Sept. 17, 2026
Building On-Chain Alternatives to Fiat Currency with Nevin Freeman of Reserve
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Reserve co-founder Nevin Freeman to discuss the project's long-term goal of creating an asset-backed currency capable of preserving purchasing power. They explore Bitcoin's evolution as a store of value, Reserve's experience bringing stablecoins to Venezuela, the potential for tokenized real-world assets to expand DeFi, and the regulatory barriers standing between today's financial system and globally accessible on-chain markets.
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RSS Feed In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Nevin Freeman, co-founder of Reserve, an open protocol for creating asset-backed token portfolios. Freeman discusses Reserve's pursuit of a currency that could preserve purchasing power without depending entirely on fiat, along with the years of experimentation required to pursue that goal. The conversation examines Bitcoin's growing role as a store of value, Reserve's work in Latin America, decentralized token funds , tokenized securities, and the regulatory changes needed for on-chain finance to reach a global market.
What you'll learn:
- Why Freeman has become considerably more bullish on Bitcoin since founding Reserve
- How Reserve envisions a "flatcoin" designed around purchasing power rather than a fiat currency peg
- What Reserve learned after its stablecoin wallet reached significant adoption in Venezuela
- How DTFs use smart contracts to provide diversified exposure to baskets of tokenized assets
- Why Freeman believes DeFi has demonstrated the potential of globally accessible financial markets
- How securities laws complicate the creation of financial products that can move freely across borders
- Why regulatory modernization may progress incrementally as traditional financial institutions adopt tokenization
- How Reserve's community navigates token economics, market cycles, and disagreements over the project's direction
- Why Reserve recently launched thematic DTFs tied to different parts of the AI build-out
- And much more!
Nevin Freeman is the co-founder of Reserve. His path to crypto began well before the project's launch, starting with an interest in transportation engineering and later shifting toward AI and questions about how emerging technologies could affect society. Freeman first bought Bitcoin in 2011, sold his holdings the following year, and continued following crypto before becoming more deeply involved during the 2017 market cycle. That period helped lead to Reserve and a long-term effort to develop decentralized financial infrastructure around asset-backed money. Today, Freeman and the Reserve community are building DTF infrastructure while working through the technical, commercial, and regulatory requirements of making a globally accessible asset-backed currency possible.
Did you enjoy this episode? Check out these other great guests:
- Tomasz Stańczak - Ethereum Foundation
- David Hoffman - Bankless
- Fisher Yu - Babylon Labs
- Alexei Zamyatin - BOB
- Sid Powell - Maple Finance
And many others!
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