A 117-Year-Old Asset Manager Goes “Fully Native,” Seeing Tokenization as OS upgrade | Theo Golden
episode
Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
52 min
2 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How did Theo Golden’s career evolve from journalism to leading Baillie Gifford’s digital‑assets team?
I have this very strong hypothesis that some of the winners in this space are going to be what I call like disruptive incumbents, like organizations who now have digital assets teams who are building products to compete with the disruptors themselves. And so the view was like, yeah, let's take on that role. Even if it doesn't work, it would be fantastic learning for our own investment theses. We're spending time with the FCA in the UK, understanding what their thoughts were and having conversations. And we doubled down post FTX to really think, okay, how can we build tokenized instruments?
Today's guest is Theo Golden, the head of digital assets at Bailey Gifford. Bailey Gifford recently made headlines with the launch of Baggy, a tokenized bond fund built on Ethereum and Solana that is yielding approximately a 7% yield and settles using USDC. It's another sign that tokenization is moving beyond proof of concepts and becoming part of how traditional financial institutions think about investment infrastructure. Also want to give the disclaimer that although our guest this week works at Bailey Gifford, nothing in this podcast should be considered as an offer of its investment advisory services or should otherwise be confused for investment, tax, legal or other financial advice. Lots to discuss today.
But with that said, Theo, welcome on.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks for coming on. Before joining Bailey Gifford, I saw on your LinkedIn, you were actually a financial journalist as well, which is interesting. I did not know that. What was that journey like going from being a reporter to investment analyst, then tokenization lead, and now leading the digital assets unit at the firm?
Yeah, well, it's definitely not the most vocational journey into financial services. To make the full circle, I actually, I studied music and was a professional singer at one point as well. So it's been a whole journey. My career has been a lot of fun. But yeah, particularly from journalism to being an investor and then leading the digital assets piece at BG. The work has, I mean... being a financial journalist, you get to be in the market, you talk to everyone, you get to understand what makes things move and what are the signals to look for. And you get to then kind of refine that down and then make it bite size and allow people to understand what really what's going on. But when you're, and I'm sure you'll have this experience as well, like you then often start to come up with your own views.
You start to think about where you would be putting money to work or what you think should happen next and all those sort of things. And I got a little bit frustrated because I was like, I want to use these views. And I got to know lots of folks at Bailey Gifford and an opportunity arose to come across and be an investor. And that's kind of how that journey changed. And so I had this kind of background of living and breathing markets, but I wanted to go and put my ideas to use. And then I landed at Bailey Gifford, was on the investment floor where I grew up, learned how to look at businesses, mega trends, commodities, currencies, effects. how to think like a portfolio manager and very quickly decided that there was a lot of kind of greenfield space that we could improve in the financial system.
And one of my first one of my earlier investment recommendations at Beta Gifford was to was to buy Ethereum. And so I kind of started leading a lot of the crypto work and then tokenization. And we grew a team from there. And it's just been it's been kind of entwined in my career and relationships at Bailey Gifford from the very start. So it's kind of been a very organic and process of discovery, learning and a lot of fun along the way.
What would you say is the differences between thinking like maybe a financial journalist versus an investment manager or an analyst on that side? Because I'd imagine there's probably some similarities, but a ton of differences, given that, you know, as a journalist, you're kind of looking for a story or an angle or, you know, it's I mean, both sides are definitely fact driven and data driven.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How did Theo Golden’s career evolve from journalism to leading Baillie Gifford’s digital‑assets team?
0:00–8:20
2
Why does Theo describe tokenization as an operating‑system upgrade rather than a brand‑new financial system?
8:20–16:19
3
What lessons did Baillie Gifford learn from the post‑FTX era and how did they shape their token‑fund strategy?
16:19–24:04
4
How did the team convince traditional clients that a tokenized bond fund can be ‘same‑but‑better’?
24:04–33:03
5
What is the origin story of the BAGEY tokenized bond fund and why were short‑duration corporate bonds chosen?
33:03–43:04
6
Why did Baillie Gifford launch BAGEY on both Ethereum and Solana, and what criteria do they use to evaluate a blockchain?
43:04–51:46
7
How are institutional investors responding to tokenized assets and what level of trust do they have today?
51:46–52:14
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
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