Over the last few weeks, the CEOs of several major financial institutions, as well as regulators around the globe, have been talking about tokenization, stablecoins, and blockchain. Wei-Shen and Tony do their best to unpack why this is significant.

This week’s episode is one of those where Wei-Shen and Tony blather on about an array of things, including generative AI, cybersecurity, and Taylor Swift’s new album. Listen at your own risk.

This week, Bank of America’s Ashok Krishnan and Duncan McInnes join Tony to discuss the build, buy, borrow strategy and instilling the right culture within the bank. 0:00 – Shen and Tony talk about the Risk Live Asia 2025 conference in Singapore 7:30 – Ashok and Duncan join the podcast 11:30 – The build, buy, borrow strategy 14:00 – Building a rocket ship 19:00 – Instilling a culture that remains 22:30 – Doubling down on the ‘Why’ 28:00 – Managing tech priorities 34:00 – Dealing with data, interoperability, and tech debt

No guest this week, folks. Tony and Shen discuss recent books they’ve read about data and analytics, and…humanity.

This week’s guest is Val Wotton, global head of equity solutions at DTCC. He joins to discuss the necessary steps leading up to the T+1 transitions in the UK and EU. 0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about Reb’s time in upstate New York 6:00 – Val Wotton joins the podcast and discusses the metrics from US T+1 13:00 – Analyze the entire lifecycle and do your impact assessment! 18:30 – Considerations from Asia 22:00 – Additional costs to assess 28:30 – Balancing mandatory deliverables and T+1 work 34:00 – Tweaking CSDR rules 42:00 – Resiliency can’t be understated

This week’s guest is Bill Murphy, managing partner at Cresting Wave 0:00 – Tony and Shen discuss System of a Down and Gorillaz 6:00 – Bill Murphy, Blackstone’s former CTO, joins to discuss that much-discussed MIT study on AI projects failing and factors executives should consider as the technology continues to evolves

This week, Shen and Reb discuss a recent MIT study on GenAI pilots, and Reb’s recent story about ModuleQ dissolving. https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952681/fintech-powering-lseg%E2%80%99s-ai-alerts-dissolves

This week, Reb and Tony talk about the internet and the problems compounded by AI. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952665/the-great-disappearing-internet%E2%80%94and-what-it-could-mean-for-your-llm 0:00 – Welcome to the team, Mya! You can reach her at Mya.Jheeta@infopro-digital.com 7:00 – Reb and Tony discuss her recent column and the interconnected mess of a web of humans, internet, and AI

This week’s guest is Lior Yogev, CEO and co-founder at FundGuard. He joins the podcast to discuss legacy tech stacks at asset management firms. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about personalities 10:00 – Lior Yogev joins the podcast 12:30 – When does a tech stack become legacy? 19:00 – How asset managers modernize their platforms without excess downtime 22:30 – Migration times 26:30 – Total rebuild vs. slight tweaks

This week’s guest is Mo Rahim, group chief data officer at Standard Chartered, who joins the podcast to discuss data and AI governance and guardrails for AI. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about recent shows they’ve watched 9:00 – Mo Rahim joins the podcast 13:30 – Understand your core identity 17:00 – People and literacy 19:00 – Get your data right 25:00 – Standard Chartered’s research, partnerships, and innovation pillar 29:00 – Building AI in a safe and responsible way 32:30 – AI is your plus one

This week’s guest is Nick Kolba, CEO and co-founder of Connectifi, who joins the podcast to discuss the Model Context Protocol, LLMs and agentic AI. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about Astronomer’s ad campaign 5:30 – Nick Kolba joins the podcast 8:00 – Step changes or big jumps in tech 18:00 – Excitement for the Model Context Protocol 21:00 – Parallels between FDC3 and MCP 24:30 – Concerns around security 30:00 – Work that still needs to be done 41:00 – Code generation for “senior engineers”

This week’s guest is Brian Bejile, cofounder & CEO, Octaura 0:00-7:20: Anthony Malakian and Rebecca Natale, Europe Editor for WatersTechnology, complain for seven minutes about poor customer service and artificial intelligence. 7:20-35:23: Brian Bejile and Nyela Graham, senior reporter at WatersTechnology, have an actual informative discussion—as opposed to Tony and Reb’s diatribes—about the origins of Octaura, modernization of the credit markets, the platform provider’s move into the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) space, and the need for more data and analytics on the buy side.

This week, Reb and Nyela discuss BNY’s digital workers and what the use of AI in society signals for the future.

This week, Riad Chowdhury, head of Asia-Pacific, and Dan Burke, global head of emerging markets at MarketAxess, join to discuss block trading in fixed income. Plus Reb discusses her recent article about Cusip and updates on the class action lawsuit moving through the courts. 00:00 Reb and Tony discuss recent reporting around Cusip and updates on the class action lawsuit 12:30 Riad Chowdhury, head of Asia-Pacific, and Dan Burke, global head of emerging markets at MarketAxess, join the podcast 14:40 Block trading in fixed income vs. equities 20:20 Drivers for larger-sized trades 23:00 MarketAxess’s Targeted RFQ 31:00 Challenges for dealers 33:00 Learnings from the equities world 39:00 Trends in bid/ask spreads for EM hard-currency debt 44:20 AI model for Targeted RFQ

This week, Reb, Nyela, and Shen discuss concerns around air travel and notable cybersecurity incidents. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952488/agentic-ai-takes-center-stage-bank-tech-projects-new-funding-rounds-and-more?cx_artPos=1&cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_1#cxrecs_s 0:00 – Reb, Nyela, and Shen talk about Reb’s flight back from New York 10:30 – They discuss two stories from our last Waters Cooler about the previous hacks on the SEC’s Edgar database and Ion

This week, Par Cassells joins Nyela to discuss shorter settlement cycles and the role of vendors in the transition. 0:00 – Tony and Nyela talk highlights from the Tech & Data in Financial Markets (TDFM) conference 7:00 – Par Cassells, chief client officer at AccessFintech, joins Nyela on the podcast 9:00 – Par’s takeaways from North America’s move to T+1 13:00 – The upcoming moves to T+1 in the EU and UK 17:00 – T+0 margin vs. T+0 settlement 20:30 – Difference between the transitions 24:00 – Vendors’ role in the T+1 transition

This week, Tradeweb’s Chris Bruner joins the podcast to discuss digital assets and fixed income. 0:00 – Reb is back in NYC! 6:30 – Chris Bruner, chief product officer at Tradeweb, joins Nyela on the podcast 13:30 – Tradeweb’s history with blockchain 18:40 – Gauging client reception to digital assets 28:50 – Upcoming regulatory headwinds

Tony and Shen discuss Bloomberg’s addition to IB chat, common threads in our Voice of the CTO series, and op resiliency. Our Bloomberg story: https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7952434/bloomberg%E2%80%99s-chatbots-streamline-external-data-sharing-otc-trading Our Voice of the CTO series: https://www.waterstechnology.com/topics/voice-of-the-cto

This week, Hamilton Lane's Griff Norville joins to discuss how the asset manager is tackling private markets data. 0:00 – Eliot joins Tony on the podcast 3:10 – Griff Norville, head of technology solutions at Hamilton Lane, joins the podcast 4:40 – Private markets data extraction 6:10 – Data storage issues 8:40 – Tackling standardization 11:00 – The dual role of being an asset manager and a data provider 15:40 – Are attitudes changing around this data? 20:00 – The expanding tech landscape

This week, Bitdefender’s Adrian Coleșa and Transilvania Quantum’s Sorin Boloș join to discuss security vulnerabilities in quantum computing 0:00 – Tony is back! 3:30 – Adrian Coleșa, Senior Security Researcher at Bitdefender, and Sorin Boloș, quantum software engineer at Transilvania Quantum, join the podcast 8:00 – How the partnership between Bitdefender and Transilvania Quantum began 12:00 – Research into QC as a potential target 14:00 – Why attack a QC 19:30 – Who bears the onus 23:30 – Classical and QC vulnerabilities 32:30 – What is a quantum antivirus