Martin Masser of the crypto exchange ChangeNOW used a recent appearance on The Wolf Of All Streets to push back on a story his own industry often tells about itself. The fear that crypto and stablecoins are pulling deposits out of traditional banks, he said, is sort of nonsense, according to ChangeNOW. The migration is real, in his telling, but it is going somewhere else.
ChangeNOW is a crypto exchange, and it was cited during the same segment as an example of the super-app convergence the speakers were describing. Readers should weigh the argument with that in mind.
Masser’s Argument, in His Own Words
Asked where consumer money is actually moving, Masser said: “All the deposit flight is going from banks to neobanks. Has nothing to do with crypto. People, you know, like the younger generation doesn’t go into their bank branch anymore. They just sign up for Revolut or SoFi or whatever it is.”
That is a crypto executive downplaying crypto’s disruptive effect on retail banking, and pointing instead at app-first consumer finance brands as the actual competitor to the branch model. It is not the position the sector usually takes, which is part of why the segment is worth surfacing.
A second, unnamed guest on the program pushed a related structural point about behavior, recalling that “Back in the ’90s, you’d have to wait for a bank branch to open to do anything with your money.” The argument was that always-on, permissionless settlement has already reset consumer expectations, whether or not the headline crypto narratives capture it.
Why SoFi Keeps Getting Named
SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ:SOFI | SOFI Price Prediction) is one of the two neobanks Masser called out by name. It trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol SOFI, and it operates as a bank holding company through SoFi Bank, funding its lending operations primarily through consumer deposits. In other words, the deposit-gathering that Masser describes as flowing to app-based banks is, at SoFi, the actual funding base for the loan book.
The scale is meaningful. SoFi reports 15.8 million members, and its Technology Platform serves over 134 million global accounts for enterprise clients. CEO Anthony Noto, on the company’s July call, framed the trajectory this way: “We had 650,000 total members when I joined in 2018 and we are now adding that amount every seven or eight weeks.”
Investors who want to check the primary source can read SoFi’s Q2 2026 earnings release filed with the SEC here, or track ongoing disclosures at investors.sofi.com.
Where the Clean Split Gets Messy
Masser’s framing draws a bright line: deposits go to neobanks, crypto stays separate. One of the two companies he names complicates that line. SoFi’s Financial Services segment includes SoFi Crypto, alongside SoFi Money checking and savings, SoFi Invest brokerage and the SoFi Credit Card. The company describes itself as a member-centric everything app enabling members to borrow, save, spend, invest, buy and sell crypto, and protect their money through a single platform.
That does not refute the branch-behavior claim. A generational shift away from branches and toward apps can be real even if the apps sell crypto next to the savings account. It does mean the categories overlap at exactly the company being used as the example.
Convergence Point Both Speakers Landed On
Where the two podcast speakers agreed was on convergence: traditional finance and crypto rails are being folded into single consumer surfaces where everything is offered to everyone. SoFi’s own product map, spanning lending, deposits, brokerage, cards, crypto trading and a stablecoin, is a working instance of that model.
What Is Actually Being Claimed
Masser’s arguing that a generational change in how people bank, away from branches and toward apps, is being misattributed to crypto. That is a testable proposition rather than a settled one, and readers can decide how much weight to give it knowing where the speaker works and which company he named.