The Translation Layer - How the Institutional Core moves onchain | Renée Berman, Motive Partners

The Translation Layer - Renée Berman, Industry Partner, Motive Partners Renée Berman has spent her career inside the machinery of US capital markets and now works on moving it on-chain. She was COO for equity derivatives at Credit Suisse, ran Capital Market Strategy at Broadridge, and was a Managing Director in digital asset strategy at DTCC, which clears and settles almost every trade in America. She is now an Industry Partner at Motive Partners, working with the portfolio on digital asset strategy and with the VC arm on where to deploy. Renée sets out the three routes the SEC has approved for tokenising an equity and why she thinks all three survive: the derivative model built by Robinhood, Kraken and Ondo for investors overseas who cannot easily get exposure to US stocks; native issuance through a digital transfer agent, advocated by Superstate and Securitize with Computershare now entering; and the entitlement model DTC is building, where the security moves into a control account and a token is minted into the participant's wallet. On digital money, her read is that stablecoins have found genuine product-market fit in remittances and cross-border payments, and that the GENIUS Act rules being written now open the door to issuer-led stablecoins from large corporates paying suppliers overseas. We also cover why collateral mobility is the use case institutions actually care about, where a firm starts when it cannot rip out fifty years of technology, and the risk frameworks that have to exist before a regulator or a risk committee signs anything off. Renée is writing Motive Partners' white paper on blockchain and agentic AI. She sets out what that looks like applied to collateral: an optimisation tool instructing an agent, securities moving instantly by smart contract because the underlying assets are already tokenised, no human in the loop. The second half covers her career from Bain and Bridgespan through Credit Suisse, Broadridge and DTCC, what each side of the TradFi and Web3 divide gets wrong about the other, what earns a yes from Motive, and a quickfire round that includes the best hire she ever made, who was not on the shortlist she was handed. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 00:38 Tokenisation as rails. Crypto, stablecoins and tokenised RWAs, and where each stands 04:22 The three routes the SEC has approved for tokenising an equity 08:17 DTC's tokenisation service, the chains, and collateral mobility 10:35 Where an institution starts, and the risk frameworks behind it 13:42 Blockchain and agentic AI: the Motive Partners white paper 16:07 Career: Bain, Bridgespan, the foundations, Credit Suisse, Broadridge, DTCC 18:40 The seat between TradFi and Web3 20:14 What Motive looks for before backing a founder 21:02 Quickfire round 24:00 Where to find Renée RESOURCES Building the Digital Asset Securities Ecosystem - DTCC, Clearstream and Euroclear with BCG, introducing the Digital Asset Securities Control Principles: https://www.dtcc.com/-/media/DASCPWhitePaper.pdf Risk Mitigation Framework - GBBC and Oliver Wyman: https://www.gbbc.io/news/risk-mitigation-framework Renée Berman on LinkedIn ABOUT THE GUEST Renée Berman is an Industry Partner at Motive Partners. Previously Managing Director in digital asset strategy at DTCC, Capital Market Strategy at Broadridge, and COO for equity derivatives at Credit Suisse. Earlier at Bain, Goldman Sachs Foundation and JP Morgan.