys. You you can engage with regulators. There is an oversight."

And with the ecosystem say, "Hey look, you can verify that this transaction really happened." Because if not, anyone can claim that whatever volume or whatever payment amount

without sacrificing compliance.

Yeah.

Um and without antagonizing regulators, but protecting privacy of payments.

Yeah.

All right. Lindsay mentioned the regulators, and I promised Chris Bummer that this would not be a policy conversation, that this be more technical. I'm a policy reporter, but you mentioned the regulators. So Steven, I'm going to come back to you now. Let's talk about um your federal charter application.

Um you guys just resubmitted um a second go at it. Talk a little bit about um lessons you learned from the first go around, but also just higher level. What what do the regulators want to know about your federal trust charter?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's lesson we learned was keep it simple. Um I think ZeroHash has a very broad business. Uh we do tokenization, uh issuance, uh payments, wealth management, um custody operations. And so I think um kind of simplifying that um, in in our second application was important. Um, but I I mean, there's no surprises in any of the questions that are coming in.

I mean, they want to know about governance, um, how you're working with third parties and affiliates, how people are dual-hatted, um, the, you know, the you talk about distribution, how you manage wallets, working with uh, self-hosted wallets and thing how your compliance program is built, if you're going to facilitate kind of movements like that. Um, the Yeah, I mean, they're they're looking at your your your organizers and officers. Um, so, nothing I think I think would be surprising to anybody in the room. Um, and and I think the, um, you know, what's important is this is just one charter, one license and in a host of them in the US that are available right now. Um, without um, federal legislation, there's going to continue to be this state-federal push-pull on who regulates.

You know, uh, 49 states have money transmitter licenses that have applied to or jurisdictions that apply to these activities. Um, a lot of it businesses have decided to go the state non-depository trust route, so, uh, Zero Hash has one of those in North Carolina. Um, and then you have the SEC and CFTC making great strides in guidance and rule-making that's going to end up placing these technology within a whole host of federal regulated institutions. So, um, I think there's a big story about the OCC right now, um, and that's mainly because they're filling a a void in the federal landscape, uh, particularly for custodians, um, but uh, it's what's going to be more interesting, I think, to us moving through '26 and '27 is the additional kind of federal licenses that are available now, um, and how those will interplay, um, depending on the type of assets that you're supporting. I mean, tokenization's moving into securities and securities issuance.

We've already talked about money market funds, um, you know, perpetuals on the price movement of digital assets is another element that that is being monitored. So, I think, um, you know, fundamentals that you'll hear from folks like them to to my left say that this is a technology that's going to be applied broadly to every asset and to every asset class. And so, that's going to naturally bring in, you know, dozens of regulators.

Okay, I want to start opening it up a little bit in our last 5 minutes or so here. Um, and starting with Jose, let's talk a little bit about AI, um, and my question is is there anywhere in this tokenization discussion where AI technology fits in particularly well or that like we just shouldn't be letting it touch right now? Where where do you see the technology playing a role in in the implementation here?

Yeah, Brandon, no, AI is absolutely irrelevant for crypto. There's nothing to see there. Uh, no, there there are obviously there are there are many many implications. And I think that we we we can look at it at least in in very in a couple of different levels. One of them is the transaction side of things and then the other one is obviously the cybersecurity and attacks and exploits.

Um, as you look at the overlap between blockchains and AI, one of the things that might get enabled and which is is been the holy grail of of the industry for a lot of time is synthetic payments and micro payments especially. I spent the last best part of the last 10 years in rooms where people were asking why do we need the stablecoins for payments if we have X and we live in the best of possible worlds and we can do micro payments via app stores and we can do tokenized deposits to pay and we can do a bunch of things. Which are valid questions that the industry has been addressing in several ways. Part of the use cases where well, you don't know some of these cases that are going to show up. I think that the traditional payment rails are not very good for doing payment transactions.

Obviously, you cannot give a credit card to an AI agent and send them on their on their merry way but you can allocate a crypto wallet with value in it and you can do machine to machine payments. There's uh I would not claim by any means that we have sorted it out. That's why there is there are bodies out there like the X402 Foundation where we are members with many other colleagues in the industry. We're trying to figure out what is the right stack for AI payments. There is another derivative of that which will go which I don't think we're there yet to the real world asset and the trading and how does the world work in a in an environment where you can have tokenized stocks that are traded by AI AI bots.

The other aspect of it which has been very relevant in the in the first half of this year is the speed of attacks. I don't think that that is happening only in the in the crypto space. We are seeing that in a number of other infrastructure but the speed of attacks has increased vastly. I am an optimist. I think that AI favors defense in in the sense and thing that people will work at but there is a value of a scale and is a value of being a stress test and and battle hardened against that.

So I think that they it will favor consolidation of volumes and assets on chains that have been around for a long time and are tried and tested and protocols and applications that have been around. So I think that we'll see an advantage of a scale given the the the cyber threats. Lindsey, Stephen, any thoughts you want to add on that?

Um yeah, I I just want to say I think stable coins are the most perfect medium. It's a perfect marriage for a gen tech commerce. Um at its core stable coins are programmable money. Um you don't want to give an agent a credit card or a bank account with open-ended limit with no limits on it. Stable coins you can set up a pre-funded wallet on Tempo using our machine payments protocol.

You can tell the agent exactly what it's allowed to do, what it's not allowed to do. When it runs out of money or it doesn't follow those exact specifications the transaction stops. I actually think it's a marriage made in heaven. I think it's going to be really interesting. There's lots of legal issues that we haven't yet explored, but like Jose, I'm a I'm a optimist and I think you're going to see this programmable money agent marriage take off.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't agree more. Um but um I think we what we're building and focus on is agent identity and being able to pass through credentials in those transactions because there's still, you know, beneficiaries at the end of the agent. Um these are people. They're not just machines.

Um and so uh making sure that you're authorizing appropriately and that you, you know, if you need a closed-loop system, that you know that you're within your closed loop. Um and um I mean, stablecoins have been already kind of been beneficial in this space. Uh but I think the tokenization in general, just kind of on the theme, is um the interoperability, moving from stablecoins to any other asset um will be in the hands of agents and they need that interoperability to make it all work um as well.

Folks, that is all the time we have. Please give our panelists a big hand. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Yep, thanks.