The EthCC Cannes Special ft. Ilya, Stake Capital | Robinhood, RWAs & Future of AI | The LOCAL Ep.6

Recorded in Cannes over a bottle of rosé for a change, this is our first ever live episode of The LOCAL, recorded during EthCC last week.

We sat down with Ilya from Stake Capital Group, an early-stage crypto VC, investing, building, and validating the frontier of deep tech and Web3.

We unpacked what’s really going on beneath the current wave of stablecoin launches, the AI agent hype cycle, and the slow-motion collision between crypto and the real world. Stake Capital has been investing across the crypto stack for years, from DeFi infra to privacy tech and tokenised credit, and Ilya joins us to share his take on where the market’s heading, why Europe might be missing the moment, and what happens next when agents start spending on-chain.

Also in this episode:

• Why stablecoins might be crypto’s only true product-market fit
• Gambling vs investing: is there actually a difference?
• Why Robinhood might quietly win
• Tokenisation, RWA, and touching the messy real world
• The Copilot problem: is your trading code leaking?
• AI security, AI researchers, and the productivity gap no one’s fixing

 

Subscribe for new episodes every week: ‪@TheLocalWMC‬

 

🎧 Also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your fix.

 

Follow us on X: https://x.com/TheLocalWMC

@timmeggs | Marcus (the other one)