Why DeFi Works Best When it Does the Least
episodePreviously titled “Why He Left Goldman Sachs to Build an Onchain Bank | Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 13, 2026
Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
43 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why are stablecoins considered a threat to traditional banking credit creation?
This is w like one of the big anxieties of, you know, banking regulators and central banks. They view stable coins as a threat to credit creation.
I know you've argued that it's systematically underpriced in DeFi. Why do you think the market still kinda misunderstands risk after all of these cycles?
DeFi works best when it does the least. All of the hacks tended to happen with systems that were very complicated.
Do you ultimately see stable coins being used as the de facto payment then long term? Even outside of crypto?
Credit cards are okay, but stable coins are just better. They're quicker, they're cheaper, and they're more transparent. I look back to this analogy of the Pompidou Center in Paris. You put everything on the outside, you make everything transparent. You show how the plumbing works to the users that come to it.
Today's guest is Adrian Casanero of Asila Reach, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial. Steakhouse is one of the biggest companies in DeFi asset management and vaults, managing more than $4.5 billion in on-chain assets. It powers earned products for companies like Coinbase, MetaMask, and Robinhood. And through its spin-off business growth, it's bringing RWAs on-chain at a big scale. There's a lot to discuss today. So Adrian, welcome on.
Hey.
How did Adrian transition from Goldman Sachs to co‑founding Steakhouse Financial?
Thanks for having me. Yeah. Happy to chat.
Thanks for yeah, thanks for being here. Before Steakhouse, I know you spent time at Goldman Sachs in Bain. What was that experience kind of like that made you one maybe want to leave and co found this business alongside your other founders?
I did MA at Goldman. This was it was a very short period. I enjoyed it a lot. It was definitely one of the the highlights of my corporate career. The people there are super driven, super helpful, super interesting. The work is amazing. I found myself actually admiring more often the clients than bank, really. So, you know, the bank was in the business of advising these incredible businesses and it just left me feeling like, okay. Okay, maybe that's more like something I should be doing rather than actually just being on the advisory side. And that that kind of led me to entrepreneurship through a longer route. Like we don't we don't have to go into it if you don't want to. I ran a small business in in Switzerland and eventually started sort of contributing, you know, part-time moonlighting in the evenings to the to the maker forums, which is where I met my co-founders.
Mm-hmm. You're right.
What lessons did Steakhouse learn from MakerDAO about transparent on‑chain accounting?
They're from like makerslash sky, right?
Yes, exactly. Yes, yes. I mean that that's where we started. We were one of the core units of Maker, the strategic finance core unit, and later well, first the real world finance core unit, then the strategic finance core unit, then the real world asset core unit. Now we're a star. Like this is this to give you a sense of the chaos of DAO as of DAOs as an organization.
Mm-hmm.
But the three of us are very different. We're very distinct. But what brought us together was that we view we saw Maker as a a better type of bank, really. Uh, you know, one with a transparent balance sheet that could be reviewed in real time. We developed the financial statements for Maker on based on like the double entry accounting ledger, which was a really cool exercise. It was the first instance I could think of where you could look at a bank And track and audit every single transaction all the way down to, you know, the individual smart contract movement. For for us, this was like a revelation and this is how you can actually make a better form of finance, you know, with all of the risks on the outside.
Because the three of us, we're from a generation of people that sort of came of age in 2008. So we really got like the brunt of, you know, the global financial crisis. And yeah, so kind of growing up in the debris of that. that you came away with, you know, the chaos, the credit contraction, the financial instability, all of these things. I think coloured our perception of how you could do finance better.
Do you feel like what you're creating is maybe an improvement or a solution to
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why are stablecoins considered a threat to traditional banking credit creation?
0:00–1:12
2
How did Adrian transition from Goldman Sachs to co‑founding Steakhouse Financial?
1:12–2:15
3
What lessons did Steakhouse learn from MakerDAO about transparent on‑chain accounting?
2:15–5:03
4
How mature is DeFi today and what risks still go misunderstood?
5:03–7:30
5
When will institutional finance fully move on‑chain and what are the biggest hurdles?
7:30–11:48
6
How does the Grove protocol bring real‑world assets onto the blockchain?
11:48–16:31
7
Why are simpler, “dumb” DeFi contracts considered safer than complex ones?
16:31–21:16
8
What is the roadmap for building an on‑chain risk‑free rate and its impact on credit?
21:16–43:39
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
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