The month of May 2025 marked a pivotal shift in the evolution of digital money, as developments in stablecoins, institutional crypto adoption, real world tokenization and new technical standards suggested a deeper integration of blockchain infrastructure into the mainstream financial system.
In this recent episode of the *Bitcoin, Fiat, and Rock and Roll* podcast, veteran payments expert Tony McLaughlin laid out a sweeping vision for the future of money—a future, he argues, that will be built not on traditional banking infrastructure, but on public blockchains and stablecoins.
In a time of tectonic shifts within global finance, few concepts embody both the promise and peril of innovation as thoroughly as decentralized finance (DeFi) and its organizational counterpart, the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). At the intersection of digital assets and traditional banking, Dan Liebau—founder of Lightbulb Capital and affiliate faculty member at Singapore Management University—is one of the field’s most pragmatic yet forward-thinking voices in the DeFi and DAO research space.