Before a trading app reaches a user, there is an entire system underneath it doing the real heavy lifting.
In this episode of Couchonomics with Arjun, Arjun is joined by Yoshi Yokokawa, Co-Founder and CEO of Alpaca, for a sharp and wide-ranging conversation on brokerage infrastructure, on-chain finance, market access, and what it really takes to build financial products at global scale.
It is a grounded look at how trading has shifted from web to mobile to on-chain, why financial access still needs to be designed around culture and local behaviour, and what happens when traditional markets and digital assets begin moving closer together.
From tokenised stocks and stablecoins to prediction markets and infrastructure complexity, this conversation explores the less visible layer of finance, the one powering the apps, products, and experiences users see on the surface.
They also discuss why infrastructure should behave like a utility, what responsibilities licensed platforms carry around investor protection and market integrity, and why the long-term shift toward on-chain finance may be less about ideology and more about real product-market fit.
🎙️ In this episode:
• What Alpaca actually does and why brokerage infrastructure matters now
• How trading behaviour has evolved from desktop to mobile-first experiences
• Why financial products cannot be copied globally without cultural context
• The difference between building apps and building the infrastructure beneath them
• Why Yoshi believes everything will eventually move on-chain
• Stablecoins, tokenised stocks, and where real adoption is already happening
• Why bridging fiat and on-chain systems is harder than it looks
• The role of infrastructure in investor protection, compliance, and market safety
• Whether finance is heading toward super apps or continued specialisation
• Why Yoshi thinks access matters more than the language of “democratisation”
• Building globally across 45 countries and operating financial infrastructure at scale
• Yoshi’s view on Japanese founders, risk-taking, and what may change next
If you are trying to understand where financial infrastructure is heading, and how brokerage, stablecoins, tokenisation, and digital assets are starting to connect, this episode gives you a practical lens into the layer most people never see.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 Why infrastructure matters more than people think
01:00 Meet Yoshi Yokokawa and what Alpaca does
02:14 Why this is a big moment for brokerage infrastructure
04:54 How trading behaviour has changed over time
07:28 Why financial products need cultural context
09:30 Trading, gambling, and the role of infrastructure
12:19 Why Yoshi believes everything will move on-chain
15:14 Investor protection, fraud, and market integrity
18:05 Tokenised stocks and infrastructure complexity
20:51 Bridging fiat and on-chain finance
23:46 Bundling, unbundling, and where finance is going
27:04 Access vs democratisation in financial services
29:02 Building globally across 45 countries
33:40 Stablecoins, tokenisation, and real product-market fit
36:36 Why Alpaca stays focused on infrastructure
39:37 Yoshi on Japanese founders and startup culture
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