Jaime Rogozinski, WallStreetBets: ‘Crypto Should Help, Not Replace TradFi’

Should DeFi replace TradFi or can they co-exist? Jaime Rogozinski joins “Opinionated” for a conversation on DeFi, TradFi, regulation and more.

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ABOUT

“I don’t think you’re going to replace the stock market with the blockchain just because it’s better. I think they can coexist. Take all the benefits that you have from blockchain and figure out a way to adapt it.”

Jaime Rogozinski is the founder and ousted chief of Reddit’s infamous trading community: WallStreetBets. He spent years watching crypto from the sidelines as a die-hard “stonks only” investor. This week on “Opinionated,” he tells Ben, Danny and Anna how he finally came around.

Now, Jaime is playing a leading role in WSBDapp.com, a project he says mixes global equities, smart contracts and borderless finance. The idea is to give investors a crypto token whose value is linked to trades they might not otherwise make. Jaime says it’s an innovative evolution of traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The project is in its early stages, but the gang still has plenty of questions for Jaime. For example: Why would regulators allow tokenized stocks? How do tokenized exchange-traded products\ differ from exchange-traded funds? Is this really going to be a boon for retail investors?

Listen to this week’s “Opinionated” to find out.

This episode was produced, announced and edited by Michele Musso with additional production support by Eleanor Pahl.

HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Benjamin Schiller

Benjamin Schiller is CoinDesk's managing editor for features and opinion. Previously, he was editor-in-chief at BREAKER Magazine and a staff writer at Fast Company. He holds some ETH, BTC and LINK.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

EPISODES