Vince Kadar / Polymath
Polymath is going public to unlock tokenized real-world assets
In this episode
In this episode of Blockchain Interviews, Ashton Addison speaks with Vince Kadar, CEO of Polymath, about how Polymath’s purpose-built blockchain Polymesh is unlocking institutional adoption of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). Vince breaks down how Polymath evolved into a layer-1 protocol, the challenges of going public, and how their capital platform enables businesses to tokenize any asset — from equity to supply chain use cases like coffee plantations. We also dive into liquidity, compliance, and the platform’s upcoming roadmap and capital raise.
polymath.network · @PolymathNetwork on X
- Polymath is acquiring its Layer 1 blockchain Polymesh back as a subsidiary to align tokenization efforts and increase deal flow between the two entities.
- Tokenizing assets like equity or real estate still requires full legal compliance and securities licensing; blockchain does not circumvent regulatory requirements.
- Polymath's platform enables companies to tokenize illiquid assets by programming rights, yield, jurisdiction rules, and trading restrictions directly into security tokens.
- The company is pursuing a public listing via reverse takeover but paused the process to complete the Polymesh acquisition, expected to close within days.
- Polymath focuses on creative tokenization use cases like revenue streams and barrel investments rather than digitizing already-liquid products like money market funds.
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Transcript
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I'm Ashton Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on Blockchain Interviews, we have Vince Kadar, CEO of Polymath, here to talk about institutional adoption of blockchain, tokenization, real-world assets, the Polymesh Layer 1, and so much more. Vince, welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time. Thank you very much, Ashton. Yeah, you know, real-world assets and tokenization have taken off,
especially since so many corporations are getting involved with Bitcoin and realizing the potential that blockchain has brought over the last year and a half, with ETFs and more companies recognizing that this is the future. I know Polymath has been around since long before all of this and has been innovating and growing with the industry. I'd love to hear the latest. To start off,
what is Polymath currently working on? Then we can dive into all those topics. Wow, well that may take longer than this recording to go through everything, but we're definitely very busy, working on many parallel tracks. In February, we announced our intent to go public via a reverse takeover of a publicly traded operating business called Analytics Insight. The goal was to
be listed by this point in time, but we stopped the process to acquire another asset. That asset is our Layer 1 chain, Polymesh. so if anybody remembers the story about Polymath we are a layer 1 chain we are or we created a layer 1 chain poly mesh we separated it out of Polymath it was a separate organization it operated independently or has operated independently since October of 2021
and a few weeks ago we announced our intent to acquire Polymesh back into Polymath as a subsidiary that's located in Cayman Islands and that transaction will close in sometime next week probably at Friday of next week but really what that means is greater alignment between Polymath and Poly Mesh now and a real focus on delivering on the RWA
thesis and the I guess the intent of why you know we create like why Polymath is even around back in 2018 it was the focus was all about the tokenization of real world assets we brought together the working group of 25 experts and companies to define ERC400 we then created that layer 1 chain because we realized that the market needed a fitfor-purpose chain specifically for
the tokenization of real world assets that smart contracts were you know again a not a not an overkill but it was just a band-aid on a solution and that's why we built Poly Mesh we then then later carved it out because well that's what that's what blockchain companies do they create their not for-p profofit we stay at the for-profit they build the ecosystem we build actually the you
know the business and commercial model actually for you know the for the marketplace now that we're coming together as I said we're still we're still operating independently but with an aligned objective right and so Poly Mesh Labs will continue on its role as being an ecosystem play but like I said there's just greater alignment with us that we can create
deal flow with each other we still like Polymath will specialize in its field but it will work with its ecosystem partners to make sure that we're just delivering actually on the overall objective which is to get total value locked of assets on our chain mhm yeah i'd love to dive into the chain part a little bit more but first I want to hone in more on the tokenization and the interest from
all these different companies that you know they hear other companies are tokenizing they want to do it too they don't really know where to start could you walk me through you know if a company came to you and said I want to tokenize our stock or something in our company how does that work yeah that's and again we have a lot of calls every day as far as people that want to tokenize
something because they hear the buzz they see the excitement and now it's like okay let's call Polymath because they're going to help us so we can help them from a technology point of view right we're not a fullervice company where we have a broker dealer but we've got a network of broker dealers that we can put them on to we've got a network of legal companies actually
that we can refer them to as well so you're not circumventing anything from a legal point of view that's the most point you still got to actually have your offering underwritten by a securities lawyer because what ultimately you're doing is you're creating a security or you're issuing a security and it's even it even gets to the point where when people see the use case of real
estate and tokenizing real estate A lot of real estate developers real estate owners they want to do that okay so but they what they don't realize is that you're converting if you're a broker of record for selling real estate you're not that same broker that's selling a security now they have a different license different jurisdiction and that confusion exists and you know we've
dealt with that time and time again that you are you are transferring something from this type of asset to that type of asset so how does it work while there's engagement with us we can set up a platform for them like if you're a let's say Ashton you wanted to tokenize your cap table for Block West Capital right you could do that right you're the owner you could totally tokenize your
cap table you can license the technology from us you can operate it yourself because you are the owner you can even issue the security token itself because you're also the owner you don't need a broker dealer actually to raise your seed round your series A you know maybe actually after you do it a couple of times then maybe you know again get a lawyer engaged or maybe get a broker
dealer engaged but typically again like startups they do this themselves they do it through venture funding and you could and you can model your cap table on a Polymath platform even you know through your venture funding round and open it up mhm so you again you would where would where would you start and where would you end at some point in time you got to get to a lawyer they got
to put together your offering you've got to price out the offering you got to describe actually you know myself as an investor if I'm going to invest in your particular offering well why do I want to invest right is there yield do I have do I have rights right all these things that I'm saying also have are programmable into the security token right the yield the rights the jurisdiction
the trading the lockup value like there's other aspects that can be incorporated into that security token as well but and where they end ultimately is hopefully actually on our chain and hopefully in a trade venue either a DEX or a centralized exchange that allows it to be tradable mhm no there's some great insights Vince and that fact that you laid out in the beginning about you
know this is not like a shortcut to you know just doing it the easy way you still have to do it's a security is a security whether it's on the chain or off the chain you still have to do everything the same and you mentioned there at the end one of the advantages is you can bake that stuff into the smart contract to make it more efficient is can you talk about other advantages for
these companies that you know they've heard about it they realize okay we're not taking shortcuts we still have to do everything on the right side of the law but we're including the tokenization okay programmability are there other major advantages to tokenizing versus just traditional security offering definitely is it's a transparency well it's making liquid what's
illi liquid today because a lot of a lot of products that are now being tokenized and what we see it's not like we've seen actually the other players that they're tokenizing a money market fund well a money market fund is already liquid they're just taking a product that we all understand and you know representing it actually in a digital format what we're
our engagement is with organizations that want to do things differently tokenizing a revenue stream as an example right and providing because again like they you could tokenize a future revenue stream on something that you're delivering you could tokenize a let's say a distillery that's producing gin and vodka today but they want to start aging whiskey
right so tokenize the barrels offer that up as an investment product it's that creativity that we see as our level of engagement and that's the it's the interesting use cases that we'd like to work with i think where where it comes down I think where this the start and the stop is that there's the hey I'd like to do this what can I do and you know the answer that we tell most
people you could do virtually anything you could tokenize anything right it's just a matter of what is a lawyer willing to underwrite actually as part of your particular offering and does it make sense and then can you deliver on that because the last thing anybody wants to see in this new space of tokenization is that you know pe people are actually just creating you know false products
and they're issuing security tokens that is tied to you know like melting icebergs definitely no that's a good example with the whiskey there's probably tons and tons of companies that have products or inventory of some kind where the process could be so much more efficient if it was tokenized you know the inventory sitting on the shelf for years whether it's aging or
you know minerals in the mine that you know had to go through the process if you could tokenize that at an earlier state than the final product I feel like that would make more companies efficient through this kind of tokenization right and when you when we like the whole reason for doing this is that the goal is that we collect the collective we as far as far as
all the actors that are building this new digital u footprint we create an environment where the markets are you know running more efficiently more transparently optimized as well we're we're basically I'd say rebuilding or reimagining the capital operating capital markets operating system right and when you think about that well you know we're a disruptor right
And other companies like us are disruptors like Napster was a disruptor for the music industry and Uber was a disruptor for you know the taxi industry and Airbnb the same thing right so disruptors are usually you know met with a lot of resistance a lot of push back actually and you know that's I think that's what we saw in the early days when we were starting to
create this narrative of that you know capital markets need to be running with security tokens and smart contracts and you know transparency and programmability it was like whoa whoa you know like what are you doing it's not broken you know what do you need to fix here well the taxi industry wasn't broken either the hotel industry wasn't broken either we just wanted to actually
make it run you know more efficiently we wanted to reimagine actually an industry like if we were to create it today and that's very much what we're doing here now now what we've seen since November 4th is the you know the winds have changed right so instead of the resistance we're seeing and now we're now we're getting the right pull right so there's wins in our sales and it's
pulling us in the right direction there's clarity on what a what tokens are right there's the collectibles there's the utility and then there's the security right these are all like what's been defined by the crypto council on the hill and that's really actually helping to you know drive some clarity around what we do how we operate and you know for the industry as a whole
So the regulators are you know warm to it I know the regulators in Canada like two have already approved the issuance of security tokens on a DLT broker dealers are already starting to act in that way I do know there's more than a dozen broker dealers in the US that have in their filing that they are permissioned to issue security tokens on a distributed ledger technology
platform so you know we're starting to see you know again the narrative is pushing now it's just going to take it'll take time just much like Uber you know it took time actually in order to you know develop the drivers and you know the workforce and everything else but you know at some point in time then there's a you go from minimal growth to explosive growth so at what point in
time do we get to explosive growth well that still could be you know a couple of years or it could be actually as quick as 18 months yeah yeah yeah no it seems like there's been some great progress at least in some parts of digital assets since the new administration has taken hold and you know stable coins bitcoin institutional interest in tokenization so
But of course you need to have a huge framework to be able to trade securities on a new style of you know more efficient hopefully t0 24/7 using blockchain technology i feel like that's not something that they can just do overnight especially since you know the way that the stock market is right now the people that have a hold of that they like the way that it
is although it is pretty inefficient yeah well I think the inefficiency means there's more cost the costs actually go to the actors that are you know again this is a job right like transfer agents are needed in the current framework they're not needed in the future framework right and so we that's what I mean by reimagining you know what this capital stack formation looks like and
how it operates today and who needs to be where you know as as part of you know having their fingers on something on a keyboard or in a filing cabinet right the filing cabinets are gone you know maybe the fingers on the keyboard aren't even required anymore because you know and I've used this reference before we and you know we've seen actually that movie where the machinery takes
over you know we're building Skynet here for capital markets right the machinery takes over the tokens are actually a program why do we need humans actually like you know like in between in order to like settle a transaction it's the actors like you and I that are wanting to either from an issuance point of view or from an investor point of view that are acting you know acting in good
faith with each other and issuing these security tokens and you're making the investment but you know once the machinery is set up and it's processing what more do you need definitely i'd love to know a little bit more about poly mesh in the layer 1 and I know you mentioned at the beginning about the ERC1400 standard which was on Ethereum you
know I'm sure there's probably other advantages besides the fact that you know Ethereum it can be slow or it can have higher transaction costs what are the main advantages of having a dedicated layer 1 blockchain like polymesh to run all the tokenization through the major advantages of having our own layer one well and that is a key differentiator of poly math through
of from anyone else is that we do have our own layer one it was created by us if we need to make changes to let's say the functionality from a regulatory point of view we can do that we can push that change out operationally I'd say we've always operated the chain and built the chain for regulatory compliance and institutional grade and all of our you know not operators are
financial services companies or they report to are up to a regulator they need to be licensed as a broker dealer as a bank as an exchange in order to operate the interesting well and like I said actually it is our competitive advantage and our I'd say our moat now our competitors in this space I'd say you know again if you're issuing on Ethereum or if you're issuing
on another general purpose chain well the I'm not saying actually that's a disadvantage but it's definitely you know I would say not going to be the chain of choice in the future right public permission actually is you know at least in this environment I'd say is a is a requirement taking the chain public actually as I said I think what we've done is now raise the stakes for all layer
ones and anybody that's operating in this space of security tokens unless you know unless your layer one chain is public right and it's got greater governance now because we get out and we now have to report to you know our financial regulator and actually it's transparent by the way of financials as well right now we've got that transparency that I'd say no other chain and no
other organization has that is operating in this space but yeah the compliance aspect is key and really just being able to move fast with the market so we've got our ear to the market we're really listening as far as what's required you know from a customer point of view from a regulatory point of view and you know we've got the ability to move the needle because of that
mhm yeah know it's it's good to point out that sometimes you know permissionless fully decentralized blockchain where nothing can ever be changed without 99% of people agreeing to something it can be unfeasible if you have to fit it into the current regulatory framework and make that more efficient of the stock market you know it's how can you get everyone to agree
sometimes if having permission is good but having the accountability of being a public company I think sort of balances that out that it's like hey we're able to adapt with the regulators and we're accountable to the regulators and the investors and the and the people that are doing the tokenization because everything's on the books that's right and at the end of
the day like it's it's a system of trust that you build here so you know again like it takes years to build a trusted network that people can embrace and say "Okay I'm going to use this chain i'm going to use this ecosystem i'm going to use this company actually or partner with this company in order to operate my business and to issue a security token it takes all
of 5 seconds actually to just ruin that trust right right it's either via security breach or you know like we saw with another chain out in the UAE as well where you know the value of the utility token that powers that chain completely I think it dropped by 90% so you know again like we know I'd say majority of our token holders polymath holds on a large reserve itself you
know as part of a public company as well just to provide that level of security we're working to make sure that there are other publicly traded companies that are also holding our utility token on book just to show that again it's a this is not a this is not a game here right like we need to increase the level of I guess trust in the network with public and private companies
actually holding you know our token that powers our chain you know on the on their books and balance sheets yeah no that's that's really nice to know if other public companies are getting involved you know that's that's much more than other tokens in the space I can say and you know I saw that Polymath is also going through another raise right now and that makes sense if
there's you know going public acquisitions all this stuff can you talk about the raise you know potential partners what's that going to be allocated towards yeah yep so for sure so we're raising 18.75 million that represents 20% of a public float that's required in order to go public and you know the reason for going public it's not that we need the funding or
the money you know we're well capitalized we you know we've got a long runway the reason for going public is you know to raise awareness of what we're doing but then also to have another form of currency in order to acquire companies to be part of our story going forward right so we have a we have not just a growth story of bringing customers on you know our capital platform
our issuance platform and then on chain but we've got another story that's forming as far as our an M&A an M&A actually activity right and so and that's just to be able to say we're going to compound you know our revenue and our you know basically the market cap of the company by acquiring select assets that we feel that can add value not just to the overall organization but to
the chain itself so how do we get increased TVL on that chain if there's a trady software business that's operating in the capital market stack that's you know provides a key service I'd say to this industry how can we actually how can we reposition that so it needs the chain in order to you know to power its you know its growth story right how does it incorporate actually
directly into the chain it could be fund man fund management software it could be an AI platform that's that's producing you know peer analysis reports it could be an exchange traditional exchange that's out there and it could be even a cryptocurrency exchange platform as well that's of interest to us so you know the I think the market is open you know what's of
interest is basically anything that fits into that you know delivers into the capital markets stack from crypto to traditional finance platforms that's really exciting i'm looking forward to seeing the raise and going public and you talked about you know exchanges i'm curious on what are you know what are the security token exchanges where these companies
can get liquidity or people can go to a secondary market once it's tokenized i feel like that's a small sector that needs to grow a lot as well yeah there really aren't any right now and I think that's the that's the that's the issue right everybody's in this there's in a primary issuance stage but you know if I think there is Okay so there is INX inx is now being acquired by Republic
So that was that is a security token exchange there were several that were operational but none of them actually with all that much activity i know a few that have already actually folded and gone bankrupt a few that are up for sale right now running an ATS actually for security tokens like I think the you had to build momentum on the primary issuance side and then you need the ATS right
And I think there was a lot that went out with a you know all the components and parts at the very beginning it's and it is an expensive value proposition like you know what we're building here actually requires you know compliance officers regulatory licenses like you know and con and consistent reporting actually to your regulator on what you're doing
Which then what all that requires capital in order to you know to operate the business and so you know you needed actually a large bank account in order to be able to fund that runway and unfortunately there's been some carnage you know since 2017 I think now is the right time to be formulating you know the right approach and maybe like again
acquiring actually a traditional exchange you know and transforming that into you know you know your own exchange your security token exchange venue so at least you've got you've already got a source of revenue already that you can build upon as you transform yeah know that's a great suggestion at the end there of transforming a traditional exchange because one of the reasons
that you know these major companies getting on a major public trading stock trading exchange is you know the access to so many investors but if you get on a smaller exchange where there's not as many people know about it you know you don't have that network effect and then take security token exchanges they're they're very small and it's like you know you don't get that same effect as
obviously listing as a traditional public company on a big exchange how can security token exchanges get over that hump to start building a network effect where more companies can tokenize and get onto exchange and more people actually know about it I think it's going to actually happen like it's going to be like I think there's going to be a transition that's going to come from two two
parts of the market the traditional exchanges that are going to mo morph into being a security token exchange the reverse cryptocurrency exchanges that are going to morph into providing security tokens actually as a product i think Kraken's already announced actually plans you know to operate that i think Coinbase is working on something as well like it is happening right the
press releases the investments actually are are are underfoot it's a matter of like who's going to provide it but it's then really what it comes down to is well what's the product that's trading on there because there is early evidence i think you mentioned T0 actually as TZ as a company had issued a security token and was trading on there and I believe it was a Ritz Carlton actually out
out in Aspen that was highly traded they had more volume traded than you know the value of the of what was tokenized actually in a day and those are all just market makers just just moving the token around but you know again like what's the product that's going to be traded right is it is it going to be you know a security token tied to a whiskey barrel is it going to be
commercial real estate what's it going to be so it's anybody's best guess right mhm i think it's going to be probably somebody's collectible that you know that's going to be like some prized possession that everybody wants a piece of mhm yeah no I'm excited to see how it plays out and that's some good you know prospecting forward i think a combination of maybe an innovation zone in
traditional markets where we start testing out tokenized stocks and then of course the major crypto exchanges i saw Kraken made a you know some kind of announcement where pe people that are you know there's there's getting to be more of an overlap of stock traders and crypto traders it's starting to merge more and they want it in one place and Robin Hood I wouldn't doubt them
either to start doing something with tokenization if their recent talk at the Bitcoin conference you know they were hinting at that so I'm excited to see how it plays out and but you know you mentioned a few times it really starts with the primary issuance with polymath right now is actually doing the primary issuance before you get to the market what do you see as like the
interest in the since the new administration and even before that since the Bitcoin ETF launch you know we've heard Black Rockck talking about RWA and tokenization other major institutions how much of an a growth in interest over the last year and a half have you seen from companies now opening their eyes and becoming interested in tokenizing with Polymath we've we've seen
a lot and this is like information that we're pushing around actually in our investor deck as well we've got a very strong pipeline that's that we're working with organizations that want to tokenize over $4 billion worth of assets actually with Polymath and onto the Polyst chain 60% of that is coming out of the real estate sector so a lot of actually that activity
is coming out of real estate which is again it's the illquid market it's what everybody understands however but you know it's the one that's really going to move the needle when it comes to like you know TVL on a on a chain so you know like I'm excited for the future I joined this organization like almost four years ago and it's been a I'd say an interesting cycle
Because I've never seen an industry that there was where there was so much friction and push back actually from regulators and other actors in this space and even confusion as well like you know I've I've seen other people on podcasts where they say you know tokenization of real estate it's just a REIT just call it a REIT i'm like well that just tells me you don't understand actually what we're
doing here right and I think it's that greater clarity of what it is that we're doing here and it's you know when you're tokenizing real estate you're not token you're not creating REIT right but what has to change to make things easier i would say other things also need to be upgraded in other markets and like the land registry right dubai's land department is now running on
blockchain what does that signal that allows the tokenization of real estate to happen directly without having to create a special purpose vehicle but now like the hoop that everybody else has to jump over in other markets in order to tokenize an asset has been removed right and so that aspect needs to happen in other markets where there's friction from a legal point of view so basically
really what it means is that really everything should be running on blockchain definitely definitely and we'll see how quickly that transition can happen in North America I'd love to know you know the road map sort of for the next 12 months into maybe around this time 2026 you know what is obviously you mentioned going public and that's huge but like after
that how do you keep the momentum going and keep the traction growing that's that's interesting actually i think we're well I think it's going to be actually through a land and expand strategy and we have a land and expand strategy right now where we have launched a start me up program so if you are a startup if you're you know if you want to dip your toe into tokenization we've got
a premium product you can sign up for it online simply clicking you know the acceptance to the terms and conditions create your own tokenization portal you can issue your security token you could create your own investor portal you're done right so and we did this specifically and it truly is free we want people to use it we want people to dip the tone it we want people to
understand it actually and I think this is going to help to build the momentum as far as okay what do what does this industry have to have have to offer we want to hear about the creativity we want to hear about people's frustrations actually as well and you know as far as using our products but we also want to hear and publish the success stories it's not going to be
easy actually in order to get there we understand that because like this we're not selling socks on the internet right which you know you could spin up a marketplace and just start doing that all you need is a very simple license because it's a security it has to go through an extra speed bump in order to get over you know that hurdle in order to utilize and issue a security token
so you know what we really want to do is grab as much market share as we can in order to build that out actually into 2026 so we're going to do that organically but we're also going to do that inorganically so you know our idea is you know look we'd like to get to you know a billion dollar company actually as soon as we can we're coming out actually on the public markets
you know and I'd say actually we priced actually our offering attractively for investors to get into right and you know what we priced ourselves out as a hundred million dollar enterprise why because we actually see upside and we want to make sure actually our own equity and our own stock actually tracks to where we think it should go we have received commentary as far as
well why aren't you doing it actually on your own chain well we could we could have actually but you know we would be tripping you know over some compliance issues ourselves if we did so that doesn't mean to say that you know and our plans are we will list on the Toronto Stock Exchange first we will crosslist on the NASDAQ actually as fast as we can and that's about 12 months
afterwards we're going to do something creative actually at that point you know as far as a token issuance because we know the path that we need to take now yeah it's very exciting i'm looking forward to seeing that listing what's the best way to follow along with the M&As that you mentioned and the raise in the listing I guess follow us actually on our you know on
our primary website you know Poly we'll publish all the information there follow us on LinkedIn U Polymath follow us on Twitter Polymath you could follow me on Twitter as well i'm tooken Vince our marketing team actually has created an Instagram channel where we're trying to document our go public so we've got an Instagram channel Polymath there's also a
tokenized Vince Poly Instagram channel as well so multiple ways to follow us multiple ways to get information actually from us the tokenized Vince is actually is just a narrative we are we've created a I'd say a viral our marketing team's created a viral offering with stickers that we're sending out to people actually just you know put a sticker on something that and says tokenize
this with our logo so if you want to tokenize a Porsche if you want to tokenize something actually record that send that to us we'll put that up on our all of our media channels as well you know we're we're really excited about this offering and really what this you know what this public offering has to do and really excited about the future because like I said you know I'd
say six six months ago it was a very different story and it was a very different different story for a lot of companies actually that was just in the digital asset space and even the Bitcoin space and it's and it's changed actually since then and like you said you know you and I were both in Vegas there's a lot of excitement around the this space in general definitely and thank you
so much Vince for the insights into tokenization where it's at with companies and the security tokens how can we actually transition the stock market into being on the blockchain which I'm excited for one day i'm sure it will all happen and I'm excited to see the going public process i'm going to leave the links to those socials and other platform that you
mentioned in the show notes and wishing you and the team all the best moving forward on going public and just tokenizing the world so thank you so much for the time Vince great thank you
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