Leading the Shift Toward Agent First On Chain Financial Markets | Yoshimasa Satoh, Pragma Tokyo 2026

Yoshimasa Satoh, Representative Director of Alpaca Japan, introduces Alpaca’s API-first brokerage infrastructure and its role as a broker for brokers. With more than 300 institutional customers and 15 million end-user accounts, Alpaca provides trading, clearing, settlement, and custody across major global markets. Satoh explains how tokenized assets, crypto products, and traditional securities are converging as Japan prepares to treat crypto assets as financial products and expand access to crypto ETFs. Satoh then connects longer trading hours, onchain settlement, and automation to agent-first markets. As U.S. exchanges move toward nearly continuous trading, AI agents can operate across time zones and asset classes that humans cannot monitor around the clock. He expects competition for investor liquidity to intensify as stocks, tokenized assets, and crypto become easier to access through common infrastructure. His recommendation is to automate decisions that can be optimized from data while keeping human judgment focused on uncertainty, values, and situations with many moving parts. 00:00 Introduction and Alpaca Japan 00:57 Alpaca as a Broker’s Broker 02:39 Open Financial Services Worldwide 03:53 Agent-First and Onchain Market Strategy 04:36 Institutional Scale and Global Accounts 05:19 API Infrastructure for Brokers 06:15 Japan’s Crypto Regulatory Shift 07:14 Crypto ETFs and Alpaca Investors 08:14 Traditional and Crypto Markets Converge 09:11 Tokenized Assets Across Markets 09:55 Japan’s Tokenization Constraints 11:08 AI, Automation, and Human Work 13:42 Nearly Continuous Financial Markets 15:46 Agent-Driven Trading 16:25 Onchain Multi-Asset Infrastructure 17:55 Competition for Investor Liquidity 19:02 Human Judgment Under Uncertainty _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇯🇵 *Pragma Tokyo 2026* Pragma Tokyo 2026 was held on September 25th at the Toranomon Hills Forum in Tokyo, Japan and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Tokyo 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT7ZDw43Z98U ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Alpaca X: https://x.com/AlpacaHQ ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city