Solana, Tokenized Stocks, and Backpack w/ Armani Ferrante | Raoul Pal The Journey Man

Raoul Pal says the shift he anticipated in 2013–2014—equities, bonds, and currencies moving onto blockchain—is now happening, with the speakers describing blockchains as a global API for accessing financial products. They argue that globally accessible, divisible tokenized U.S. equities could bring new capital to public companies and increase U.S. dollar use, while tokenized pre-IPO shares could broaden access but raise questions about price discovery and incentives.

Ferrante says redeemability for the actual share is a key feature of Backpack’s tokenized stock, enabling movement between on-chain and traditional systems. He says deep on-chain liquidity could require billions of dollars at scale, while intent systems could source long-tail shares at the NBBO; expanding Solana access from 200 to 10,000 symbols is another step toward a Robinhood-like range.

Ferrante says regulated brokerage infrastructure and licensing can make products such as perpetual futures and tokenized stocks possible, citing a reported Hyperliquid–Kraken partnership as an example of combining exchange capabilities with licensing. He also describes operating across countries as a difficult, frustrating, and expensive process involving local regulators, teams, and licenses.

Ferrante says Solana had a more developed technology, community, and startup ecosystem than competing chains at the time, with startups nearing product and token launches and protocols preparing to go live. He described those fundamentals as disconnected from the negative news-cycle narrative, calling the gap a value disconnect that made staying with Solana an easy decision for him.

Ferrante predicted that crypto could grow 100x as the industry matures through compliance, regulation, integration with financial systems, tokenized stocks, and stablecoins. He argues that regulated financial activity on-chain could drive value to underlying chains through technology use at scale, while high-throughput, low-latency infrastructure would be needed if blockchains become important to finance and the modern economy.