Alpaca’s $435M raise driven by Wall Street’s tokenization push

Episode 24 of The Starting Block was broadcasted live with The Block's Head of Multimedia Gareth Jenkinson, Bitwise Europe Senior Research Associate Luke Deans, and Alpaca Co-Founder & CEO Yoshi Yokokawa.

Alpaca Co-Founder & CEO Yoshi Yokokawa joins Gareth Jenkinson on The Starting Block to discuss building the "AWS of financial infrastructure" for tokenized US equities, the explosive growth of AI agents on Alpaca's platform, and navigating the global regulatory landscape amid Wall Street's tokenization push. Bitwise Europe Senior Research Associate Luke Deans also joined Gareth for the day's Market Pulse to discuss Bitcoin's volatility expectations, key on-chain price levels to watch, and why digital assets may be well-positioned when the AI trade eventually unwinds.

Outline

00:07 - Show Open & Headlines Preview
07:46 - Market Pulse: Bitcoin Volatility
16:57 - AI Trade & Capital Rotation
23:12 - Alpaca's Origin & Infrastructure
33:19 - AI Agents & Agentic Trading
37:11 - Everything App & Bundling Trends
40:46 - Regulation & Growth Outlook

Guest links:
Yoshi Yokokawa - https://x.com/iyoshyoshi
Alpaca - https://x.com/AlpacaHQ
Bitwise Europe - https://x.com/Bitwise_Europe

Host links:
Gareth Jenkinson - https://x.com/gazza_jenks
The Block - https://x.com/TheBlockCo
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