Proud moment speaking at @Harvard on tokenization, AI, blockchain and the future of Islamic finance. I spoke about a problem I’ve been thinking about last 20 years, that is, should where you are born determine the financial opportunities you can access? That same question has taken us from distribution, to infrastructure, and now to building @ZIGFinance around real financial products and global access. Blockchain isn’t the mission, tokenization isn’t the product. Access is the key! And ultimately, everything we build has to create real economic activity and value around the ecosystem, including ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01. Good discussion & more work ahead :)

Last year, the video was real and we drew the future on a whiteboard. This year, the video is AI. But what we’ve built is very real. We said ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 would become the meta-asset of onchain finance. That meant building applications, bringing real financial products onchain, attracting institutional capital, creating distribution, generating revenue and putting ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 at the center of it all. One year later, we’re quoting ourselves and bringing the receipts. And we’re nowhere near done.

Looking forward to speaking at @Harvard at the 2026 Harvard Islamic Finance Conference on September 25–26, representing @ZIGChain This year’s theme “Global Finance in Transition” couldn’t be more timely. Capital is moving onchain & AI is changing how financial products are built and distributed. And investors are increasingly asking not just what the return is, but what sits underneath it. I believe Islamic finance has a much bigger role to play in this transition than most people realise. Asset backing, real economic activity, risk sharing and responsible capital are incredibly relevant principles for the financial system now being built onchain. See you in Cambridge!

We are looking to heavily invest in the area of blockchain security. Trillions of dollars are moving onchain, while AI is changing the threat landscape faster than most infrastructure can keep up. Institutions won’t come at scale, and users won’t feel safe, until this is properly solved. If you’re a great founder building in this space, DM me. We’re serious about backing the best teams we can find. Any stage, any amount.

Well, @Figure is right about the core problem with tokenization today. Putting a token on top of an asset isn't really transformation. You haven't fundamentally changed how the asset moves, settles or reaches capital. A lot of tokenization today is still a new interface sitting on top of old financial rails. The real opportunity starts when more of the lifecycle moves onchain and assets can interact programmatically with the wider financial system. Where I would go one step further is the endgame. I don't think native onchain ownership is the final destination. Native access is. The bigger opportunity is when private credit becomes globally distributable, institutional assets become composable and financeable, capital can move across markets more freely, and investors can access opportunities historically restricted by geography, infrastructure or distribution. That's where tokenization becomes truly transformative. Access is the REAL opportunity.

Tashkent was supposed to be a conference stop. It turned into one of the most interesting markets we’ve seen in a while! A few conversations started here that could become very real, very quickly. More on that soon 👀 Shot this with @Khaliiqo to sum up our experience :)

After all these years, I’ve never asked you for anything but today I will. Not for myself, but for someone in our community. Pedro is fighting for a chance at life. He urgently needs treatment and a possible life saving surgery at Mayo Clinic. Every donation helps, no matter the size. 🙏 GoFundMe: Crypto donations directly for Pedro: ETH: 0x93Ed4527a94D6544788108283bAe16Fffb85E245 SOL: FDK5BMTM6W5NNSXSQqv3UW88Z8cETZH5ZbRU9gMMvNys Please donate, repost & share. 🙏

“Curator” is used too loosely in onchain finance. Real curation begins before the vault. A curator should source the opportunity, match it to a capital mandate, structure it around the required risk, return and liquidity, coordinate compliance, and take it through to distribution. For this USD1 product, ZIG Markets originated the cross-border settlement opportunity, structured it around a specific real-world yield mandate, and connected the compliant structure, onchain infrastructure and distribution. This generates revenue through origination, structuring, vault economics and distribution. More products and AUM mean more revenue, resulting in more ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 buybacks. This is how we are scaling 1000X the revenue and bring back the value to ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 @ZIGChain is the settlement and value layer, ZIG Markets is the commercial engine. ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 sits at the center of both.

Congrats team @Ask_ORO! I have seen the team working through extremely tough market & deliver a killer product that’s loved by everyone! @ZIGChain is proudly doubling down in the latest round as well :)

18 months ago, when @Bilalbinsaqib first told me what he was taking on, I doubted whether the system could move fast enough. I never doubted that he would keep pushing until it did. Today, @PakistanVARA licensing framework is live. Pakistan has delivered in last 6 months, what many developed countries took years establishing. No one delivers something of this scale alone, but the speed and coherence of this effort say a great deal about Bilal’s brilliance and ability to navigate and move complex institutions. For Pakistan, it changes how we enter conversations at the very top globally, gives Pakistani founders a credible home framework and opens doors across capital, partnerships and talent. For other emerging markets, it demonstrates that they do not always need to wait for developed economies to define the financial future first; with the right leadership, they can help shape it themselves. I have always known Bilal to be exceptionally sharp, and he could have done almost anything, anywhere; he chose to serve his country. As a friend who has seen what it took, I could not be prouder. ❤️

Yes, we were lied to about stablecoins. Not because they lack a transformative use case, but because we were told their defining use case would be payments. As @jonah_b explains, when dollars enter on one side and pesos or naira must come out on the other, the onchain transfer is only one part of the journey. FX, liquidity and off-ramps remain, while modern fintechs already solve many major corridors efficiently. But payments may prove to be the smaller stablecoin use case. The bigger one is investment. Once capital is held in stablecoins, the important question is no longer how cheaply it can exit into a bank account. It is what that capital can access: tokenized funds, private credit, treasuries and other regulated financial products. Stablecoins become the common subscription and settlement layer connecting capital directly with opportunities that were previously restricted by geography, distribution, banking relationships or minimum ticket sizes. That is not primarily an on-ramp or off-ramp story, it is an access story. Payments make money easier to move. The investment use case can make opportunity far easier to access, and that may be the much larger stablecoin story.

Markets go through cycles. Good and bad, bull and bear. But despite the cycle, building and shipping continues through all of them. A little over 100 days ago, at the @ZIGChain Summit, we laid out our ambition to build an ecosystem where real financial activity comes onchain, and the value it creates ultimately flows back towards ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01. Since then, TVL has grown from around $10M to more than $60M, and we revamped the tokenomics of ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 to create a much stronger alignment between the growth of the ecosystem, the revenues we generate and the native token. But what excites me even more is the activity that explains how we got to that number. - Laser Digital, the digital asset arm backed by Nomura, invested directly in ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 and is now working with ZIG Markets to build institutional-grade onchain credit, bringing institutional risk frameworks and governance to a pipeline targeting $100M in TVL. - ADI Foundation takes us deeper into Abu Dhabi’s institutional ecosystem, with a framework focused on regulated stablecoin infrastructure for receivables, SME working capital, private credit and other productive finance use cases. - Ondo brought tokenized stocks and ETFs into the ecosystem, expanding the range of institutional-grade financial assets available onchain. - Fuze gives us a route into banks and fintechs, while Fasset connects us to more than 1M users across 125+ countries. We keep saying it, but distribution really is one of the most underestimated parts of bringing finance onchain. - And alongside all of this, we have continued building with Taurus, Beehive, Gate, HTX, Abhi, DeFa and others across infrastructure, products, liquidity and distribution. This is why ZIG Markets and our new ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 tokenomics matter so much to us. We never wanted ecosystem growth, institutional adoption, revenue and our token to exist separately. ZIG Markets earns by originating, structuring and distributing financial products, and a portion of that revenue can be used to acquire ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 from the open market. As the financial ecosystem grows, the economic alignment around ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 grows with it. The market decides when it wants to pay attention. But it doesn't change our job. Which is to keep shipping, keep growing, and make sure ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 has far more behind it than it did last time.

Heading to Tashkent for Silk Road Finance & Technology Forum, 24–26 August. Meeting regulators, institutions and builders to discuss tokenized assets, stablecoins and how @ZIGChain and ZIG Markets can build capital rails across emerging markets, with ethereum:0xb2617246d0c6c0087f18703d576831899ca94f01 at the core of it! If you’re attending, DM me.