Description

Aya Kantorovich on Institutional DeFi, Tokenized Assets and Raising a Seed Round the Week FTX Collapsed | Unblock'd Aya Kantorovich co-founded August and Upshift, which give institutions access to DeFi with counterparty risk they can underwrite. Her seed round closed the same week FTX collapsed.

In this episode, Dr. Jemma Green talks with her about institutional DeFi, tokenized real world assets, stablecoins, DeFi security and what it takes to run two companies as a new mother. Aya explains why she left FalconX to build on-chain, why DeFi still has no true prime brokerage, and how Upshift vaults now sit inside Kraken's qualified custody so institutions can earn yield on idle Bitcoin and ETH without leaving the platform.

She also covers composability, tokenized treasuries as collateral, why market makers matter for tokenization, and why she thinks accredited investor rules are out of date. In this episode

• How Hack VC doubled down after FTX, and why Aya calls FTX an opsec failure rather than a blockchain failure
• Why DeFi still lacks true prime brokerage, and how Morpho, Aave and Kamino are closing the gap
• Kraken's kBTC receipt token and how bankruptcy-remote qualified custody limits hack risk
• Build or partner: why exchanges buy readiness instead of spending 12 months on vault infrastructure
• Stablecoin vaults for remittances, payments and treasury management
• Composability, explained with tokenized money market funds as collateral
• Why accredited investor thresholds miss the point, and what AI agents mean for them
• The Drift hack, human attack surfaces and delayed settlement as a security layer
• Motherhood, AI agents and running two companies
• Upshift as the first major vault provider on Solana
• The bets Aya is making that the market thinks are too early: regulated crypto infrastructure and AI everything

About guest:

Aya Kantorovich is co-founder of August and Upshift. Know more here. https://www.upshift.finance/

Unblock'd podcast with Dr. Jemma Green

For more information on Dr. Jemma Green

Visit: https://www.powerledger.io/

Or connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmagreen/