Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features David Kunitsky, who’s a seasoned executive with over 15 years of experience in the financial and technology sectors, including 12-plus years in crypto. He’s currently the chief corporate development officer at Everstake after previously helping to launch a streak of industry innovations and business successes.

In this episode, we discussed what feels fundamentally different about enterprise crypto adoption this cycle compared to past ones, how staking matters beyond just earning the yield, and why institutions still hesitate before allocating serious capital to staking, what tokenization actually solves for users and institutions today beyond the hype.

And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

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Luke: David, welcome to The Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

David: I’m doing all right. How are you doing?

Luke: Doing well. Doing well. I mean, we’re here at Rare Evo. you’re speaking here about, enterprise adoption, and, you’ve had a front row seat to almost every major phase of institutional crypto, from Grayscale and Fidelity to Circle, Kraken, and now Everstake.

When you look at enterprise adoption [00:01:00] today, what feels fundamentally different from previous cycles?

David: Yeah, a lot has changed. I remember when I was first in industry, 2012, 2013, you go to talk to an established company about crypto or digital assets or blockchain, depending on what the term of art was during the cycle, and they’d look at you like you had three heads to start.

I mean, I remember very clearly being in a city wealth management office trying to explain why they should care about Bitcoin, and them just looking at me like I was an alien. Yeah. and then it’s kind of evolved. Then kind of the next, cycle or generation, everybody was interested. Yeah. But it was a kind of a novelty, and it was always placed in the kind of innovation arm of these bigger corporations.

They’d have a Bitcoin and blockchain center of excellence. Yeah. But it wasn’t a business proposition. This is the first cycle and first time where the people who are fundamentally responsible within these institutions are on the business side. Ah. They’re not R&D, they’re not innovation, they’re not kind of just tinkering around and exploring and doing research.

They’re actually looking at it seriously.

Luke: Awesome. So getting out of the [00:02:00] science experiment kind of stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s great. so for a Fortune 500 executive who’s crypto curious but skeptical, what’s the strongest business case you’d make today?

David: Yeah, so it’s interesting. My experience is most Fortune 500 executives, don’t have the longest time horizon.

They’re looking… They’re managing quarterly earnings, from a quarter to quarter and year to year basis. Yeah. and so ideally, you’d like to make a solid business proposition to them, either on the COG side or on the distribution and revenue side. And that’s true for some segments, like asset managers.

You see BlackRock, Fidelity, these folks come in who it’s like, “Hey, look, people want to deploy assets into this. You can put it into your AUM and make money off of it.” That’s the clearest revenue case when you can make that case. Or for enterprise adoption like stable coins, “Hey, you can save money.” It’s a COG story.

Or, “You can, get your reach beyond borders.” That’s like a distribution story. Those are the clearest cases. There is a little bit more of a bigger picture, fuzzier thing about, like, hey, look, do you want to innovate and do you want to be [00:03:00] the incumbent players of the future? Because people are always saying, “When are the institutions coming?

When are the institutions coming?” By some metrics, the institutions are here, they’re just new institutions. Right. The Coinbases, the Krakens of the world. These are the new institutions. You saw that with the internet and media companies. Like, who are the biggest media companies today? Facebook, X, or Twitter.

These are the players. And so the story is, look, if you want to be around in this legacy position or I guess incumbent position, entrenched position in the next five to 10 years, you’re gonna need to take action now. Furthermore, your customer base is changing, and as the demographics and age generation cohorts change, they have fundamentally different views about these technologies and these use cases.

And if you want to stay with that, you need to be, along for the ride. However… By far and away the easiest is saying, “Hey, look, you can make money or save money always.”

Luke: Nice. Nice. I, I think that’s great.you know, Everstake’s one of the largest staking providers in the world, like operating across dozens of networks.

for people who haven’t gone deep on staking, how would you explain why it matters [00:04:00] beyond just earning yield on your crypto?

David: Yeah, so on, on all these proof of stake networks, Ethereum, Solana, and the like, in order to function, run the networks, process transactions, you need what are called validators, like Everstake, that basically, look over the transactions, make sure they’re valid, and then confirm them within a block in a particular order.

And they are chosen, whoever is the leader of the block, by how much stake, or in proportion to how much stake you have. And so we have users who hold Ethereum, Solana, and these other proof of stake coins. They delegate it to us, and we validate on the, transaction on their behalf, and then distribute rewards, block rewards, and other rewards to them.

And that matters for the end users. They’re saying, “Hey, look, I can get a little bit of a yield or juice on the assets I hold.” But it’s a fundamentally important role for the networks themselves to secure the networks, the consensus mechanisms, and to ensure that the blocks and the transactions are running on time.

It also, furthermore, the, rate of inflation or the block rewards set kind of like an interest rate within the economy of each network as well.

Luke: [00:05:00] Yeah, yeah. That’s great, great explanation, I think. Do you think staking kind of becomes a standard feature of investment portfolios the same way dividend-bearing assets are today, or will it remain a crypto-native niche?

David: Definitely won’t be just crypto native. Now, the form and function that it plays within kind of, like, more enterprise or institutional adoption, I do believe will change. You’re already seeing today that some of these folks who offer proof of stake asset ETFs and other asset management products are starting to now say, “Well, hey, look, if you’re holding Ethereum or Solana or these other coins, you should be staking them so that you don’t get inflated out of your percentage, ownership of the market.”

Yeah. so that’s going to happen.

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David: [00:06:00] I also think that people are now building, on top of, like, a staking primitive, they’re building products on top of that, like looped or leveraged staking, or delta-neutral staking, on chain yield products. And I think that’s the form that you’re gonna see take hold within the institutional market.

Luke: Interesting. Interesting. what are institutions asking for before they are comfortable allocating significant capital to staking?

David: Yeah, look, it’s all about, risk, right? first, it’s like utility and, like, functionality and demand and revenue and COGS, but then risk. Yeah. Risk, risk, risk.

And that’s compliance risk, technical risk, operational risk, all these things. And so they’re looking at kind of what audits and certifications do you have. They’re doing institutional due diligence questionnaires. and then furthermore, liquidity is a massive one, in particular for staking, because hey, look, Ethereum, you stake Ethereum, but then you want to withdraw it, you go into a queue.

And they need to ensure, from a user functionality and duration match perspective, that you can ensure that the liquidity is there when users need their coins.

Luke: What do you think the biggest [00:07:00] risk is among those that you just listed?

David: So I think, like, The technical risk, if you’re a quality provider like Everstake, is by and large mitigated and managed.

Not that many are getting slashed or losing coins. There’s a couple of instances here and there where that happens, but that, if you’re with a quality provider, is by and large mitigated. The next level up is, like, institutional and compliance risks. So things like SOC audits and things like that, that’s where we’re just now getting to the, enterprise-ready stage.

So that’s, like, right now what we’re focused on.

Luke: Yeah. and how big of an impact… I’d imagine you’d say a big impact, but, just for the sake of, of asking, like, we’re seeing CLARITY Act kinda going through, uh, the GENIUS Act pass through. Like, how much of an impact has the legislation had on your business model?

and, uh, you know, whether… I know CLARITY hasn’t passed yet, but just the fact that it’s reached this level, a certain amount of legitimacy, et cetera. But, are, do you see these as big unlocks for the [00:08:00] business in getting more adoption?

David: So the biggest unlock was l- I believe it was, like, the beginning of last year where the SEC released guidance that staking itself is not a security.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s what, that’s what led to the ETFs being able to come out and the ETFs being able to offer staking. So that was a huge unlock for us. Yeah. But yeah, of course. Anything that you add regulatory, clarity to, and not just clarity but, like, I guess, uh, assuredness. Because at the end of the day, somebody within an organization is making a decision to do this.

Right. And it’s a kind of like a CYA or cover your own ass situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don’t wanna be on the hook for, “Hey, Gary, you told us we could do this,” and now you’ve got some compliance agency coming in, banging on your door, right? Yeah. And so for them, it provides a huge amount of air cover to make the business case internally.

Luke: How has it been for you, like, uh, going through Gensler era to the new era we’re in? and do you feel like we’re likely to ever go back to that enforcement, like, that colder kind of era? or [00:09:00] do you feel like we’re more here to stay?

David: Whew, so I had a number of direct experiences with the last, regime, and it was pretty unfortunate.

like, setting, like, politics or, like, whatever- Yeah, yeah … side of the aisle you’re on, like, just from, an agency and, like, a business innovation and, consumer safety stuff, it was bad. It was really bad. I mean, they were, you know, not giving us… We’d go to the SEC, we’d go to the CFTC. We’d say, “Hey, can we do X, Y, and Z?

We wanna work with you. We wanna do something that works for you, works for our consumers, and works for us.” And they would stonewall you, and then you’d get, like, an inquiry. Right. out of the blue. They would, uh, do regulation by enforcement. That was horrific. And then they’d, they’d do all sorts of stuff where it was like, “Hey, we wanna get…”

When I was at Kraken, we wanted to get a Fed master account. They shut the door on that. And then FBI was doing raids on crypto founders. We were getting de-banked. Wow. it was brutal. and so- Whichever way the pendulum swings politically from, like, a regime perspective, I’m very hopeful that nothing that draconian gets put back into place.

Luke: Yeah, yeah. I, I [00:10:00] agree. And there’s a certain resilience that I think that founders and, and executives that have gone through that and come out on the other end of it, intact or, or, you know, lessons learned, et cetera. But, it does seem that, like, you know, i- if we can get the regulation or the, the, legislation across the finish line,

And it seems pretty bipartisan for the most part, that that’s probably gonna have a, a pretty significant impact versus, like, who’s in the White House at the time.

David: Yeah. and it’s just, look, the crypto industry has evolved as well. I mean, one of the frustrating parts in that last era of an administration and, and agency enforcement was…

Look, one of my buddies said to me about crypto, he’s like, “Look, some of the smartest, best people I’ve ever met, I’ve met in crypto.” Yeah. “But all of the worst people I’ve ever met, I met in crypto.” And my, my point was, there’s no shortage of people to go after if you want,, to go after these. Don’t go after the good guys who are, like, trying to work with you, who are credible, seasoned executives and entrepreneurs who wanna build a better system.

and now I think that, crypto is, maturing. Sure, you still have both sides, but you [00:11:00] have this huge density of talent and entrepreneurship at the top. So I’m optimistic that, like, whoever’s in office sees that.

Luke: That makes sense.

everyone kind of talks about tokenization, but what real world problems does it solve for users and institutions today?

David: Yeah, so I think a lot of people have interesting views on tokenization.

they view it as like, “Oh, it’ll create more liquidity,” or, “Oh,” like, “it’ll, it’ll get, uh, it, it’ll unlock certain…” The financial industry, and in particular the capital markets and equity capital markets and the FX markets are actually pretty good. Yeah. Like they’ve taken us a long way, right? and I don’t think that it’s like liquidity is the unlock, and there’s some challenges to tokenization about, like, what is the canonical version of an asset, and are you gonna have fragmented liquidity and things like that.

Ultimately, I think it ends up being about programmability and composability. Once you get all these units onto, like, an interoperable layer, you can build things on top of them. Uh, and so I think that is going… That’s… It’s kind of like a Trojan horse. We think it might be liquidity, 24/7 [00:12:00] distribution across geographies, but ultimately, I think the big unlock happens where you can do composability across all these things.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Do you see, like, ways with, uh, stable coins to make, staking, like, i- into more of a productive, play for, everyday users? ‘Cause we’re starting to see things, experiments with this, where you can get a yield in, rewards in stables or in,the native assets.

But I’m just kind of curious your take on, on where that’s going.

David: Yeah, I mean, look, when you put things online or on chain, and we saw this with media and the other things, things move quicker. The velocity of, communication increases, and the velocity of money and assets and exchange increases. And so what I think you’re gonna end up seeing is like, yes, people can put their stable coins, but they don’t want it just sitting there.

Things are no longer sitting there. They’re always moving and always productive. And whether that is, stable coin lending or either staking and staked assets or vaults on chain, what you’re gonna see is a lot more, assets put to productive uses rather than just sitting, stagnant in an account.

Luke: Yeah, makes sense. I think, um, you know, Brave [00:13:00] has a really deep stake in privacy in the open web. One concern we often hear as crypto s- infrastructure gets more institutional are risks recreating the same kind of surveillance and gatekeeping, problems it’s supposed to solve. Do you share that concern?

Like, how do you think about it at Everstake?

David: Yeah, I mean, there’s like a, there’s like a black pill and a white pill on this. I mean, the black pill’s like meet the new boss, same as the old boss, right? Right. A- and like, you’re like, oh look, the internet companies disrupted legacy media, now you have Google, Facebook, who are just there again.

Yeah. Right. Kind of, right? So yeah, there is a concern that you have that would happen. I think where this is interesting and perhaps somewhat fundamentally different, although you could debate about the web, is you’re now moving on to, like, one open standard and open layer of protocols, so people have consumer choice, right?

and so people can say, “Well look, I actually, sometimes I want to, like, custody my assets with an intermediary. Sometimes I wanna self custody. Sometimes I wanna self - privacy. [00:14:00] Sometimes I don’t want privacy.” And I think it’s about that choice, and just being able to enable that choice. Now, that said, we have the possibility to make it, like, free and open and selective privacy, but we need to have consumers educated to make them make…

understand what they’re giving up or choosing. Because otherwise you could end up in the same situation where it’s like, sure, the open internet is a thing, but then the web got kinda locked down and consumers got lazy. Yeah,

Luke: yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. I think it makes a lot of sense. Like, we’re seeing this boom in AI and agentic AIand, you know, lots of promise around, like, X402 and MPP and these new ways that we can be doing payments.

Are there strategies around staking in AI that you guys are looking at, that you’re excited about? Like, where do you see AI fitting into the picture with your guys’ business?

David: A couple different areas. So I think not… I said, well, AI is changing, like, everything. I mean, my day-to-day workflow has fundamentally changed.

Yeah. And so just from an organizational and operational level, and in particular DevOps- yeah … is, like, [00:15:00] that’s an internal area, but, like, that is changing how we build, manage, QA, and do oversight over all of our staking operations. But then from, like, a user and customer perspective, sure, staking and yield is gonna be managed.

Like, there’s so many decisions to make and so much oversight that has to happen, that’s gonna be fundamentally done by AI to, like, hey, where should I deploy my assets? What are the best strategies? And they change- Yeah … every day. Like, where you get the best risk reward, uh, reward, uh, profiles changes every day.

And so users are gonna have to rely on AI to manage those decisions for them. Do

Luke: is there a hurry to, to implement these things on the AI side, or are you guys kinda taking your time? I mean, whenever we’re talking about money with these things, or value, there’s certain risks and there’s certain…

People are still kinda figuring out how these agents work, right? and a lot of, lot of concerns around that. Are you guys kind of taking a slower approach on that or, uh, when, with regards to, like, you know, your users interacting with these things?

David: So internally we are- Full bore. I mean, like internally, like our [00:16:00] company and individual operations have been totally overhauled over the last year You do need to be a little bit more thoughtful and, wait with the end user stuff.

I mean, look, to end users it still looks like a black box, right? And, and, like, how do you know? And I don’t think we have the answers for, like, how you get consumers, and whether the consumer’s retail or, institutional or enterprise, how do you get them comfortable that these things are doing what you want them to do, and then how can you ensure that they did what you wanted them to do?

And we’re not there yet. So I think we’re like, I don’t know, wait and see, ‘cause we don’t wanna be passive. Right. But we’re, like, don’t think it’s ready for primetime yet on that.

Luke: Yeah. That’s interesting. No, no, I think, I think that’s really reasonable. you’ve been a lawyer, kind of an operator, a founder, and an executive across some of the most pivotal companies in the crypto industry.

Um, what’s the lesson that took you the longest to learn?

David: Yeah, so, like, the best idea, or the best technology, or the be- doesn’t always win. and at the end of the day, everything is, like, a human decision and a human narrative. Yeah. [00:17:00] Right? and so many times I’ve bumped my head against the wall being like, “Don’t they see this?”

Yeah. I- if people would just… Yeah. No, people won’t just. Yeah. and at the end of the day, what you need to approach that, like, you’re trying to have, explain something from someone else’s perspective. Yeah. And if they’re at an institution, they’re wearing a hat where it’s like, hey, look, they are making a decision based on different things than you are.

Yeah. And so sure, it’s great that you… Can’t they see that, in a couple years, this is going to be the future? That’s not the, like, level that they’re determining things on. they have to go out and put their neck out on the line if they’re gonna say, “Do something in crypto.” And so how can you make the case from their seat, and how can you make sure that they are covered in order to do that?

And it took a lot of banging my head against the wall to real-

Luke: I can imagine, too. I mean, especially, too, as, like, some of these crypto companies, become public entities, right? Like, and you’re dealing with a different set of concerns there and a different set of responsibilities.

and kinda it’s been interesting to see that play out as well, where, you know, the crypto native segment is very, very opinionated and fickle and passionate, and [00:18:00] that’s one of the benefits, too, but there are just real world changes in how you operate, right? Like, when you become a public company.

and those conflicts and stuff. So I, yeah, it is a pretty interesting time around.

David: Governance and fiduciary and risk and compliance questions that these people face are just different. Yeah. and I think, like, now the crypto industry has, like, matured enough to, the top end of it at least, like, realizing it and, navigating it.

But yeah, up until just about now, it was always like, “Why can’t you just do this?” Yeah. “Can’t you just see that this is the future? Like, you should just do this.” But that’s not how…

Luke: Yeah.. I think, I, if you zoom out 10 years, , staking, on-chain yield, tokenization, AI agents, all this interacting with blockchain infrastructure, what does the financial system actually look like?

Where does crypto fit in, into how ordinary people are experiencing money?

David: Yeah. Look, I mean AI in particular, is going to be a big step change. Like, not just quantitatively, but like qualitatively. Now, it’s very blurry to like figure out, but I do think that you’re gonna see [00:19:00] the world in general is gonna accelerate in a lot of different directions over the next 10 to 20 years.

It’s gonna get very weird very quick, and hopefully that weirdness ends in something positive, right? But I think there’s like two elements that I’m looking at, and one is like, look, AI agents are going to be managing complex financial and other decisions for enterprises and consumers regularly. Yeah.

that’s going to become the default. And crypto and on-chain assets are naturally suited for these, agents to interoperate with and hold. and so that’s gonna be the default, whether it’s native crypto assets or tokenized or whatever else, they’re gonna be managing these things, and they’re gonna be managing them at, like, increasing velocity.

And so you ask questions like, what is the brokerage account or mutual fund look like in the future? It may not be a fund. It may not be an account. It may be an agent, and that agent may be, off the shelf, or it might be personalized within, like, a private instance. But the fundamental interface [00:20:00] is going to change, for how people manage money and make decisions and process information.

The other thing is, what is money gonna look like? I’ve long held a thesis that where this ends up is that, like- The concept of money changes. You’re not gonna have this like… I mean, you will always have it, but it’s not gonna be the default that like you have this dollar, that’s what money is. Everything else is like an asset that you hold your dollars in, and then you exchange it for goods, services, and assets, and then you go back to dollars.

Like, I believe that in the future, and could be a long dated future, everyone’s gonna hold their own, in effect, CPI basket as money. Everyone’s gonna basically like, what are the goods it’s… ‘Cause CPI is a generic consumer price index for like groceries and cars and education and all these things that is across the board in a country.

But within the country or nation or globally, everyone has a different basket that actually matters to their life depending on like, well, maybe housing’s more of mine, or education ‘cause my kids are this school age, or maybe like I have a big family so groceries matter more, or cars, whatever it is.

Everybody is going to be able to [00:21:00] model their own CPI and then have, uh, an asset mix that matches that CPI. And, and not just CPI, but also like investment goods. And so everyone’s gonna have a custom modeled portfolio that is on par with like what the top robo-wealth managers are giving the wealthy today.

‘Cause that’s kind of how technology works. It starts like, uh, as like either a toy or a product for the wealthy, and then it gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Yeah. It’s how cell phones, TVs, everything works, and I believe that like money management and transactional management will happen the same way with AI agents.

Luke: Do you think, uh… I mean, just, just thinking about it kind of, reactively, like it seems like there’s great potential for, you know, new levels of upward mobility if you’re going to be like putting strategies to that type of a model. are you optimistic about that? do you think there’s gonna be benefits like, uh, for, everyday folks to like move forward and do things they weren’t able to kind of consider or think about with these?

David: Of course. great degree of certainty there is going to be an increased amount of fluidity, both in like [00:22:00] people’s capabilities and people’s status and standing and, and station in life, right? Now, that could end a couple different ways, right? Sure. That could mean like great. It’s great.

It empowers people. People, like who didn’t have opportunities available to them now do. On the other hand, it’s gonna be able to have some people become like superhumans and some groups of people to potentially amass greater influence and greater power. And so there’s like an interesting balance there.

Yeah. But that’s true of like every change in the world is like this could end up good, this could end up bad, but like without a doubt, there’s gonna be a huge amount of greater mobility and fluidity in people’s abilities and people’s place and station in life.

Luke: Yeah. Awesome. Well, Can’t think of a more interesting way to end this one, but David, like, it’s been really great having this conversation with you.

is there anything we didn’t talk about that, regarding Everstake or anything else that you think our audience might wanna know about?

David: No, I mean, I think we’ve li- we’ve hit everything from, nuts and bolts- Yeah … to how industry works, to far-flung predictions about [00:23:00] what the world and global economy might look like.

So I think we’ve kind of traversed it all.

Luke: Awesome. Uh, and where can people follow you if they wanna, you know, find out what the latest is with Everstake, or just, like, see what you’re putting out in the world?

David: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m at usually @Kinitsky, K-I-N-I-T-S-K-Y, on Twitter and elsewhere. Everstake.one is our website, and yeah, feel free to check it out.

Luke: Awesome. Well, David, thank you again for making the time. Really appreciate it, and, uh, it- I’d love to have you back to check in, in on things later.

David: Yeah, thanks for having

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