Unchained
Unchained
Laura Shin
Bits + Bips: The Interview — The $16 Trillion Repo Market Is TradFi’s Central Nervous System. Its Finally Coming Onchain
45 minutes Posted May 14, 2026 at 6:37 pm.
Repo, explained: what repurchase agreements actually are and why they matter
The 2019 repo crisis: rates spiked from 2% to 20% in a single day
The real lesson of 2019: cash was there, the plumbing couldn't move it
Why repo breaks smart contracts: bankruptcy remoteness and the legal problem nobody solved
The hard question: does on-chain finance need a lender of last resort?
The Aave crisis reframed: how a mature repo market would have changed everything
The call: on-chain repo hits $1 trillion within five years
The bear case: standardization is the gargantuan challenge in the way
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45:25
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Show notes
The repo market is $16 trillion globally and most people have never heard of it — until the plumbing breaks. Craig Burchell of FalconX and Matteo Pandolfi of Pareto explain how it works and why bringing it on-chain is the next big unlock for DeFi.
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The repo market is $16 trillion globally and it is, as Craig Burchell puts it, the oil that makes everything go. It is also almost entirely absent from on-chain finance — and that gap is creating real problems for RWA liquidity, stablecoin swap desks, and DeFi protocols trying to manage redemption queues. Steve Ehrlich sits down with Craig Burchell, head of lending at FalconX, and Matteo Pandolfi, CEO of on-chain credit infrastructure provider Pareto, to map exactly how repo works, what broke in 2019, why it translates extremely well into onchain finance. Matteo puts a $1 trillion figure on where on-chain repo gets in five years. Craig gives you one reason it gets there and one very honest reason it might not.
Host:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich
Guest:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Craig Burchell — Head of Lending, FalconX; previously Head of Lending at Membrane Finance. @_CraigBirchall
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matteo Pandolfi — CEO & Co-Founder, Pareto (on-chain credit infrastructure). @pan_teo_
Timestamps
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